The experiment station had another institution at its doors.  This had to do not with the dead but with the living.  Its name was “The Garden where Virtues are Cultivated.”  The director of it was the father of the agricultural expert of the prefecture.  The garden, which was not a garden, was a home for bad boys, or rather for thirty bad boys and one bad girl.  The bad girl—­the director, being a man of humanity, common sense and courage, thought it most necessary that there should be at least one bad girl—­acted as maidservant to the director.  The bad boys “maided” themselves and the school.  The lads were such as had fallen into the hands of the police.  They were being reformed in a somewhat original way by a somewhat original director.

Early in the day they had their cold bath, which was itself a break with Japanese custom, for, though most Japanese have a nightly hot bath, they are content with a basin wash in the morning.  Then the boys “cleaned school.”  Next they were marched up one by one to a mirror and required to take a good look at themselves, in order, no doubt, to see just how bad they were.  After this they were called on to “give thanks to the Emperor and their ancestors.”  Finally came a half-hour lecture on “morality.”  It was considered that by this time the boys were entitled to their breakfast.  For open-air labour they were sent to the experiment station, but they had manual work also in their own school, where, among other things, they “made useful things out of waste,” the income from which went to their families.  On Sundays the master, though he must be nearer sixty than fifty, fenced with every one of the thirty boys in turn—­no ordinary task, for Japanese fencing calls not only for an eye and a hand, but for a muscular back.  Some wholesome-looking young fellows, members of a young men’s association, served as volunteer masters and lived in the bare fashion that was so good for the boys.

The director did not believe that bad boys were hopeless.  He said that not only the boys but their parents were better for the work done in “The Garden where Virtues are Cultivated.”  He seemed to have become a sort of consulting expert to primary school-masters who were at a loss to know how to manage bad boys.  Chastisement, as is well known, is unusual in Japanese schools.  The director of the human hortus inclusus confessed to me that though two of his boys whom he had caught fighting might not have been separated without, in the Western phrase, “feeling the weight of his hand,” his heaviest punishment on other difficult occasions was the moxa.

The moxa brings us back to real horticulture.  Moxa is mogusa or mugwort. Mogusa means “burning herb.”  The moxa is a great therapeutic agent in the Far East.  A bit of the dried herb is laid on the skin and set fire to as a sort of blister.  From the application of the moxa as a cure for physical ills to its application for the cure of bad boys is a natural step.  One