writing.

Once, at Nikk[=o], I started with a friend for a morning walk to a place
described in the guide-book. The day was hot and the guide-book hazy,
and we lost the road to the place for which we had set out, but found
ourselves at last in a beautiful garden, with a pretty lake in its
centre, a little red-lacquered shrine reflected in the lake, and a
tea-house hospitably open at one side. The teakettle was boiling over
the little charcoal fire; melons, eggs, and various unknown comestibles
were on the little counter; but no voice bade us welcome as we
approached, and when we sat down on the edge of the piazza, we could see
no one within the house. We waited, however, for the day was hot, and
time is not worth much in rural Japan. Pretty soon a small, wizened
figure made its appearance in the distance, hurrying and talking
excitedly as it came near enough to see two foreign ladies seated upon
the piazza. Many bows and profuse apologies were made by the little old
woman, who seemed to be the solitary occupant of the pretty garden, and
who had for the moment deserted her post to do the day's marketing in
the neighboring village. The apologies having been smilingly received,
the old lady set herself to the task of making her guests comfortable.
First she brought two tumblers of water, cold as ice, from the spring
that gushed out of a great rock in the middle of the little lake. Then
she retired behind a screen and changed her dress, returning speedily to
bring us tea. Then she retreated to her diminutive kitchen, and
presently came back smiling, bearing eight large raw potatoes on a tray.
These she presented to us with a deep bow, apparently satisfied that she
had at last brought us something we would be sure to like. We left the
potatoes behind us when we went away, and undoubtedly the old lady is
wondering still over the mysterious ways of the foreigners, as we are
over those of the Japanese tea-house keepers.

One summer, when I was spending a week at a Japanese hotel at quite a
fashionable seaside resort, I became interested in a little old woman
who visited the hotel daily, carrying, suspended by a yoke from her
shoulders, two baskets of fruit, which she sold to the guests of the
hotel. As I was on the ground floor, and my room was, in the daytime,
absolutely without walls on two sides, she was my frequent visitor, and,
for the sake of her pleasant ways and cheerful smiles, I bought enough
hard pears of her to ha