I must tell you an experience I had the other day. Miss Lessing and I were coming back on the train from Miyajima and sitting opposite to us was an old couple who very soon told us that they had never seen foreigners before. They were as guileless as children, and presently the old man came over and asked if he might look at my jacket. I had no objections, so he put his hands lightly on my shoulders and turned me around for inspection. "But," he said to Miss Lessing in Japanese, "how does she get into it?" I took it off to show him and in so doing revealed fresh wonders. He returned to his wife, and after a long consultation, and many inquiring looks, he came back. He said he knew he was a great trouble, but I was most honorably kind, and would I tell him why I wore a piece of leather about my waist, and would I please remove my dress and show them how I put it on? He was distinctly disappointed when I declined, but he managed to get in one more question and that was if we slept in our hats. When he got off, he assured us that he had never seen anything so interesting in his life, and he would have great things to tell the people of his village. There isn't a place you go, or a thing you do out here that doesn't afford some kind of amusement. The first glamour of the country has gotten dimmed a bit, not that the interest has waned for a moment, but I have come to see that the beauty and picturesqueness are largely on the surface. If ever I have to distribute tracts in another world, I am going to wrap a piece of soap in every one, for I am more and more convinced that the surest way to heaven for the heathen is the Soapy Way. During the holidays I tried to study up a little and add a drop or two to that gray matter that is supposed to be floating around in my brain. But as a girl said of a child in Kindergarten, "my intelligence was not working." Putting Psychology into easy terms, stopping to explain things I do not understand very well myself, struggling through the medium of a strange language, and trying to occidentalize the oriental mind has been a stiff proposition for one whose learning was never her long suit! When I come home I may be nothing but a giggly, childishly happy old lady, who doesn't care a rap whether her skin fits or not. The prospect of war is getting more and more serious. Out in the Inland Sea, the war ships are hastening here and there on all sorts of secret missions. I hope with all my heart there will not be war, but if there is, I hope Japan will wipe Russia right off the map! HIROSHIMA, February, 1904. Dear old Mate: