perfect
land, and was now paying the price of disillusionment with bitter
tears.

Eight o 'clock the next morning.

I cabled Jack, "Hiroshima for winter."

He answered, "Thank the Lord you are nailed down at last."

P.S.--I have bought all the books on color prints I could find.

October, 1911.

Hiroshima! Get up and salute, Mate! Is not that name like the
face of an old familiar friend? I have to shake myself to realize
that it is not the long ago, but now. A recent picture of Jack and
one of you and the babies is about the only touch of the present.
Everything is just as it was in the old days, when the difficulties
of teaching in a foreign kindergarten in a _foreigner_ language was
the least of the battle that faced me. Well, I thought I 'd
finished with battles, but there 's a feeling of fight in the air.

Same little room, in the same old mission school. Same wall paper,
so blue it turned green. And, Lord love us, from the music-rooms
still come the sounds like all the harmonies of a baby
organ-factory gone on a strike.

But bless you, honey, there is an eternity of difference in having
to stand a thing and doing it of your own free will. As Black
Charity would remark, "I don't pay 'em no mind," and let them
wheeze out their mournful complaints to the same old hymns.

Had you been here the night my dinky little train pulled into the
station, you would have guessed that it was a big Fourth of July
celebration or the Emperor's birthday. I would not dare guess how
many girls there were to meet me. It seemed like half a mile of
them lined up on the platform, and each carried a round red lantern.

Until they had made the proper bow with deadly precision, there was
not a smile or a sound. That ceremony over, they charged down upon
me in an avalanche of gaiety. They waved their lanterns, they
called _banzai_, they laughed and sung some of the old time foolish
songs we used to sing. They promptly put to rout all legends of
their excessive modesty and shyness. They were just young and
girlish. Plain happy. Eager and sweet in their generous welcome.
It warmed every fiber of my being. When they thinned out a little,
I saw at the other end of the platform a figure flying towards me,
with the sleeves of her kimono out-stretched like the wings of a
gray bird, and a great red rose for a top-knot. It was Miss First
River, a little late, but more than happy, as she sobbed out her
welcome