Chapter VI: Part 6

After an hour’s rest I returned to the fossils, and at 4 bicycled off to Baroness d’A----’s garden party,--bicycled in a white muslin frock, which, had the people not thrown buckets of water into the roads, would have come through scathless, but as it was, was heavily specked with mud all up the front, and I felt all the carriage folk staring at me. Otherwise I had a good time, and arranged some details about the forthcoming Debate.

=May 9.=--At work all day on fossils. Dr. _M----_ came to the laboratory about 2, and we had a long chat; he is one of the very few Japanese who know enough of my work to be really interested.

=May 10.=--On Sunday Professor _S----_ asked me to go to see the celebrated Buton flowers (paeonies), and I set off at 9 and met him and his wife at Ryonokubashi at 10. We then drove to the gardens, which lie across the river, in quite a slummy part of the town. The south part of Tokio, across the river, corresponds in a way with the south of London, and is distinctly its working quarter.

The paeonies were under the shade of straw mats, which roofed them and the spectators in, and a lovely sight they were. Each flower was really huge, about a foot across, but, as a rule, there was but one on a plant. White, pink, crimson, and almost black, and all the shades so beautiful and artistic, they were infinitely more pleasing than the chrysanthemums.

In the same garden were also a number of dwarf trees--now I have bought several at various times, and was always astonished at the cheapness and prettiness, but here, a very (to me) inartistic one cost £4, and the only one I really liked was £9!

After lunch we took the train, and went out of Tokio for some distance to a place where there was a very renowned wistaria flower. The trunk of this enormous tree was twisted and gnarled with intertwining branches, and all together was about 12 feet in diameter. The branches were all trained on props over bamboo, and formed a great flat roof, over an appreciable part of an acre! The flower clusters hang so thickly and evenly as to give the appearance of a ceiling of long tassels. The tails seemed to be only a foot or so long, but when measured were found to be 2 or 3, some even 3 feet 6 inches long! The whole sight was very charming, and quite startling, but perhaps less romantically beautiful than one had imagined it. The gardens had only this one tree on show, and under it the people sat and walked about and drank tea.

On returning we missed the connecting train and had an hour and a half to wait; it was cold and began to rain. I didn’t mind, for Professor _S----_ was very interesting, and we talked of nearly everything under heaven and earth--but the more I see of him the less I think he is a typical Japanese; he is an exceptional one. I was sorry for poor Mrs. _S----_, however, who could not follow our conversation very well, and who had no one else to talk to. We dined at a restaurant in Tokio, and I got back home after a thirteen-hours outing, practically _tête à tête_ with a Japanese man--and bored I had not been for a moment, and people here say you can’t get any real companionship from the Japanese. I say it is those people’s own faults.

=May 11.=--Torrents of rain all day, so that I did nothing but work at the Institute--which was somewhat hampered by the absence of the boy who runs the engine. I got home in an awfully bad temper, after battling with everything all day--but the bright dripping green of the trees all round me, and the peace of my little house, soon soothed me up.

=May 12.=--Pouring rain all day again; it was so hateful ploughing through these streets, with no side-walks and mud 6 inches deep, that I decided not to go to-morrow, but stop at home. There was a dance at the K----’s, and I had a good time. A charming American was there, who smiled all the time and made one happy just to look at him. There was also a young, fair-haired Mr. B----. His teachers must have been very proud of him; he had the bright smile and the “good” look of a favourite boy, and an ornament to the Y.M.C.A. I felt sure he must be a missionary, but he turned out to be an artist, just out, and to stay a year, painting all sorts of things, Japanese portraits among them. He seemed much astonished when he found I had travelled alone--I am sure his sisters never would,--and when I tried to soothe him by quoting my French and other tours (to show I thought it an everyday sort of thing to do), he seemed so very astonished that I drew in the rein and got him to talk of his own character, which causes him trouble and interest.

=May 13.=--The rain cleared off, but the roads are still bad, yet by the time I came home they were beginning to be dusty.

They dry here at a quite wonderful rate, and in the most terrible weather one has always the consolation of knowing that when it clears it will do so thoroughly and completely.

=May 14.=--After the day’s work I called round to see how Professor _F----_ was, as I had heard nothing of any kind for a fortnight. I saw him for a short time--his face was rather swollen, for they have been injecting strychnine, but otherwise he _looked_ all right, only he could see so little. The cure seems to make almost no progress.

As I was near, I called on the _S----s_ as a duty (and pleasure) call, and came away with a lovely bunch of roses, the Professors, when caught unawares like this, are always in true Japanese dress--and look so nice in it.

In the evening was the last Cinderella--and a very nice dance it was.

