jars and vases, he has one out at one time, another at another. A certain
vase goes with a certain screen, and every time a change is made, the
daughters of the house receive new lessons in the art of placing the
articles and decking them with flowers and boughs of blossom in order to
gain the most beautiful effect. If a visitor be present in the house, the
guest-chamber will be decorated afresh every day, each design showing some
new and unexpected beauty in screen, or flower-decked vase, or painted
kakemono. There is one vase which is always carefully supplied with
freshly-cut boughs or flowers. This is the vase which stands before the
tokonoma. The tokonoma is a very quaint feature of a Japanese house. It
means a place in which to lay a bed, and, in theory, is a guest-chamber in
which to lodge the Mikado, the Japanese Emperor. So loyal are the Japanese
that every house is supposed to contain a room ready for the Emperor in
case he should stay at the door and need a night's lodging. The Emperor,
of course, never comes, and so the tokonoma is no more than a name.

Usually it is a recess a few feet long and a few inches wide, and over it
hangs the finest kakemono that the house can afford, and in front of it is
a vase whose flowers are arranged in a traditional form which has a certain
allegorical meaning.

At night a Japanese room is lighted by a candle fixed in a large square
paper lantern, the latter placed on a lacquer stand. The light is very
dim, and many are now replacing it with ordinary European lamps. Unluckily
they buy the very commonest and cheapest of these, and so in consequence
accidents and fires are numerous.

Among the coolies of Japan, the people who fill the back streets of the
large towns with long rows of tiny houses, the process of "moving house"
is absolutely literal. They do not merely carry off their furniture--that