Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/162

134 sense of duty and the loving disposition of a Japanese girl. Neither husband nor wife regards the sexual instinct, however veiled, as the corner-stone of partnership for life. Obedience to parental wisdom is the first stage, mutual politeness the second, devotion to children, begotten or adopted, the third. From these unselfish elements a high average of felicity is attained, possibly even higher than elsewhere. However that may be, the wife's fidelity, jealousy, affection recur as motives of popular poesy. That essentially feminine quality which every bachelor has observed in some otherwise perfect wife "wedded to a churl," and of which I can find no better definition than the following verse affords, would seem common to both hemispheres:

Dearer than kindness Of those I love not Is thine unkindness, Loved one, to me.

This degrading and doglike devotion explains the joy in service which robs it of all sting. Take this revolting picture, which I christen

Gladly on love's road Pulling the rickshaw, Undrawn, I draw it On to the end.

The husband (selfish brute!) is of course seated in the rickshaw, and it is worth notice that "love's road" is the first metaphor we have encountered. Against the jealous wife, bending, lantern in hand, over her