The Little Maid of Miyanoshita and I were tossing bits of cracker to the gold-fishes in the pond, and each bit made a breaking, flashing rainbow as they rushed for it in a writhing heap. She had never been to America nor to England. "Wouldn't you like to go?" "Verry much," she said. "Well, aren't you going some day?" "I hope so, but--" she paused; "if I wore these clothes the people would follow me about the streets. If I wore European clothes, I would look like--what you say--a fright." "Never!" Again she shook her head. "Yess, yess I would." And the pity of it is I am afraid she was right. The Little Maid did not walk the hills much. "Japanese men do not like for women to go about much," she said. "My uncle does not like that I go about alone, but my father he does not care. He has been in America." "It is perfectly safe?" "Yes, perrfectly safe. Is it not so in America?" "Well, no, not always; at least not in the South, where I come from." She did not ask why, though I should not have been surprised to learn that she knew, and I did not explain. She was very fond of Schiller, she said, and she had read many American and English novels. She liked "The Crisis" very much--she did not mention others--though she liked better the novels that were written by women. "Because you understand them better?" "Not only that," she said slowly, "but I think that men who write novels try to make the women happy, and the women who write novels do not do that so much; and I think the women must be nearer the truth." She turned suddenly on me: "_You_ have written a book." "Guilty," I said. "And what does that mean?" "It means that I have," I said lamely. We talked international differences. "American women use very many pins, is it not true?" "I think it is true," I said. "We do not," she said; "we use what you call"--with her fingers on a little cord at the breast of her kimono--"strings. But," she added suddenly, "an American says to me that I must not speak of such things." "Tut!" "Well," she said, "I do not see anything wrong." In America, I explained, we put the woman in a high place and looked up at her. "Is it not so in Japan?" I said. "No," she said simply, "it is not so in Japan." She thought a while. "That must be very nice for the woman in America," she said. "I think it is," I said. "But then," she said, to explain the mystery, "they are so well ed-u-ca-ted." "Well, I don't think it is because they are so well educated," I said. "Then they are worthy," said the Little Maid. * * * * *