He was small, like all his race, and he looked as harmless as a musician. In fact, his eyes had the dreaminess of a musician’s, and the clasp of his hand was like that of a woman. He touched me on the arm one day as I came out of the staff tent at General Nogi’s headquarters, and asked me in fairly good English if I knew San Francisco. Together, with a crooked stick, we traced out a map of the city on the sand at our feet. He knew it as well as I and he pointed to his former home, near the corner of Washington and Mason streets. Then he pulled from his breast pocket a letter sweat-stained and travel-worn, which, read: “To whomever this may concern, I wish to say that the bearer, George, is the most faithful servant I have ever had, that he is a good cook, and that he has a lovely character. I will consider it a favor to myself if his next employer treats him generously. “MRS. H. L. HEVENER, “1180 Mason Street “San Francisco.” His real name was Eijiro Nurimiya. He had seen me the day before at the General’s tiffin and had read the word, “San Francisco,” on my arm band, but had not ventured to speak to me when in the General’s presence. He was one of Nogi’s bodyguard, and I immediately knew he must be a man of some distinction, for throughout the camp it was well understood that Nogi had about him only those private soldiers who had become eminent for service in the field. That day and the following days when Nurimiya came to my bean shed, we had long talks over the tea and cakes. Thus his story is here set down: He left the Hevener home nearly a year before the war began and worked in a watchmaker’s shop on Jackson Street in San Francisco. Like all of his countrymen he had ambition and desired to rise above the kitchen. But he was a reserve conscript, subject, as such reserves are, to the call of the Emperor at any crisis similar to the one that his country is now in. So he responded to this call March 23d, sailing on the _Korea_ from San Francisco to Kobe, twenty miles from which his home lay in the Ugi Provinces. His father, a mender of broken barrels, is separated from his mother, who keeps a tea house in Kioto. There is one sister at the tea house with his mother. He had three days with his parents, the first time he had seen them in six years. Then he sailed for Manchuria, where he joined the famous Ninth Regiment, the Black Watch of Japan, a part of the Ninth Division of the Third Army chosen to conduct the operations against Port Arthur. This same regiment had a number of other American Japanese. The campaign had progressed two months, when Nurimiya saw his first great battle. It was the grand assault against the permanent forts of Port Arthur, lasting through seven frightful August days. He is one of the fifteen survivors of Company C of this Ninth Regiment, which marched into the Seven Days’ Battle three hundred and fifty strong.