This being Sunday and wonderfully fair, I decided to take the trip up the lake on one of the two small steamers that I saw anchored at apparently rival docks. They may have served boats plying on different arms of the lake. On this trip I fell in with a certain “Major Y. Myata, M.D., Surgeon, Imperial Japanese Army” as his card read, who, I soon learned, was doing Europe much as I was, only entirely alone. I first saw him as he bought his ticket on board the steamer at Lucerne,--a small, quiet, wiry man, very keen and observant, who addressed the purser in English first and later in German. He came on the top deck into the first-class section, a fair-sized camera slung over his shoulder, a notebook sticking out of the pocket, and finding a seat, very carefully dusted his small feet with the extreme corners of his military overcoat, and rubbed his thin, horse-hairy mustache with a small, claw-like hand. He looked about in a quiet way and began after the boat started to take pictures and make copious notes. He had small, piercing, bird-like eyes and a strangely unconscious-seeming manner which was in reality anything but unconscious. We fell to talking of Switzerland, Germany and Italy, where he had been, and by degrees I learned the route of his trip, or what he chose to tell me of it, and his opinions concerning Europe and the Far East--as much as he chose to communicate. It appeared that before coming to Europe this time he had made but one other trip out of Japan, namely to California, where he had spent a year. He had left Japan in October, sailed direct for London and reached it in November; had already been through Holland and Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and was bound for Munich and Hungary and, not strange to relate, Russia. He was coming to America--New York particularly, and was eager to know of a good hotel. I mentioned twenty. He spoke English, French, Italian and German, although he had never before been anywhere except to California. I knew he spoke German, for I talked to him in that language and after finding that he could speak it better than I could I took his word for the rest. We lunched together. I mentioned the little I knew of the Japanese in New York. He brightened considerably. We compared travel notes--Italy, France, England. “I do not like the Italians,” he observed in one place. “I think they are tricky. They do not tell the truth.” “They probably held up your baggage at the station.” “They did more than that to me. I could never depend on them.” “How do you like the Germans?” I asked him. “A very wonderful people. Very civil I thought. The Rhine is beautiful.”