After breakfast I climbed the mountain that I could see from my window--it ran not so high by day--and up there great Fuji was gracious enough for one fleeting moment to throw back the gray mantle of a cloud and bare for me for the first time his sacred white head. Coming down, I found a pretty story of American Chivalry and the Maid of Miyanoshita. There was a man here whose nationality will not be mentioned, and a big young American who hasn't lost the traditions of his race and country. With the lack of understanding that is not uncommon with foreigners during their first days in Japan, this particular foreigner said something to the little lady that he would not have said under similar circumstances at home. Now, just behind the hotel are two foaming cascades which drop into a clear pool of water wherein sport many fishes big and little--green, silver, gold, or mottled with white and scarlet--which it is the pleasure of the guests to feed. A few minutes later there was a commotion on the margin of the pond, and those fishes, gathering as usual for biscuit and sugar, got a surprise. The American had invited the other foreigner out there, and the two were having a mighty mill. After a nice solar-plexus landing, the American caught up his opponent and threw him bodily into the fish-pond. The man disappeared next morning by the first train. Wallah, but it was grateful to the soul--striking a Saxon trail like that! After tiffin I was struggling with Japanese idioms in a guide-book. "I will be glad to help you," said the Maid of Miyanoshita. She had gone to school in a convent in Tokio. Only Japanese girls and a few Eurasians, girls whose fathers are foreigners, were students, and they were allowed to speak only French. There she was taught to read and write English. To speak it, she had learned only from guests at the hotel. "Well," I said, "if the Japanese in this book is as bad as the English, I don't think I want to learn it." She looked at the book. "It iss bad," she said; "there are words here you must not use." (It is impossible to give dialectic form to her quaint variations from normal pronunciation.) By and by we found an example. "Yes," she said, "sukimas means 'I like.' I like flowers, birds, and so on, but you must not use that--" with one pointed finger on a word that I proceeded straightway to damn forever. "What is the proper word for _that_ word?" "Ai suru," she said. "And what does that mean?" A vertical line of mental effort broke the smoothness of her forehead. "It iss _deeper_ than 'like.'" "Oh," I said. She continued her mental search for an English equivalent. I tried to help. "Love?" I ventured. With straight eyes she met purely impersonal inquiry with response even more impersonal. "Yess," she said. * * * * *