I almost forgot to tell you that we have the same chef as when I was kindergarten teacher here in the school years ago.  He ’s prosperous as a pawnbroker.  He gave me a radiant greeting.  “How are you, Tanaka?” quoth I.  “All same like damn monkey, Sensei,” he replied.  But he is unfailingly cheerful and the cleverest grafter in the universe, with an artistic temperament highly developed; he sometimes sends in the unchewable roast smothered in cherry blossoms.

How wise you were, Mate, to choose home and husband instead of a career.  I love you for it.

HIROSHIMA, October, 1911.

For springing surprises, all full of kindness and delicate courtesies, Japanese girls would be difficult to equal.  Before a whisper of it reached me, they made arrangements the other day for a re-union of all my graduates of the kindergarten normal class.  It is hard to imagine when they found the time for the elaborate decorations they put up in the big kindergarten room, and the hundred and one little things they had done to show their love and warmth of welcome.  It was a part of their play to blindfold me and lead me in.  When I opened my eyes, there they stood.  Twenty-five happy faces smiling into mine, and twenty babies to match.  It was the kiddies that saved the day.  I was not a little bewildered, and tears stung my eyes.  But with one accord the babies set up a howl at anything so inconceivable as a queer foreign thing with a tan head appearing in their midst.  When peace was restored by natural methods, the fun began.

The girls fairly bombarded me with questions.  Could I come to see every one of them?  Where was Jack?  Could they see his picture?  Did he say I could come?  How “glad” it was to be together again.  Did I remember how we used to play?  Then everybody giggled.  One thought had touched them all.  Why not play now!

The baby question was quickly settled.  Soon there was a roaring fire in my study.  We raided the classroom for rugs and cushions and with the collection made down beds in a half ring around the crackling flames.  On each we put a baby, feet fireward.  We called in the Obasan (old woman) to play nurse, and on the table near we placed a row of bottles marked “First aid to the hungry.”  As I closed the door of the emergency nursery, I looked back to see a semi-circle of pink heels waving hilariously.  Surely the fire goddess never had lovelier devotees than the Oriental cherubs that lay cooing and kicking before it that day.

How we played!  In all the flowery kingdom so many foolish people could not have been found in one place.  What chaff and banter!  What laying aside of cares, responsibilities, and heavy hearts, if there were any, and just being free and young!  For a time at least the years fell away from us and we relived all the games and folk-dances we ever knew.  True, time had stiffened joints and some of the movements were about as graceful as a pair of fire tongs and I may be dismissed for some of the fancy steps I showed the girls, but they were happy, and far more supple than when we began.