Your Nippon character eyed in blue, and hairy-skinned always. Isn’t it absurd when it puts a ’Merican shoe on one foot and a wooden clog on the other? And if you insist on registering it as a Jap, I shall merely laugh loudly. One heroine I have read of placed a light summer haori over her heavily padded mid-winter clothes. Your Oriental novel, let me be courageous enough to say, is a farce at its best. Oh, just wait, my sweet Americans! A genuine one will soon be offered to you by Morning Glory. I stepped out to the platform, and threw out “Madame Butterfly.” Poor “Madame!” I trust in the mountain lions of high Nevada to cherish her lovingly. 5th— “Matsuba Sama, the following letter creeps ‘under your honourable table.’ “How is yourself? “I imagine that the breeze fills your bower with the odour of ume flowers. I am definite in saying that the Japanese ume is of different origin from the California plum tree, which has no expression in divine fragrance as I am told. I see your indolent face in the air, awaiting poetical inspiration on your bamboo piazza where the ume petals are beautifully blotched. “There are several months yet till we shall quarrel face-to-face over the superiority of English or Oriental literature. “Miss Pine Leaf, I—or rather we—have said farewell to Frisco. “It was sad that I never saw any battleship (excepting one shamefaced gunboat) in the bay of the Golden Gate. A bay without battleship is like a door without a lock. “Can you fancy any Japanese city without soldiers? “American soldier? “I am sorry to say that I have met no soldier in my four months at the Pacific. “I presume that the practical Meriken jins can’t bear to see such a useless ornamentation. Yes! Soldiers are degenerating, in my opinion, to the rank of a fireplace on a hot summer day. How stimulating, however, was the sound of the fearless hoofs of a cavalier! When the sabres of a regiment flashed in the sunlight, I could never keep from fluttering my paper handkerchief. “I shall not excite myself in such a joy in Amerikey. “I made the acquaintance of one colonel at Mrs. Willis’. He is a jolly business man. Just think of a colonel plus merchant! Is it possible? He changes his white shirt every morning, and shines his shoes twice a day. I should say that he will carry a sheet and opera hat, and leave his gun behind, whenever he is summoned to a battle-field. Possibly he has hidden his colonelship in his trunk. “I found afterward that every old gentleman is a colonel or judge. “Everything in California is made for just a woman. “California gentleman isn’t privileged to raise one question against a lady. He is provided with all sorts of exclamations to please the woman. If he should ever miss one dinner with his wife, he would be divorced in court on the morrow.