The girls were taught needlework, music, the arranging of flowers, etc. They were instructed in household duties and the things needed by a wife and mother. Some girls received higher education, becoming able to understand the Chinese characters used by the Japanese, and they were especially well learned in the history of their country. "Plutarch tells us that the ambition of a Spartan woman was to be the wife of a great man and the mother of illustrious sons. _Bushido_ set no lower ideal before our maidens; their whole bringing up was in accordance with this view. They were instructed in many martial practices for the sake of self-defense, that they might safeguard their person and their children; in the art of committing suicide, that in case no alternative opened to save them from disgrace, they might end their lives in due order and in comely fashion."[134] There were a number of books, which appeared from time to time, upon the education of the girl, till a library arose which were often bound in one volume. "If the reader will imagine a volume composed of the Bible, 'Ladies' Letter-writer,' 'Guide to Etiquette,' 'The Young Ladies' Own Book,' Hannah More's works, Miss Strickland's 'Queens of England,' a work on household economy, and an almanac, he will obtain some idea of the contents of the _Bunko_, or 'Japanese Lady's Library.' With text and illustrations, the volume is very large; but if translated and printed in brevier with the cuts, it would not probably occupy more space than one of our largest monthly magazines. The books composing it, in their order of importance, are the _Ōnna Dai Gakŭ_ ('Women's Great Learning'--the moral duties of woman, founded on the Chinese classics); _Ōnna Shō Gakŭ_ ('Woman's Small Learning'--introduction to the above); _Ōnna Niwa no Oshiyé_ ('Woman's Household Instruction'--duties relating to furniture, dress, reception of guests, and all the minutiae of indoor life, both daily and ceremonial); _Ōnna Imagawa_ ('Moral Lessons' in paragraphs); _Ōnna Yō bunshō_ ('Lady's Letter-writer'); _Nijiu-shi Ko_ ('Twenty-four Children'--stories about model children in China). Besides these works of importance, there are _Hiyaku Nin Isshiu_--a collection of one hundred poems from as many poets, written in the old Yamato dialect, and learned in every household, and perpetually repeated with passionate fondness by old and young; a collection of lives of model women; household lore; almanac learning; rules and examples to secure perfect agreement between man and wife; and a vast and detailed array of other knowledge of various sorts, both useful and ornamental to a Japanese maiden, wife, widow, or mother. This book is studied, not only by the higher classes, but by the daughters in almost every respectable family throughout the country. It is read and reread, and committed to memory, until it becomes to the Japanese woman what the Bible is to the inmate of those homes in the West in which the Bible is the first, and