Part 7 (1/2)

I never before felt the cruelty of heathenism so keenly. No punishment in the next world can equal the things they miss in this life by a lack of belief in a personal G.o.d.

It must be very beautiful at home about this time. The beech trees are all green and gold, and the maples are blazing. I am thinking too about the shadows on the old ice-house. I know every one of them by heart, and they often come to haunt me as do many other shadows of the sad, sad past.

HIROs.h.i.+MA, December, 1903.

G.o.d bless you honey, I've got a holiday and I've sworn vengeance on anyone who comes to my door until I have written my Christmas letters. I wish I was a doctor and a trained nurse, and a scholar, a magician, a philosopher and a saint all combined. I need them in my business.

I have spent this merry Christmas season, chasing from pillow to post with bandages, hot water bags, poultices and bottles. We have had a regular hospital. All the Christmas money I had saved to buy presents for home went in Cod Liver Oil, and Miss Lessing, bless her soul, is doing without a coat for the same purpose. When you see a girl struggling for what little education she can get, and know what sacrifices are being made for it, you just hate your frumpery old finery, and you want to convert everything you possess into cash to help her. All the teachers are doing without fires in their rooms this winter, and it is rather chillsome to go to bed cold and wake up next morning in the same condition. When I get home to a furnace-heated house and have cream in my coffee, I shall feel too dissipated to be respectable!

We have not been able to get a new cook since our old one died, and the fact must have gotten abroad, for all the floating brethren and sisters in j.a.pan have been to see us! Y.M.C.A.'s, W.C.T.U.'s, A.W.B.M.'s and X.Y.Z.'s have sifted in, and we have to sit up and be Marthas and Marys all at the same time!

Sometimes I want to get my hat and run and run until I get to another planet. But I am not made of the stuff that runs, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that I have stuck to my post. If sacrificing self, and knocking longings in the head, and smas.h.i.+ng heart-aches right and left, do not pa.s.s me through the Golden Gate, then I'll sue Peter for damages.

It's snowing to-day, but the old Earth is making about as poor a bluff at being Christmasy as I am. The leaves are all on the trees, many flowers are in bloom, and the scarlet geraniums are warm enough to melt the snow flakes.

My big box has arrived and I am keeping it until to-morrow. I go out and sit on it every little while to keep cheered up. This is my third Christmas from home, one more and then--!

There has been too much sickness to make much of the holiday, but I have rigged up a fish pond for the kindergarten children, and each kiddie will have a present that cost one-fourth of a cent! I wish I had a hundred dollars to spend on them!

To-night when the lights are out, my little sick girl's stocking will hang on one bed post, and mine on the other. I don't believe Santa Glaus will have the heart to pa.s.s us by, do you?

HIROs.h.i.+MA, January, 1904.

Here it is January and I am just thanking you dear ones for my beautiful Christmas box. As you probably guessed, Mate, our Christmas was not exactly hilarious. The winter has been a hard one, the prospect of war has sent the price of provisions out of sight, the sick girls in the school have needed medicine and fires, so altogether Miss Lessing, Miss Dixon and I have had to do considerable tugging at the ends to get them to meet. None of us have bought a st.i.tch of new clothing this winter, so when our boxes came, we were positively dazed by all the grandeur.

They arrived late at night and we got out of bed to open them. The first thing I struck was a very crumpled little paper doll, with baby Bess' name printed in topsy-turvy letters on the back. For the next five minutes I was kept busy swallowing the lumps that came in my throat, but Dixie had some peppermint candy out of her box, the first I had seen since I had left home, so I put on my lovely new beaver hat, which with my low-necked gown and red slippers was particularly chic, and I sat on the floor and ate candy. It--the hat and the candy too, went a long way towards restoring my equanimity, but I didn't dare look at that paper doll again that night!

You ask if I mind wearing that beautiful crepe de chine which is not becoming to you? Well, Mate, I suppose there was a day when I would have scorned anybody's cast-off clothes, but I pledge you my word a queen in her coronation robes never felt half so grand as I feel in that dress! Somehow I seem to a.s.sume some of your personality, I look tall and graceful and dignified, and I try to imagine how it feels to be good and intellectual, and fascinating, and besides I have the satisfaction of knowing that I am rather becoming to the dress myself!

It fits without a wrinkle and next summer with my big black hat,--!

Well, if Little Germany sees me, there will be something doing!

I must tell you an experience I had the other day. Miss Lessing and I were coming back on the train from Miyajima and sitting opposite to us was an old couple who very soon told us that they had never seen foreigners before. They were as guileless as children, and presently the old man came over and asked if he might look at my jacket. I had no objections, so he put his hands lightly on my shoulders and turned me around for inspection. ”But,” he said to Miss Lessing in j.a.panese, ”how does she get into it?” I took it off to show him and in so doing revealed fresh wonders. He returned to his wife, and after a long consultation, and many inquiring looks, he came back. He said he knew he was a great trouble, but I was most honorably kind, and would I tell him why I wore a piece of leather about my waist, and would I please remove my dress and show them how I put it on? He was distinctly disappointed when I declined, but he managed to get in one more question and that was if we slept in our hats. When he got off, he a.s.sured us that he had never seen anything so interesting in his life, and he would have great things to tell the people of his village.

There isn't a place you go, or a thing you do out here that doesn't afford some kind of amus.e.m.e.nt.

The first glamour of the country has gotten dimmed a bit, not that the interest has waned for a moment, but I have come to see that the beauty and picturesqueness are largely on the surface. If ever I have to distribute tracts in another world, I am going to wrap a piece of soap in every one, for I am more and more convinced that the surest way to heaven for the heathen is the Soapy Way.

During the holidays I tried to study up a little and add a drop or two to that gray matter that is supposed to be floating around in my brain. But as a girl said of a child in Kindergarten, ”my intelligence was not working.” Putting Psychology into easy terms, stopping to explain things I do not understand very well myself, struggling through the medium of a strange language, and trying to occidentalize the oriental mind has been a stiff proposition for one whose learning was never her long suit! When I come home I may be nothing but a giggly, childishly happy old lady, who doesn't care a rap whether her skin fits or not.

The prospect of war is getting more and more serious. Out in the Inland Sea, the war s.h.i.+ps are hastening here and there on all sorts of secret missions. I hope with all my heart there will not be war, but if there is, I hope j.a.pan will wipe Russia right off the map!

HIROs.h.i.+MA, February, 1904.