as the youngest clerk from the H. and S. Bank.

This was the end of her tale. She had had to leave Japan just after her recovery, and had only now been able to pay her second visit. To-morrow she must walk up to Kose, and renew acquaintance with the landscape that had entered so into her life. She would like to see if she could find the exact spot where she was suddenly kidnapped: the very grass-stems, grating in the breeze, had an irresistible fascination.

Breakfasting early next morning, porridge handed hot at 6 A. M.,-I strolled outside to reconnoitre where I was by daylight. The charm of Karuizawa lies in its open space of moor, its elbow-room so rare in a country where villages are mostly crowds, and also in its tonic air, limpid from its remoteness, its very touch conveying a sense of rest to the fagged arrivals from the teeming coast of the Pacific. Most of these consist of missionaries and their families, who converge every summer from hundreds of miles away to this high ground, "in order to seek that renewed vigor of body and soul without which our ministrations can have little success amid the daily obstacles that confront us in an alien land." They also enjoy up here the unaccustomed treat of continuous trifling intercourse with members of their own race: the village is such a tiny one that the native population is quite swamped by the vivacious whites; thus their stay at Karuizawa (lasting two or three months every year) brings them some of the cheery effect of "going Home." Every day there are picnic ascents on the hills, or wanderings down steep paths (sed revocare gradum !) in the depths of delicious woods; now and then comes a romantic expedition to climb Asama by night, peer into the swirling pit of flame, and try to keep

warm till the wonderful Dawn shall disclose the myriad peaks of Japan: tea, tennis tournaments, and religious services divide the remainder of their time, with an occasional graver conference, at which undaunted puzzled hearts bring forward better methods for "the evangelization of the unique and stubborn race among whom our lot is cast." In fact they have a thoroughly good time, right through the summer months; and who would grudge it them? unless perhaps the perspiring merchant down in his Treaty Port, who rarely gets more than a fortnight holiday,-besides being a mere unheroic sinner into the bargain. Walking through the unstirred pool of heat that fills the Tokyo streets in August, I have often missed familiar Protestant figures in the Christian quarters of the city; and their absence during the long doyo (dog-days) served only to accentuate the worn black garments of the Roman Catholic men and women who moved slowly to and fro at their endless work among the poor: high or low thermometer is all the same to them ("unmarried people need no change"), whose liaison with the comforts of this life is of the very least, and holidays deferred.

But we have wandered from the village street at early morn. Karuizawa was formerly-up to that distant date, when primary education was established in England-a posting-station (fifty men and fifty horses kept) on the great Nakasendo, the road which runs inland from Tokyo to Kyoto, while the more frequented Tokaido links the two capitals by a route which hugs the Pacific coast. The inhabitants gained their living almost entirely from their services to noble travellers on the road: but when in 1868 a few young Samurai dissolved the feudal system, and so relieved the Daimios from the obligation of their periodical journeys to Yedo, and when a little later railways came.

with hours instead of days, Karuizawa people-like too many others in Japan just then-were altogether adrift, left to shift for themselves. Then some missionaries discovered that the site was exactly what they wanted as a summer resort, houses cheap to hire or build, service in plenty, and surroundings so primitive that they might live in a free-and-easy way, without the fear of invasion by fashionable tourists who would make things dear and strike a discordant note in the calm retreat.

Thus a phoenix village rose on the ruin of the irrevocable past: presently, as summer set in down below, butchers' meat and Western "groceries" came up, exhibited behind glass windows, to the amazement of the old inhabitants; then, as Western comforts grew more common, until actual cows were kept and milked, wives and children of business-men in the Ports were consigned to swell the missionary group; in '93 the Government built the manytunnelled Abt-rail track, and Karuizawa became a station on a trunk-line connecting the two seas; when the "Manpei Hotel" was opened (with a signboard painted in foreign letters) and table d'hôte was naturalized, the coddled tourist thought that he must have "a look in" too, just to see if Asama really were as "active" as they said; while quite recently even Japanese gentlemen of high degree have begun to build houses and introduce their families. As in so many other cases, the world followed the lead of the missionaries. Foreigners are now the raison d'être of Karuizawa, and no echo of Feudalism haunts the hills; the former pomp of the Nakasendo-with its chronic injustice is forgotten, and the black-eyed children of to-day barely look at the rack-rail engine being shunted on or off the crowded trains, as if it had been always so. Asama (eight miles distant from the station,

