I agree with Charity.  “Ef you want to spile a valuable wife, tu’n her loose in a patch of idlesomeness.”

STILL AT NIKKO, August, 1911.

You beloved girl, I have heard from Jack and my heart is singing a ragtime tune of joy and thanksgiving.  How he laughed at me for being too foolishly lonesome to stay in America without him.  Oh, these, men!  Does he forget he raged once upon a time, when he was in America without me?  As long as I am here though, he wants me to have as good a time as possible.  Do anything I want, and—­blessed trusting man!—­buy anything I see that will fit in the little house at home.

Can you believe it?  After a fierce battle the sun won out this morning, and even the blind would know by the dancing feel of the air that it was a glorious day.  At eight o’clock, when the little maids went up to the shrine, happy as kittens let out for a romp, they forgot even to look Buddha-ward and took up their worship time in playing tag.  The old woman who uses the five-foot lake as the family wash-tub, brought out all her clothes, the grand-baby, and the snub-nosed poodle that wears a red bib, to celebrate the sunshine by a carnival of washing.

I could not stand four walls a minute longer.  I am down in the garden writing you, in a tea-house made with three fishing-poles and a bunch of straw.  It is covered with pink morning-glories as big as coffee cups.

It has been three weeks since my last letter and I know your interest in Jack and germs is almost as great as mine.  Jack has been in Peking.  He thinks the revolution of the Chinese against the Manchu Government is going to be something far more serious this time than a flutter of fans and a sputter of shooting-crackers.  The long-suffering worm with the head of a dragon is going to turn, and when it does, there will not be a Manchu left to tell the pig tale.

Jack is in Mukden now, where he is about to lose his mind with joy over the prospect of looking straight in the eye—­if it has one—­this wicked old germ with a new label, and telling it what he thinks.  The technical terms he gives are as paralyzing as a Russian name spelled backwards.

In a day’s time this fearful thing wipes out entire families and villages.  It has simply ravaged northern Manchuria and the country about.  Jack says so deadly are the effects of these germs in the air that if a man walking along the street happens to breathe in one, he is a corpse on the spot before he is through swallowing.  The remains are gathered up by men wearing shrouds and net masks, and the peaceful Oriental who was not doing a thing hut attending strictly to his own business, is soon reduced to ashes.  All because of a pesky microbe with a surplus of energy.

You know perfectly well, Mate, Jack does not speak in this frivolous manner of his beloved work.  The interpretation is wholly mine.  But I dare not be serious over it.  I must push any thought of his danger to the further ends of nowhere.