ards can be traced by desolated villages and piles of
bones.

Jack tells me he is garbed in a long white robe effect (I hope he
won't grow wings), with a good-sized mosquito net on a frame over
his head and face. He works in heavy gloves. Mouth and nose being
the favorite point of attack, everybody who ventures out wears over
this part of the face a curiously shaped shield, whose firm look
says, "No admittance here." But all the same, that germ from
Siberia is a wily thief and steals lives by the thousands, in spite
of all precautions.

Jack is as enthusiastic over the fight against the scourge as a
college boy over football. His letter has so many big technical
words in it, I had to pay excess postage.

I 've read his letter twice, but to save me I cannot find any
suggestion of the remotest possibility of my coming nearer. Yes, I
know I said Japan only. But way down in the cellar of my heart I
_hoped_ he would say nearer.

What a happy day it has been. Here is your letter, just come. The
priests up at the temple have asked me to see the ceremony of
offering food to the spirits, in the holy of holies.

There is not time for me to add another word to this letter. What
a dear you are, to love while you lecture me. What you say is all
true. A woman's place _is_ in her home. But just now out of the
East, I 've had a call to play silent partner to science and while
it 's a lonesome sport, at least it 's far more entertaining than
caring for a husbandless house. Anyhow I am sending you a hug and
a thousand kisses for the babies.

SHOJI LAKE, August, 1911.

Mate, think of the loveliest landscape picture you ever saw, put me
in it and you will know where I am. With some friends from
Honolulu and a darling old man--observe I say _old_!--from
Colorado, we started two days ago, to walk around the base of Fuji.
Everything went splendidly till a typhoon hit us amidships and sent
us careening, blind, battered and soaked into this red and white
refuge of a hotel, that clings to the side of a mountain like a
woodpecker to a telephone pole. I have seen storms, but the worst
I ever saw was a playful summer breeze compared with the
magnificent fury of this wind that snapped great trees in two as if
they had been young bean-poles, and whipped the usually peaceful
lake into raging waves that swept through a gorge and greedily
licked up a whole village.

Our path was high up, but right over the water. Someti