"If you have 750 yen to spare, give it to the poor families of Tokio whose sons have gone to war. You buy Kamura-san from the tea-house and you go away to Manchuria; you will not know whether she goes to school. Most likely her house-mother will sell her again. Anyhow it is useless. She really does not want to go to school. She likes the tea-house, the music, the lights and gossip, and the coming and going of strangers. You cannot change her, and it is no use. Give your money to poor people in Tokio." * * * * * After this Kamura-san's instincts told her that something was wrong, and she began to take perceptibly more notice of the young officer. Once, as I was told, she said to him: "I always liked you best--you are so pretty." I charged her with this statement. "Who told you that?" "Never mind." "He is a liar," said Kamura-san calmly. And once I caught her making eyes at him behind my back--something that she had never done with me. With this, too, I charged her. "No," she said in denial, "he is your brother. He will be my best friend. He will be godfather to our child." I staggered half-way across the room--that infant talking of a child! "In heaven's good name," I said, "what do you want with a child?" "That I may not be lonely when I old," said little Kamura-san. * * * * * Still, out of curiosity now, I went to see the house-mother of Kamura-san. Her head was poised on her shoulders like a snake's, and her eyes were the eyes of a snake--black, beady, and glittering. A face more hard, cunning, cruel, and smilingly crafty I never saw, and it took her but a little while to discover that I was an unsatisfactory customer, and I couldn't help wondering what that Austrian father would have thought and felt had he seen that snake-like hag trying to barter with me for his own flesh and blood. I left the young officer there and naturally the house-mother tried to sell the child to him. Kamura-san I never saw again. When I came back from Manchuria I heard that she was gone--whither I don't know, but I'm hoping that the Austrian father by some chance may some day see these lines. * * * * * But no more now of temples, blossoms, pictures, _netsuke_, tea-houses, wrestling-matches, theatres, and the what-not that everybody with a pen has so wearisomely done to death. News of the battle of Nanshan has come in. Next week we leave again. An explanation has occurred to me. You know the Japanese does nearly everything but his fighting--backward. Of course he reads and writes backward. At the theatre you find the dressing-room in the lobby. Keys turn from left to right, boring-tools and screws, I understand, turn from right to left, and a Japanese carpenter draws his plane toward him instead of pushing it away. Sometimes even the Japanese thinks and talks backward. For instance, suppose he says: