The basis of the present day terpretation is found in the Kojiki and the Nihongi, written in the early eighth century. Are the puerile legends, Mr. Morgan asks, of an age when it was the rule rather than the exception to be a deity," to be taken seriously? Jimmu Tenno, grandchild of the Sun Goddess, is as authentic a figure as Virgil's Æneas. no more, The aim of the Kojiki, "a modest fraud," was that the claim of the Yamato chieftains to rule Japan "should be firmly founded on the everlasting rock of fraudulent history and enforced by the commands of imaginary gods." The Greek Lucian taught morality by laughing the old myths out of court. But twentieth-century Japan does the opposite: she brings them back. By instinct the Japanese as a nation have shown a Tepugnance to monotheism, In 1934 a Japanese was sentenced for dis-inspect because he said that the stories of the Sun Goddess were unworthy. The sword of Susa-no-O "scabbarded and swathed in many wrappings of brocade, lies to this day in the Family Shrine in Tokyo, and no Japanese dare, on pain of being charged with lose majesty, express a doubt as to its authenticity.
Were the Kojiki to be written today (says Mr. Young with pungent sar-asin) a much more perfect work might be expected, for not only has The art of lying improved but the art of imposing a convenient orthodoxy Sh nations has, with the aid of the Press and scientific weapons, reached "point which barbarous despots hardly dreamed of.
Cutting off the Head She feels she may not last long. trees of husbands—and willingly providing the support up which children and households clamber as performers in a more or less successful kind of British rope trick, will gigglingly relive those days in Mrs. Barry's pages.
It is possible, she si Widows s, that Grass laugh rather more than those ladies with Husbands at Home, But as the ensuing notes will show (they are more or less founded on fact and practically comprehensive). what with housekeeping, children, schools, visitors from abroad, village activities, Sunday letters, and what not, they have really no time to be giddy until the boat trip on the way back. And even then only after the children are dont teel like it. Fortunately. in bed, by which time they probably And with these opening words she glides into the record of life in England of a Lady with a Husband Abroad, beginning with her birthday on which she wakes early and feels that she may not last long. Let's say at once that the illustrations are worthy of the text, the grins caused by the latter being prolonged by the ionner.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.