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JAPAN such deformities. The genuine Japanese style of couplet was chiefly in vogue, however, though always with increasing loss of the old vigour of thought, and increasing reliance on tricks of diction and trivialities of conception. Several of these poem-composing parties became historical events, not merely for the sake of the couplets produced, but also because of the magnificence and tastefulness of the entertainments. Often a feature of the arrangements was a display of choice flowering plants which served to inspire the poetasters and to reward the most successful. Loose as were the morals of the time, the language of these verses was seldom indelicate. But in the closing days of the Heian epoch, when luxury and self-indulgence reached their extreme point, a new pastime was introduced,—the competitive composition of love-letters. In these all phases of carnal affection were depicted or suggested by the aid of refined and scholarly phraseology. Nevertheless, in everything that concerned outward appearance, the conventions of decorum were observed with the utmost strictness in all Japanese polite pastimes at whatever era. The costumes and customs of an Occidental ball-room in the nineteenth century would have seemed altogether shocking to mediæval Japanese.

Gathering plants of the sweet-flag in June and comparing the length of their roots; writing verses 192