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 on the front of my clean shirt-waist.

It was she, you remember, who in all those other years was my faithful secretary and general comforter.  The one who slept across my door when I was ill and who never forgot the hot water bag on a cold night.  For years she has supported a drunken father and a crazy mother; has sent one brother to America and made a preacher of another.

Now she is to be married, she told me in a little note she slipped into my hand as we walked up the Street of the Upper Flowing River to the school, adding, “Please guess my heart.”

And miracle of the East!  She has known the man a long time and they are in love!  I am so glad I am going to be here for the wedding.  It comes off in a few weeks.