=May 16.=--I stopped at home to-day--as the great Debate began at 3, and I had to borrow chairs from several neighbours. I hope to-day to found a Debating Society in Tokio (there is such a dearth of anything more than dances and gossip, you at home couldn’t believe!), and have been raking people out--I have got Miss C---- and Miss H---- to oppose each other on the subject, “Chaperons should be abolished.” Frivolous enough--but one must put the pill in jam here in Tokio, and I hope gradually to get sober and instructive. The Debate was really more of a success than I had dared to hope, and I got nearly every one to speak by the little device of drawing numbers by lot, even Baroness d’A---- and Mrs. P----, who swore they wouldn’t. I had thought, after founding it to-day, to leave it till the hot season passed, but people are keen to have one in June--so it is encouraging. The use of a Japanese house came out strikingly to-day--when I took out my sliding partitions and made nearly my whole house one big room. The weather and the garden behaved themselves--and mercifully everything went off well. Of course the motion was lost, only two people wishing to abolish chaperons.

=May 18.=--A nice bright day. I bicycled home by the library and got some books of Hearn’s; I am thinking of getting up a Debate on Lafcadio Hearn next time, if I can; most people here knew him personally--and so few seem to realise that he was great, and almost all run him down! So I expect a very interesting time of it; there will be no difficulty in getting speakers to condemn, but who is going to stand up for him!

=May 19.=--I just called in on Miss B---- on my way home, and asked her to propose “That the picture of Japan presented in Lafcadio Hearn’s books is totally fallacious.” She consents--I anticipate some fun, and she is (I believe I have remarked before) quite the best conversationalist in Tokio, and a missionary (whom Hearn detested) to boot.

=May 20.=--Fossil cutting and examining all day. I have been arranging the fossil slides, the series got mixed, and it is no joke to keep them straight. Professor _Y----_ called in to see me (he is off to Europe very soon); and invited me to “tiffin at 5” in a few days. The wording is a little puzzling, isn’t it?

I called to inquire how Professor _F----_ is, and was glad to find him a little better, though very little, but with no prospect of perfect recovery.

Strawberries are beginning in the shops; it is such a treat after having had only apples and oranges for all these months. The temperature is delightful, like our July, and I enjoy it greatly, but the nights are still very cool, so that I have a hot-water bottle and the winter quilt. Things are beginning to bite me again, great horrid things of all kinds. Spiders and centipedes come out at night, and all sorts of creatures I never saw before; already I am rendered unnecessarily hideous with bites, what it will be later on I don’t know. I saw the J----s to-day, who once lived here twenty years; they said that Japan is a country that “grows on one” till it is heart-breaking to leave it. I feel that already, it is a pity I have stopped so long. I don’t ever want to go now except to escape insects. The horrid “semi” have begun to sizzle to-night. They are the things that sit in the trees all night and make a sound as though you have a headache; only when they stop for a second or two, you realise you haven’t got one inside your head--but outside. Well, even in Eden there was the serpent, and I suppose sizzling semis aren’t as bad as serpents, at any rate their influence is less far-reaching.

=May 21.=--Fossilising all morning, and in the afternoon I was “at home”--blessed day! These two days in the month I look forward to hugely. A number of people came, among them Mrs. H----, a charming woman, young Mr. _M----_, son of the man who was Dean of the University before Professor _S----_, and Professor _S----_ himself. He came at an interval between Mrs. G----’s call and some others, and we started on Japanese poetry. It seems to be very subtle, so subtle, in fact, that even such a cultivated man can’t understand it right away. Though there is no rhyme and the form lies in the middle of syllables, there is great ingenuity shown in finding words with double meaning suggestive of some poetical idea. The G----s, who called also, have been here thirty years, at least the Mrs. G---- has, and both she and her daughter like the Japanese greatly, and are much liked by them. I am going to get Miss G---- to oppose Miss B---- in the Debate on Hearn. I am glad to find some one who will stand up so sincerely and heartily for Lafcadio Hearn.

=May 22.=--After fossil-cutting walked along to the Faculty lunch with Professor _M----_ and talked nothing particular, as usual. At 5 I went over to Professor _Y----_ “for tiffin,” and was received in a foreign style room, and sad it was. Though so tiny a man, he has a large family, as all the Professors seem to have, unlike the corresponding men in our country. A Mrs. _N----_ was there, and a Miss _X----_, a teacher in a school. I resent very much the fact that all women school teachers (as well as girl pupils) have to wear a special kind of skirt (and very hideously ungraceful it is) over their kimonos, so that every one knows them to be teachers, just as we know hospital nurses. Perhaps it is the hideousness of the skimpy skirt, all open at both sides, that I resent, as much as the fact that it is a uniform marking these women out as apart from their fellows. Once, when I asked why it was all the teachers I saw were so plain featured, I was answered by a Japanese man, “well, if a girl is pretty, she can be married and does not need to go in for teaching.” And we hear so much of the “reverence of the Japanese for teachers.” It seems to me the Japan that we Europeans have at last learned to know, and whose characteristics we have had drummed into our ears, is already a thing of the past, and as _altmodisch_ as our early Victorian furniture, which the Japanese are picking up as “new styles.” But though our furniture may change so fast as to bewilder them, does our national character too change with a startling rapidity equal to the Japanese?

