I scoffed at my absurdity in being ready with the first line for my poem on the lake. If you knew that “O minstrel of Heaven and Truth!” was the beginning, you would laugh surely. The lake wasn’t a huge singer like the Pacific Ocean, at all. [Illustration: Drawn by Genjiro Yeto “UNCLE. PLEASE COUNT HOW MANY STORIES IN THAT BUILDING.” ] “Uncle, please, count how many stories in that building!” I begged. Chicago structures “crush my little liver” completely. Did I ever dream that I would eye such pillars of the sky in my life? When I returned to my hotel, I declared that I would not open my trunk, because my everyday dress was good enough for Chicago. I regret to say that the gentlemen are so homely. 9th—How dear is the green crispy paper money. What a historical look! It made me feel as if I were at home. I hated ever so much the gold coin in California. Its threateningly mercantile aspect made me shudder as at a speculator of Kakigara Cho of Tokio. If I like Chicago it must be on account of its soiled paper money. I will exchange all my gold to it. I went to one store for a short skirt like that Chicago woman wears. It may be a change, though shortness in hair and dress is my aversion. It may be advantageous in showing one’s shoes, though eternal exhibition isn’t tasty. It would be an accurate account of my reason for buying to say that I singularly wished to use up a few jumbles of money. I dulled myself reading the advertising bills through my hotel window. There’s no block free from them. ’Vertisement! Isn’t it horrid? I laughed, wondering why those enterprising Meriken jins don’t employ the extensive backs of prizefighters in the ring. Uncle and I went to see the Injuns dance. How fantastically they sang! There was a Japanese tea-house. It is no “tea-house” at all. It was the saddest thing I ever saw. I thought that Chicagoans were not fastidious with anything. “Any old thing will do!” they might say jollily. Open, hard-working Chicago! Has she much education? 10th—My uncle wanted me to join him in visiting a stockyard to see the doomed pigs groaning, “Fu, fu, fu!” I declined. Uncle started off alone. There was some time before I heard someone fisting on my door. “A Japanese gentleman wishes to see your husband, madam,” a hotel attendant addressed me. “Good God! My husband?” I cried. Satemo! How could any porter be such an ignoramus as not to distinguish between Mrs. and Miss! Possibly he esteemed me “modern” enough to marry an old man for money’s sake. Oya, he was Mr. Consul of Chicago. “Walk in, sir! Uchino hito will return within an hour or so.” Then I explained about “my husband.” We both laughed. There is nothing more pleasing when in an alien country than a chit-chat in our native “becha becha.” Japanese speech! Such a beautifully indefinite, poetically untidy language! I love it. 11th—It would be too much of a risk of one’s life to stay in Chicago. Good-bye!