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24 to prosecute the offending reporter; but the remedy would be worse than the disease, since not only is it dilatory and expensive, but the protracted advertisement would tend to circulate rather than to kill the slander. Besides, in the eyes of an indulgent public gallantry, as our French neighbours call it, excites more amusement then reprobation. At any rate, libellous paragraphs, with their inevitable accompaniment of blackmail, are at present sufficiently numerous to detract from the high reputation deservedly enjoyed by more scrupulous journals such as the Nihon, the Nichi Nichi, and the Jiji Shimpo. The feuilleton flourishes. When illustrated by woodcuts, representing a Japanese woman tied naked to a tree and assaulted by Russian sailors, it makes good fuel for chauvinistic flame; but such outrages on taste are rare, and in general the reader prefers adventurous romance, with a spice of unreality, in the vein of Jules Verne or the elder Dumas.

Proximity to the continent where manners count for less than dollars has, in the opinion of many, made the present generation less polite and more mercenary than its predecessors. One certainly misses the exquisite courtesy still in vogue in outlying districts, when one has occasion to remark the rudeness or familiarity of certain classes in or near Tōkyō. But this declining courtesy, which cannot be called general, is not to be attributed solely to ignorant dislike of strangers. As soon as the sensitive native discovers that ceremonious attention is apt to be mistaken for obsequiousness, his pride intervenes and his bearing becomes less affable. The example of ill-mannered tourists has, it is true, demoralized the service of certain hotels, where the visitor persists in regarding