It was a mile from the great, double-moated park of the Imperial Palace, from the Diet and the Foreign Office, whither, scarcely a generation ago, representatives of European powers had galloped on horse-back, with a mounted guard against swashbuckling "two-sword men." The streets, however, on which once an American Secretary of Legation, so spurring, had been cut in two by a single stroke of a thirsting _samurai_ sword, were peaceful enough in this era of _Meiji_. The cathedral, the college, the low brown hospital and the lines of red-brick mission houses stood on grassy lawns behind green hedges which gave a suggestion of a quiet English village. A couple of the smaller Legations still clung to their ancient sites and the quarter boasted, besides, a score of ambitious European residences and a modern hotel. In the rectory the bishop sat at tiffin with the archbishop of the Russian Cathedral, a man of seventy-eight, gray-bearded and patriarchal--another St. Francis Xavier. In this foreign field the pair had been friends during more than a score of years. Both were equally broad-minded, had long ago thrown down the sectarian barriers too apt to prevail in less restricted communities. To a large extent they were confidants. The archbishop spoke little English, and the bishop no Russian and but "inebriate" French (as he termed it), so that their talk was habitually in Japanese. When they had finished eating both men bowed their heads in a silent grace. The Russian, as he rose, made the sign of the cross. As they entered the library a wrinkled house-servant sucked in his breath behind them. "Will the thrice-eminent guest deign to partake of a little worthless tobacco?" he inquired, in the ceremonious honorifics of the vernacular. The thrice-eminent shook his head, and the bishop answered: "Honorable thanks, Honda-_San_, our guest augustly does not smoke." At the table they had been talking of the great dream of both--the Christianization of modern Japan. The archbishop continued the conversation now: "As I was saying, the great stumbling-block is the language. It is all right for you and me, who have had twenty years at it, but our helpers haven't. His code of courtesy forbids a Japanese to seem to correct even when we are absurdly wrong. One of my boys"--so the bishop affectionately referred to his younger coadjutors--"was preaching the other day on 'The Spiritual Attributes of Mankind.' He meant to use the word _ningen_, man in the wide sense. He preached, he thought, with a good deal of success--the people seemed particularly grave and attentive. Afterward he asked an old Japanese what he thought of the subject. The man replied that he had felt much instructed to find there were so many things to be said about it. He added that he himself generally ate them boiled. My young man had used the word _ninjin_--carrots. 'The Spiritual Attributes of Carrots!' And a whole sermon on it. Imagine it!"