The streets to-day looked unusually upset, and the reason of it is that it is the time of universal spring cleaning,--a spring cleaning that does not originate from the domestic tyrant, but from the main Government, and that is inspected by the police before you have a little yellow tab of paper pasted on your door to say that you are clean. All the _tatami_ must be taken up and beaten, all the boards in the kitchen floor, under which lie hidden oil cans and charcoal, shoes or saucepans, according to the pleasure of the maids, must be taken out and the glory holes cleaned and smothered in white disinfectant powder; the front step of your hall, which, of course, is also a box in disguise, is cleared of its winter _geta_ and powdered white, while the props of your house (all Japanese houses are raised about 1½ feet above the ground) are smothered till one thinks it has snowed. When the policeman is satisfied that all this has been done, and then only, will he give you the yellow ticket. It seems to me an excellent plan--one which would be applied with advantage to some of our slums. The smaller streets to-day were perfect markets, as from the little houses every single thing is turned out on to the road, and the mats beaten there. It added not a little to the thrills of bicycling, and was an instructive illustration of the simplicity of the smallest households.

=May 23.=--After working at fossils all morning, I cycled over to Miss B---- for lunch. She was as entertaining as usual. I often think she is one of the best talkers I have met. After lunch she took me to call on Mrs. _M----_, and I followed her _kuruma_ on my bicycle. The _M----s_, of course, live in a splendid house, equally, of course, it was “foreign style,” with signs everywhere of wealth. The hall was like that of a hotel, and not a modern Waring furnished hotel either, and the drawing-room filled with chairs “upholstered” (there is no other word for it) in various brocades, with different heavy-patterned brocade curtains hung over every door and window in the stiff symmetrical style of last century’s low-water period. On the lovely verandah, looking out into a splendid garden, were round iron marble-topped tables, one was almost surprised there was no advertisement for whisky, or at least Cerebos salt match-holders. That was all I saw of the house to-day, except one little statue carved out of marble, so pure and transparent that the light shone through it as it stood in the window, among a tableful of various articles of cost. Its lovely curves were transfigured by the light behind it, so that they shone ethereal, and one could fancy it a fairy form coming in on a sunbeam--I had not realised fully before how transparent white marble is, and how suited to suggest unearthly beauty when carved in human form. I fixed my eyes on this and forgot the pink-and-green upholstered chairs.

The Women’s University owed much to this family at its foundation, and they asked me if I would like to see over it, which of course I would, so they are to take me on Friday. It will perhaps seem curious that I have made no previous effort to see this very important Institution, but I had my reasons, and the _M----s_ are the best possible people to take me now; I am glad to go. I did not know before going there, but found out afterwards, that they gave the land on which it was built, and that Mrs. _H----_ (sister of Mrs. _M----_) was, with Marquis Ito, one of the first people to whom President _N----_ went with his plans fourteen years ago, and from whom he got much encouragement and practical help.

=May 25.=--I am getting quite an expert on my bicycle. The people in the street, too, seem to have got used to seeing me, and do not bump into me as often as they used to! Though there are some who are unspeakably idiotic; one to-day, for instance, walking toward me steadily for a long way, seeing me clearly, went suddenly at a right angle into the front wheel. The traffic here is exasperating, as the roads are very narrow; there is no foot-path and no rule of the road, and people dodge about like flies, while just this week Diabolo has arrived in Tokio apparently, and is played now in the middle of the road. It is quite startling, the suddenness of this universal appearance of Diabolo, and it is made in a form that the poorest children can buy for a few farthings. Yet with it all I think there is less danger of a real accident in Tokio than in any place in England, because nothing goes fast, no motors or hansoms come on fleet-tyred wheels, and if one bicycles moderately it is really very safe. I have only knocked one baby over, but I shall never forget its eyes looking up at me through the spokes of the wheel, it looked so reproachful, but it was entirely its own fault, and it was not hurt a bit.

=May 26.=--Why do the Japanese lie so circumstantially, and then not even blush when they are found out? I had ordered some cards to be printed for the Debating Society and went round to see why they did not come. The man whom I asked went away and came back saying that the printer foreman had sent me three or four proofs, and having received no reply could not proceed with the work. I said I had returned a corrected proof some time ago, and sent him back to inquire again (knowing of old that determination generally produces the thing you want); he returned saying my proof had not come, but if I here corrected it the cards would be printed to-night; still I was not satisfied, and sent him back again, and lo, he brought the 300 cards all printed, and _with the corrections in them I had added in the proof I returned_.