8000 feet above the sea) alone remains unaltered by the dramatic upheaval in the life of the nation spread below; it has not been stirred to mark the new era by any eruption, but contents itself with an occasional extra growl, and waft of fine dust down to the roses miles away on missionary lawns. In any other country than Japan it would be strange that an obscure benighted moorland hamlet should have been so quickly changed into a cosmopolitan centre, so up-to-date that the voice of the gramophone may be heard in its street, and spirited placards like the following appeal to the maternal foreign eye:

Here highest quality Cow support alone, therefore much frequent Milk in prompt delivery at uttermost small price the every day.

(The middle-class Anglo-Saxon shouts for joy; but what would he not give to be able to express his meaning in Japanese half as well as these peasants do in English.)

About ten o'clock the lady was ready to start, and we made up an escort of five or six. An hour's ascending path brought us to Kose, a peaceful hamlet in a hollow of the hills, a cluster of small houses that cater for visitors who come to bathe, with a very limpid brook babbling music through the trees. As we arrived, an exciting incident occurred. An English lady on a handsome Australian mare was waiting to ride back to Karuizawa, when one of a string of pack-horses tethered near broke loose, and her steed began to career wildly. A Cambridge man who had come with as to botanize leapt forward like the handy man he was, and deftly drew her out of the danger which seemed imminent. Children of every age ran out to inspect the commotion, but speedily turned their attention on us instead: a boy of eighteen months made his mother

transfer him to my shoulders, where he reigned and approvingly pulled my hair, as though he had known me in some previous existence. When we see the extraordinary ease with which this race "make up to" foreigners, we are the more impressed by the ability of the Tokugawa rule, which for two and a half centuries found no difficulty in maintaining such an absolute seclusion. We sat down on the placid sward and ate our lunch, enhanced by Kirui beer just cooled in the rapid brook: the Lady had walked away, begging to be allowed to go alone to identify that crucial spot; so the Botanist laid out his specimens while he smoked a good cigar (choice Manila, price 1d.), and in the sleepy calm of that oasis of deep content we felt more like citizens of the world than superior natives of a peerless isle ten thousand miles away. The shadows had grown before she returned, tranquil as the woods around: she had not seen any sign of the starting-point she sought; the unkempt Blackwood's Magazine.

coarse-grained grass that met her gaze stared dull indifference to the question in her eye. We told her this was as it should be; great works of Art admit of

no encore.

We were preparing to go home, when some American ladies kindly asked us in to a cup of tea in a tiny house they occupied. Amongst them was a girl of fifteen, with frank wistful eyes and 'beautiful white throat, who waited on us casual strangers with a sweet intensity of care that appealed to us all. She was there to try what the baths could do: and now

in silence she reposes

where the white-crossed burial slope, which broods so still above busy Yokohama bay, has covered with its cosmopolitan turf that young transparent face. One was taken, the other was left; but I never saw either again. Yet "ships that pass in the night" in Japan are not forgotten, however brief the encounter.

Ernest Foxwell.

The Western slopes of the Vosges mountains on the North-Eastern frontiers of France, gradually subside into long rolling hills covered with corn, alternating with forests of beech and oak, and with rich pasturage in the well-watered valleys. These breezy uplands form the water-shed of the Moselle and other rivers, on whose banks buildings and factories are rapidly springing up. But above the busy life of Nancy and Epinal, the upper country is inhabited by a simple, industrious race, living in substantial stone houses with wide-spreading roofs; ploughing and wood-cutting, making cheese and butter, and rearing poultry, untroubled by any modern theories of scientific agriculture.

