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institutions, it is not great, but a considerable number of them are employed as instructors in schools; and those who are less fortunate and have fewer attainments are employed to a considerable extent in different post and telephone offices and in some branches on the railway. Many private companies of different kinds have begun to employ women clerks as an experiment, and in most cases they have already proved successful.

It seems that there is good hope for women acquiring a wider field for the display of their talents.

It might not be quite out of place to add a few words about more or less important institutions organized by ladies. There are some twenty of such in Tokyo: the Charity Hospital, under the direct patronage of the Empress, with Her Imperial Highness Princess Arisugawa as the Chief of the Council; the Japanese Ladies’ Educational Society, with Her Imperial Highness Princess Kanin as President; the Special Society for Nursing the Sick, under the direct patronage of the Empress, in connection with the Red Cross Society; the Japanese Ladies’ Sanitary Society, the Ladies’ Society for Orphans, the Society for Nursing, Infants belonging to Female Prisoners, and such-like, with eminent ladies as Presidents. Most of them are doing their work well.

A society for female charity handicraft is under the presidency of Miss Parker, of England.

There are many similar institutions in the provinces.

Proportionately, the mental capacity of Japanese women to men seems to be pretty similar to that which their Western sisters are supposed to bear to the men. We cannot, of course, predict what will be women’s place in the social sphere at large in future, but one thing is certain: the educational system for women has been extended, together with that for men, to a proportion that Japan has never before known. Their emulation and aspiration increase year by year, so that the supply of educational institutions is always far behind the demand.