Ceremonial Manners In Japan

Given a highly imitativa race like t'h9 Japanese, and let oneundíVating standard bo set before them. Tlien generation after generation will no change be witnessed. The standard will act like that of the French academy on the language of France. Now, at home, iu America, we have 50 standards of manners - the reserved and reticent New England manners, the slap you on the back fat western manners, the deniagogue's manners, the drummer 's manners, the en) and dried business man's manners - these and dozens of others might be Bpecifled. And it must be admitted by even the most patriotic that the man who shotüd try to model his deportment on all theso schools at once would como to a somewhut ruixed result Nothing of this be'üldering coraplexity has ever existed-fn Japan. Froni mikado at the top to eooly at the bottom of the social scale one undeviating standard has ahvays prevailed. Originally an importation from China, it haa been elaborated through centuries ol stndy of the most elabórate ceremonial etiquette till at last through constant praotice it has become second nature. No one ever saw anything else, vei dreamed of anything ulse. There was one way of saluting a superior, one of saluting an equal, one oí Ealutiug an inferior, and one's head would have heen cut off had he departed from it. No Japanese child ever saw a drummer - sawouly prostrate artisans salutiug samurai, samurai saluting daimios, daimios saluting shoguns. The whole ceremonial became organized into them as much as their iustinctive habits into our setters aud pointers, perhaps the best marmered of our population. Little girls of 10 will one see hero whose finish of breeding would havo awakened the envy of a dnchess at the court of Louis XPV at Versailles. Female servants one will enconnter at a dinner in the house of a Japanese gentleman whose grace, charm aud dignity are the quintesseuce of ladylike refinement. "Triflss make perfection, but perfection isnotrifie. " The simple f act is that the young woman of 20 has been doing the thing for a thousand yeara -