Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 July 1889 — No More Hari-Kari. [ARTICLE]

No More Hari-Kari.

The Mikado of Japan is a deeply distrusted individual. He has seen many Japanese customs we ken and disappear on account of European influences becoming so dominant, but ho never dreamed that time-honored llari-Kari was destined to be blotted out. That custom had come down from remote antiquity, and it was- considered the most effective for Keeping officials straight that could be invented. An official who was short in his accounts, or who didn’t attend to las duties properly, wasn't impeached, or discharged, or even allowed to resign. He simply received a communication from the Mikado, couched in the most poli to terms, intimating that as soon as he could pen the customary farewell letters to his family and the press, intelligence of his suicide would be quite acoeptible to the authorities. If he was a highly salaried man the letter was accompanied by a richly-jeweled sword with which to carve himself. Not long ago the Mikado sent a particularly elaborate and costly cheese stabber to a high official who had offended him, with the usual polite encouragement to /cfor/ese. hut instead of complying the official took a steamer for France, and on reaching Paris he sold the jeweled sword for $(>,000 quite a haridsome speculatiou. He thinks of opening u store in Paris for the purchase of swords of that description, all of which is calculated to knock Hari-Kari higher than a Kite. —Texas Siftings.