By the way I wish you would write and tell me just exactly how Jack is. You said he was working too hard and that he looked all fagged out. Wasn't it exactly like him to back out of going South on account of his conscience? He would laugh at us for saying it was that, but it was. He may be unreligious, and scoff at churches and all that, but he has the most rigid, cast-iron, inelastic conscience that I ever came across. I wish he would take a rest. You see out here, so far away from you all, I can't help worrying when any of you are the least bit sick. Jack has been on my mind for days. Don't tell him that I asked you to, but won't you get him to go away? He would curl his hair if you asked him to. Preparations for war are still in progress and it makes a fellow pretty shivery to see it coming closer and closer. Hiroshima will be the center of military movements and of course under military law. It will affect us only as to the restrictions put on our walks and places we can go. With the city so full of strange soldiers, I don't suppose we will want to go much. Two big war ships, which Japan has just bought from Chili are on their way from Shanghai. Regiment after regiment has poured into Hiroshima and embarked again for Corea. I am terribly thrilled over it all, and the Japanese watch my enthusiasm with their non-committal eyes and never say a word! My poor little sick girl grows weaker all the time. She is a constant care and anxiety, but she has no money and I cannot send her back to her wretched home. The teachers think I am very foolish to let the thing run on, and I suppose I am. She can never be any better, and she may live this way for months. But when she clings to me with her frail hands and declares she is better and will soon get well if I will only let her stay with me, my heart fails me. I have patched up an old steamer chair for her, and made a window garden, and tried to make the room as bright as possible. She has to stay by herself nearly all day, but she is so patient and gentle that I never hear a complaint. This morning she pressed my hand to her breast and said wistfully, "Sensei, it makes sorry to play all the time with the health." Miss Lessing tried to get her in the hospital but they will not take incurables. Somehow Jack's hospital scheme doesn't seem as foolish as it did. If there are other children in the world as friendless and dependent as this one, then making a permanent home for them would be worth all the great careers in the world. HIROSHIMA, March, 1904. My Best Girl: