TRAVELLERS in Japan who keep their eyes open will soon notice that the eruet-stand is the criterion of civilisation, This aphorism might be thought to imply that the Japanese before the advent of foreigners were uncivilized, whereas they enjoyed a very elaborate civil 3 kind: what is meant is that to the foreign eller in Japan the cruet-stand is the criterion of the civilisation he loves. The traveller cing through from Kobe to Yokohama y the Tokaido railway determines to break the journey at Nagoya, sv as to avoid a night in the train. He arrives there late at night, expecting to find a handsome new hotel close to the station. He gets into a riesha and is whirled along a broad highway for what seems miles. After nearly half an hour the ricsha man turns down a narrow street on the left and pulls up at the door of a thoroughly old-fashioned tea-house, which he smilingly introduces as Shina-chu's. "Why, after all there is no foreign-fashion hotel at Nagoya," thinks the traveller, as he is peat by musmies up the narrow stairs until he is brought into a. series of little rooms, each with one table in the middle, four chairs, and a cruet-stand in the middle of each table. Then he knows that he has not been wished by his ricsha-man, and that he is in civilisation. If the tables and the chairs cannot be certainly relied on, the cruet-stand is incontrovertible proof. Where there are cruet-stands, there are the other modern comforts, iron bedsteads, spring beds, washstands, and quasi-foreign cookery. We have learnt from Stuckton that stationary wash-tubs are the criterion of civilisation in the at such hostelries in Japan it is the cruet-as Shivachu's, of which we have spoken, And when our traveller leaves or Kanaya's at Nikko, in which no iachu's at Nagoya the morning after attempt is made to appear foreign, but arrival, he is not surprised to find the old Jap: character is preserved written on the door modestly, and with at least in the exterior, that we welcome no vulgar display, " Hotel clu Progress." cruct-stand. Then there are mag-The cult of the cruet-stand is not ut buildings like the Daitukuan at however confined to Japan. In the noka, three stories high, with for-London Daily Graphic there has been eign fashion windows a "d iron balconies, going on for some time a discussion on When we go in, we are made to take off the Immorality of Cheapness, in the our boots, and we think it is a tea+ course of which Mrs. Lynn Linton house after all, and we pass up through inveighed very strongly against the long rows of real tea-house rooms, wickedness of dealing at Stores, and the until on the top floor we see a table degeneration of the age which "ha: with a green cloth, four cane-bottomed lost the art of spending money royally. chairs, and the cruet-stand in the Mrs. Lintou's letter was really not worth middle. Then we know we shall get answering, but it is answered in a dis-foreign food. cursive letter occupying two columns by But it would be a mis ake to imagine Mrs. Haweis. Mrs. Haweis points out that these cruet-stands are only for the how much the cheapening of counodibenefit of foreign travellers. 'Nhe Japan-ties has added to the comforts of the ese are taking with. much zeal to enter-poor. She says:—When I was a child tainments in foreign style. They give the lower middles' had no carpets, no each other dinners at their semi-foreign white tablecloths, no tumblers that look hotels, and the cruet-stand veeupies a like cut glass, no cruets we pepper and very prominent position in their feasts, these things were not aleiply obtain-glittering ofer the Japanese banque er is not particular as to the appropriateness—tu the. able, the masses did without them. foreign taste—of the condiments he They had cuarse mugs, scoured boards, cuploys, and he employs them freely, with perhaps vue mat, and the mustard Ju feasting, asin almost everything else, lived ina teacup or pewter pot. Now, the Japanese looks up to foreign w: so cheap are these things that the superior ty his own: whit luublest thrifty family can sport cruets, salad plates, white napery, and a sort of ese still rage wapupers may sty, the or Brussels carpet." We quote this to ior being, and she y his incessant show what a prominent part the endeavours to imitate him, As long stand—according to Mrs. Haweis—ha: as this is the case, it is unreasonable taken in the amelioration of the lot of to imagine that he feels really insulted the lower middle.' There is one thing by extraterritoriality, or will be really in this extract that will cause a momen-eved if he dues not yet the treaties tary sigh for the past in the breast of foreign Powers revised on the one who has travelled in Japan. Mrs. of equal rights. Tt seems certain that Haweis says that the "mustard lived in the demand for the abolition of extra-a teacup or pewter pot but it is always territoriality is not a popular demand very dead, and has been dead for a long it may be very reasonably doubted time in a eruet-stand in Japan, whether the peuple, as a whole, want to It is curious that Mrs. Haweis and have the country thrown open to for-Tapanese hotel-keepers should show such eigners; even if, with that concession, reverence for cruet-stands, when they they buy the withdrawal of consular are quite extinct in the lu uses of jurisdiction. The Diet meets in a month, the upper middles," as Mrs. Haweis and then perhaps we shall wet at what would elegantly term them, There the real feeling of the country is; we was a time, and it 1s not so very long say perhaps, because the people generally When the cruet-stand was the did not take much interest in the election indispensable central ornament of the of inewbers of the Diet, and their mem-dinner-table: it has vanished away like bers may not, at first, represent them the Snark, without any special edict, but accurately. But the Diet will be a simply in obedience to an unwritten splendid means of political education, law, which ordained that it should be and it will not be long before the elec-superseded by eccentric little bottles be~ tors do take an interest in their parlia-tween every two guests. Can anyone ment, and then we shall know what tell offhand what has become of his their real wishes as to treaty revision cruet-stand when he first dispensed are; and when the country is thrown with it, and what he did with it? His open, the demand for cruet-stands will boy may know, and some day when he become larger goes to Japan, he will find it the chief ornament of an inn table, and he will be glad.
Reviews. have entertained foreigners for years, OF course, at the great hotels that
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.