Politeness will be a great acquisition, if it does no more than impart grace to manners; but its function does not stop here.  For propriety, springing as it does from motives of benevolence and modesty, and actuated by tender feelings toward the sensibilities of others, is ever a graceful expression of sympathy.  Its requirement is that we should weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice.  Such didactic requirement, when reduced into small every-day details of life, expresses itself in little acts scarcely noticeable, or, if noticed, is, as one missionary lady of twenty years’ residence once said to me, “awfully funny.”  You are out in the hot glaring sun with no shade over you; a Japanese acquaintance passes by; you accost him, and instantly his hat is off—­well, that is perfectly natural, but the “awfully funny” performance is, that all the while he talks with you his parasol is down and he stands in the glaring sun also.  How foolish!—­Yes, exactly so, provided the motive were less than this:  “You are in the sun; I sympathize with you; I would willingly take you under my parasol if it were large enough, or if we were familiarly acquainted; as I cannot shade you, I will share your discomforts.”  Little acts of this kind, equally or more amusing, are not mere gestures or conventionalities.  They are the “bodying forth” of thoughtful feelings for the comfort of others.

Another “awfully funny” custom is dictated by our canons of Politeness; but many superficial writers on Japan, have dismissed it by simply attributing it to the general topsy-turvyness of the nation.  Every foreigner who has observed it will confess the awkwardness he felt in making proper reply upon the occasion.  In America, when you make a gift, you sing its praises to the recipient; in Japan we depreciate or slander it.  The underlying idea with you is, “This is a nice gift:  if it were not nice I would not dare give it to you; for it will be an insult to give you anything but what is nice.”  In contrast to this, our logic runs:  “You are a nice person, and no gift is nice enough for you.  You will not accept anything I can lay at your feet except as a token of my good will; so accept this, not for its intrinsic value, but as a token.  It will be an insult to your worth to call the best gift good enough for you.”  Place the two ideas side by side; and we see that the ultimate idea is one and the same.  Neither is “awfully funny.”  The American speaks of the material which makes the gift; the Japanese speaks of the spirit which prompts the gift.

It is perverse reasoning to conclude, because our sense of propriety shows itself in all the smallest ramifications of our deportment, to take the least important of them and uphold it as the type, and pass judgment upon the principle itself.  Which is more important, to eat or to observe rules of propriety about eating?  A Chinese sage answers, “If you take a case where the eating is all-important,