Dinner over, a siesta on the soft mats is next in order.  These mats seem made for sleep and indolence.  No booted foot ever defiles them.  Every one leaves his clogs on the ground outside, and glides about in his mitten-like socks, which have each a special compartment for the great toe.  My waiting damsel having gone out, and there being no such things as bells, I do as the natives and clap my hands.  A far-off answer of Hei—­i—­i is returned, and soon the shuffling of feet is heard again.  The housewife appears with the usual low bow, and, smiling so as to again display what resembles a mouthful of coal, she listens to the request for a pillow.  Opening the little closet before spoken of, she produces the desired article.  It is not a ticking bag of baked feathers enclosed in a dainty, spotless case of white linen, but a little upright piece of wood, six inches high and long, and one wide, rounded at the bottom like the rockers of a cradle.  On the top, lying in a groove, is a tiny rounded bag of calico filled with rice-chaff, about the size of a sausage.  The pillow-case is a piece of white paper wrapped around the top, and renewed in good hotels daily for each guest.  One can rest about four or six inches of the side of his os occipitis on a Japanese pillow, and if he wishes may rock himself to sleep, though the words suggest more than the facts warrant.  By sleeping on civilized feathers one gets out of training, and the Japanese pillows feel very hard and very much in one place.  The dreams which one has on these pillows are characteristic.  In my first some imps were boring gimlet-holes in the side of my skull, until they had honeycombed it and removed so much brain that I felt too light-headed to preserve my equilibrium.  On the present occasion, after falling asleep, I thought that the pillow on which I lay pressed its shape into my head, and the skull, to be repaired, was being trepanned.  My head actually tumbling off the pillow was the cause of the fancied operation being suddenly arrested.  A short experience in traveling among the Japanese has satisfied me that they are one of the most polite, good-natured and happy nations in the world.  By introducing foreign civilization into their beautiful land they may become richer:  they need not expect to be happier.

W.E.  GRIFFIS.

JASON’S QUEST.

I.

This is a story of love for love, and how it came to naught.  In it there shall be no marrying from mercenary motives; the manoeuvering mother-in-law is suppressed; Nature takes her course; and in the climax I strive to prove how sad a thing it is that men are modest and women weak.

Still, I do not lose faith in humanity, but hope for better things in the broad, bright future.  I would respectfully call attention to the moral of this tale, and, as for the heroes and heroines of the hereafter, I cheerfully leave them to regulate their affairs upon a different basis; which basis, I devoutly believe, will be one of the inevitable results of time.