"Be prepared," Dibdin’s letter begins, after his usual abrupt manner, "be prepared for a sort of shock." "A week ago I arrived in Yokohama with half a schooner-load of stocks and stones, carvings, idols, etc., homeward bound. "If you have ever been in Yokohama you will remember the Grand Hotel on the Bund." Yes, I do remember. It was the one bright spot for me in Japan on my brief and disappointing journey six years ago. Heaven knows why I went there. Once I had viewed the Temples at Nikko, the sacred deer on the Island of Miyajima and the volcanic cone of Fujiyama, there was nothing else to do. I am not an ethnologist and there were no bookshops. While awaiting my steamer, the only refuge was that self-same Grand Hotel at Yokohama, where you can still sit in a chair facing a window, as commercial travelers in provincial hotels in America sit, and look out across the water towards Tokio, and smoke and idle and gossip. Of an afternoon there is tea with excellent little cakes—served by Japanese girls in kimonos so gorgeous that even a geisha would be too modest to wear them in the street. The color, however, is meant for western eyes. The ladies, American and English from Tokio and thereabout, wives of commission merchants, agents, naval officers, diplomats, tourists, gather around and do what they can to annihilate reputations,—as is the way the world over. There is also a bar—the longest in Asia. Incidentally, every bar in the East is the longest and men from Hongkong, Shanghai, Peking, Kobe and Yokohama carry the measurements of their respective bars in their heads for purposes of competitive argument. We all need something to brag about, and there’s little else in those parts. When the ladies have finished their tea and have gone to their rooms or their ’rickshaws, the bar at the Grand is the next halting stage for the men. I have not thought of it for years, though it is vivid enough to me now. It is one of the five points on the globe where, if you loiter long enough, you are certain to encounter every one you ever knew. But—Pendleton! "If you remember this setting," runs Dibdin’s letter, "you will realize how easy it was even for a bear like me to pick up quickly the gossip of the place and, incidentally, the legend of Patterson. Patterson I learned was a drifter, an idler, a gambler, and a staunch support of the Grand bar. He is adroit, suave, pleasant, shifty—an American. Some trader found him on the beach in the Marquesas, took him along for company among the islands and ultimately landed him here. He has traded in skins, in silk, in insurance; is said to have all but killed a man in a card brawl and has cleaned out many a tourist at poker. Now, he is no longer allowed to play cards at the Grand. "I had a curiosity to see this bird of plumage and two days ago, Mainwaring, the excellent manager of this hotel, pointed him out to me.