She must have been using special tooth-powder three times a day. “We are great friends already, aren’t we?” I said. And I extended my finger-tips behind her, and pulled some wisps of her chestnut hair. “Please, don’t!” she said, and raised her sweetly accusing eyes. Then our friendship was confirmed. Girls don’t take much time to exchange their faith. I was uneasy at first, thinking that Ada might settle herself in a _tête-à-tête_ with me, in the chit-chat of poetry. I tried to recollect how the first line of the “Psalm of Life” went, for Longfellow would of course be the first one to encounter. Alas, I had forgotten it all. I was glad that her query did not roam from the remote corner of poesy. “Do you play golf?” she asked. She thinks the same things are going on in Japan. Ada! Poor Ada! * * * * * The honourable consul and my uncle looked stupid at the lunch table. I thought they were afraid of being given some difficult question by the Meriken ladies. Mrs. Consul and Ada ate like hungry pigs. (I beg their pardon!) “You eat like a pussy!” is no adequate compliment to pay to a Meriken woman. I found out that their English was neither Macaulay’s nor Irving’s. 29th—I ate a tongue and some ox-tail soup. Think of a suspicious spumy tongue and that dirty bamboo tail! Isn’t it shocking to even incline to taste them? My mother would not permit me to step into the holy ground of any shrine in Japan. She would declare me perfectly defiled by such food. I shall turn into a beast in the jungle by and by, I should say. My uncle committed a greater indecency. He ate a tripe. It was cooked in the “western sea egg-plant,” to taste of which brings on the small-pox, as I have been told. He said that he took a delight in pig’s feet. Shame on the Nippon gentleman! Harai tamae! Kiyome tamae! 30th—“Chui, chui, chui!” A little sparrow was twittering at my hotel window. I could not believe that the sparrow of large America could be as small as the Nippon-born. Horses are large here. Woman’s mouth is large, something like that of an alligator. Policeman is too large. I fancied that little birdie might be one strayed from the bamboo bush of my family’s monastery. “Sweet vagabond, did you cross the ocean for Meriken Kenbutsu?” I said. “Chui, chui! Chui, chui, chui!” he chirped. Is “chui, chui” English, I wonder? I pushed the window up to receive him. Oya, ma, he has gone! I felt so sorry. I was yearning after my beloved home. This is the great Chrysanthemum season at home. I missed the show at Dangozaka. How gracefully the time used to pass in Dai Nippon, while I sat looking at the flowers on a tokonoma. Every place is a strange gray waste to me without the intimate faces of flowers. Flowers have no price in Japan, just as a poet is nothing, for everybody there is poet. But they have a big value in this city—although I am not positive that an American poet creates wealth.