ences had
painted anew in naming colors the difference in husbands. How
prone a woman is, who is free and dearly beloved, to fall into the
habit of taking things for granted, forgetting how one drop of the
full measure of happiness, that a good husband gives her, would
turn to rosy tints the gray lives of hundreds of her kind who are
wives in name only. Her appreciation may be abundant but it is the
silent kind. Her bugaboo is fear of sentiment and when it is too
late, she remembers with a heart-break.

I can think of a thousand things right now I want to say to Jack
and while storing them away for some future happy hour, I walked
further into the deep shadows of twilight.

Instantly the spell of the East was over me. Real life was not.
In the soft green silences of mystery and fancy, I found a seat by
an ancient moss-covered tomb. Dreamily I watched a great red
dragon-fly frivol with the fairy blue wreaths of incense-smoke that
hovered above the leaf shadows trembling on the sand. The deep
melody of a bell, sifted through a cloud of blossom, caught up my
willing soul and floated out to sea and Jack far from this lovely
land, where stalks unrestrained the ugly skeleton of easy divorce
for men. The subject always irritates me like prickly heat.

NIKKO, July, 1911.

Summer in Japan is no joke, especially if you are waiting for
letters. I know perfectly well I can't hear from you and Jack for
an age, and yet I watch for the postman three times a day, as a
hungry man waits for the dinner-bell.

The days in Yokohama were too much like a continuous Turkish bath,
and I fled to Nikko, the ever moist and mossy. Two things you can
always expect in this village of "roaring, wind-swept
mountains,"--rain and courtesy. One is as inevitable as the other,
and both are served in quantities.

I am staying in a semi-foreign hotel which is tucked away in a
pocket in the side of a mountain as comfy as a fat old lady in a
big rocker who glories in dispensing hospitality with both hands.
Just let me put my head out of my room door and the hall fairly
blossoms with little maids eager to serve. A step toward the
entrance brings to life a small army of attendants bending as they
come like animated jack-knives on a live wire. One struggles with
the mystery of my overshoes, while the Master stands by and begs me
to take care of my honorable spirit. As it is the only spirit I
possess I heed his advice and bring it back t