ers and taken back to the palace with an extra
guard of three policemen.

I have been very busy, at play and at work. We have just had a
wedding tea. My former secretary, Miss First River, as she
expressed it, "married with" Mr. East Village.

The wedding took place at the ugly little mission church, which was
transformed into a beautiful garden, with weeping willows,
chrysanthemums, and mountain ferns. Also we had a wedding-bell.
In a wild moment of enthusiasm I proposed it. It is always a guess
where your enthusiasm will land you out here. I coaxed a cross old
tinner to make the frame for me. He expostulated the while that
the thing was impossible, because it had never been done before in
this part of the country. It was rather a weird shape, but I left
the girls to trim it and went to the church to help decorate. The
bell was to follow upon completion. It failed to follow and after
waiting an hour or so I sent for it. The girls came carrying one
trimmed bell and one half covered. I asked, "Why are you making
two wedding-bells?" My answer was, "Why Sensei! must not the groom
have one for his head too?"

Everybody wanted to do something for the little maid, for she had
so bravely struggled with adversity of fortune and perversity of
family. So there were four flower girls, and the music teacher
played at the wedding march! In spite of her efforts, Lohengrin
seemed suffering as it came from the complaining organ.

Miss First River was a lovely enough picture, in her bridal robes
of crepe, to cause the guests to draw in long breaths of
admiration, till the room sounded like the coming of a young
cyclone. They were not accustomed to such prominence given a
bride, nor to weddings served in Western style.

Oh, yes, the groom was there, a secondary consideration for the
first time in the history of Hiroshima, but so in love he did not
seem to mind the obscurity.

The ceremony over, the newly-wed seated themselves on a bench
facing the guests. An elder of the church arose and with a
solemnity befitting a burial, read a sermon on domestic happiness
and some forty or fifty congratulatory telegrams. After an hour or
so of this and several speeches, cake was passed around, and it was
over. At the maid's request I gave her an "American watch with a
good engine in it" and my blessing with much love in it, and went
back to work. Do not for a minute imagine that because I am not a
regularly ordained missio