When the summer comes round, the quiet villages of the Vosges are suddenly invaded by strangers. Express trains from Paris arrive and deposit their load of passengers and luggage at little wayside stations. Hotels and private houses are filled to overflowing; the special source of attraction being the mineral waters, with which the whole neighborhood abounds. There are hot springs and cold springs and warm springs, all varying in their 477

ECLECTIC.

VOL. LXXVII.

chemical components, all pouring out in exhaustless abundance waters which, from Roman times, have been famous for their healing and recuperative powers.

The village of Contrexéville is one of these favored spots; from June to September it attracts the gouty rich from all countries. The Shah of Persia, a Russian Princess and other Royalties, have been amongst this year's guests, and many French ladies, as remarkable for their enormous girth as for the vivacity of their conversation. In the height of the season the population of wealthy invalids overflows perforce to Martigny on the one hand and to Vittel on the other. In all three places the same régime prevails of early hours, spare diet, prescribed exercise and a deluge of waters within and without, mitigated by palatial hotels, bands, theatres and lovely public gardens.

While Contrexéville is taxing its resources to cajole the idle and corpulent rich to eat less, and to walk more, the neighboring village of Mandres is intent upon a task, certainly not less worthy, but of an exactly opposite nature to get the overworked and under

fed slum-children of Paris to rest quietly and to eat all that can be crammed down their poor little throats. It must be set down to the credit account of Dives at Contrexéville, that the scheme for fattening young Lazarus originated with him.

The remarkable work of the School Colony (Colonie Scolaire) at Mandressur-Vair is becoming famous throughout France, and is well worthy the attention of those interested at home in the various plans for giving a country holiday to the children of our own large towns.

The scheme originated with Dr. Graux, a Paris physician of wide interests and cultured taste, who is one of the leading doctors practising at Contrexéville during the season; he was discussing with a patient of his in 1887 the condition of the children in the Paris slums, the high rate of mortality, the deterioration, physical and moral, of the survivors, the anæmic condition of the children at the end of the school-year, and the difficulty of showing them a simpler and happier mode of life to which they might aspire.

The question was practically familiar to both the friends, as Monsieur Duval (an engineer and machine-maker by profession) was a member of the Municipal Council of one of the poorest and most crowded quarters of Paris, known as the XIth Arrondissement, and the doctor was an enthusiast for moral and sanitary reform.

Dr. Graux suggested an entirely novel idea, that a Paris municipality should acquire land and a building in a country district, to be used for the sole purpose of a holiday resort for the poorest class of children in its elementary schools. He also pointed out that within two or three miles of Contrexéville itself there was a site and a building that would fulfil all the desired conditions.

On a bracing hill-side just above the village of Mandres was a large country house, built by the Marquis de Favincourt in the seventeenth century. His successor fled amongst the crowd of noble émigrés at the outbreak of the Revolution. The estate became national property, and was sold to the peasants, who cut down the timber, broke up the park, and converted the château into barns and granaries; but it had not suffered much and was then for sale. M. Duval, who was as generous and energetic as he was wealthy, did not wait for official delays or even to consult his colleagues at Paris as to the practicability of the scheme; he bought the château at once, with enough land round it for large gardens and recreation grounds. Dr. Graux himself superintended the planting of trees and shrubs. The old building was adapted to its new uses, and largely added to; the most necessary furniture was purchased, and M. Duval handed the whole thing over to the Caisse d'Ecole of the XIth Arrondissement of Paris, ready for occupation. Education, and all that concerns the welfare of the scholars, is liberally supported by the French Republic, and the gift was cordially accepted.

The XIth Arrondissement is in itself a large overcrowded city of 220,000 inhabitants, chiefly of the working classes, with a school-population of 20,000 children; it is the eastern part of central Paris, including the Place de la République.

In the summer of 1889, two years from the first discussion of the project, the School Colony of Mandres was actually inaugurated by the arrival of the first trainfull of two hundred pale, weary and eager little boys.

The main building is divided up into large dormitories, store-rooms, and a committee room. The added building contains a fine refectory with kitchens, the room above which is used as a