es, two cents is the limit. On this they
manage to live and laugh and raise a family. It is all so simple
and childlike, so free from pretension, hurry and rush. Sometimes
I wonder if it is not we, with our myriad interests, who have
strayed from the real things of life.

On my road homeward, too, there is a crudely carved Buddha. He is
so altogether hideous, they have put him in a cage of wooden slats.
On certain days it is quite possible to try your fortune, by buying
a paper prayer from the priest at the temple, chewing it up and
throwing it through the cage at the image. If it sticks you will
be lucky.

My aim was not straight or luck was against me to-day. My prayers
are all on the floor at the feet of the grinning Buddha.

Jack is in Siberia and Uncle has Sada. I have not heard from her
since she left. I am growing truly anxious.

January, 1912.

_Dearest Mate_:

At last I have a letter from Jack. Strange to say I am about as
full of enthusiasm over the news he gives me as a thorn-tree is of
pond-lilies.

He says he has something like a ton of notes and things on the
various stunts of the bubonic germ in Manchuria when it is feeling
fit and spry. But he is seized with a conviction that he must go
somewhere in northwest China where he thinks there is happy
hunting-ground of evidence which will verify his report to the
Government. Suppose the next thing I hear he will be chasing
around the outer rim of the old world hunting for somebody to
verify the Government.

There is absolutely no use of my trying to say the name of the
place he has started for. Even when written it looks too wicked to
pronounce. It is near the Pass that leads into the Gobi Desert.

Jack wrote me to go to Shanghai and he would join me later. I am
writing him that I can't start till the fate of Sada San is settled
for better or for worse.

NANKOW, CHINA. February, 1912.

_Mate_:

News of Jack's desperate illness came to me ten days ago and has
laid waste my heart as the desert wind blasts life. I have been
flying to him as fast as boat and train and cart will take me.

The second wire reached me in Peking last night. Jack has typhus
fever and the disease is nearing the crisis. I have read the
message over and over, trying to read between the lines some faint
glimmer of hope; but I can get no comfort from the noncommittal
words except the fact that Jack is still alive. I am on my way to
the termi