And each succeeding story was uttered with such an amount of detail and an air of conviction!

=May 28.=--I got to the _M----s_, as arranged, at 9 o’clock, and there found Mrs. _H----_, who wished to come with us to the Women’s University. She was very unlike Mrs. _M----_, and dressed in European style, but her hair was very slightly streaked with grey, and I thought her 45--she told me she was 60. President _N----_ told me she herself had opened a coal mine in Kyshyu twenty-five years ago, and she was the first woman who had ever done anything of the kind here. We drove over in their carriage, as it is a long way to the University, and I was very agreeably surprised. I had heard a good deal about it, particularly that it was more of a school than a College, and not a University at all--partly this is true, but it is already a College with the foundations of University teaching and equipment, and particularly in chemistry, for which there are four laboratories, strangely enough, the arrangements are excellent. The University buildings practically amount to a village, for there are 700 or more students in residence, and more than 1000 students altogether, and there are numerous different subjects taught, from chemistry to cooking, and from flower arrangement and tea-making to law and mathematics. Law, by the way, is compulsory in the Domestic faculty--not a bad idea, is it? There are two children’s classes and schools, and a kindergarten, all part of the University--the idea being that women should be brought up in touch with children. Another very good feature is, that by far the largest number of the women graduates go back to their homes and get married, so that nearly all the students are studying to get the _culture_, not working for exams., so as to be able to become teachers.

Mr. _A----_, the Dean, was with us nearly all the time, and was dressed in Japanese ceremonial robes and a bowler hat. When he took off the bowler, one saw that he had a fine forehead, and that his face was altogether one of considerable beauty. His was undeniably a face with ideals. Mr. _N----_, the President, was rather a similar type of man, but perhaps less artistically fine. Both were very cordial, and we had an interesting talk, for they were all-round developed men, and one could talk to them as to an Englishman--not like so many of these Japanese scientists, who are (or try to be) that and nothing more.

The _M----s_ then took me back to lunch, which was in European style; the food was excellent, but with all their wealth, they had no dainty silver on the table, whose large extent looked rather drear.

After lunch they showed me the garden, taking me to the Japanese part, which was splendid, hilly with green groves and streams, and a waterfall. I saw also their Japanese rooms, most beautiful, except that they had a blue plush carpet put over the mats; there was, however, nothing else in them but the proper appointments--and I delighted in their quiet harmonies.

I got back to the laboratory in time to get in an afternoon’s work.

=May 30.=--Fossils all morning--and preparing microscope, etc. for my Monday’s expedition, when I am going after cycads. Went along to tea with Professor _F----_, who is a little better now, and from whom I needed some information about the place I was going to.

=June 1.=--The household was up at 5 this morning, and I got off to the station a good deal too early for the train, which is a fault on the right side. After seven hours along the renowned old Tokkaido, where to-day a railway runs, I landed at Yejiri, and went in a _kuruma_ about a couple of miles farther to a very noted cycad temple. I deposited my microscope and baggage on the temple steps, which I converted into a temporary laboratory, and scratched myself sadly on the cycas leaves while examining the coming fruits. The cycads are really wonderful--so tall, and curved and branched innumerably.

After pottering around for a while, I broached the subject of stopping all night at the temple, and soon got my way. The priest is extremely old and frail, and looks stupid, but I don’t think he is; there is also an old woman, whom I presume is his wife, who will do what little cooking I shall get.

It is a charmingly situated temple, and the gardens are very sweet, so decked with the beauties of age. It lies on the slope of a hill, just midway between the top and the flat rice fields below us, and is one of the most peaceful habitations it is possible to imagine. The priest seems to spend all his time, clad like one of the poorest peasants, working in the gardens, which are very well kept, and which, like all true old Japanese gardens, suggest that the little details had been planned to please a child. On tiny islands are perched minute lanterns, and across streams over which one could step are bridges or stepping-stones.

There are such hundreds of frogs just at present, as he walks one would think the priest was spilling his basket of plants into the water, there are so many splashes where he passes, but it is only the countless frogs hopping out of his way into their native element.

After a rather meagre supper of eggs and rice (it is quite surprising how tired one gets of eggs and rice, even in one meal) I wandered round the garden, tottering along with great circumspection, for I was mounted on _geta_ (the wooden clog-like things I have previously mentioned). The stillness was complete, as the temple was closed to visitors and the old priest and his wife were in the house. Range after range of hills stood back from the sea towards Fuji mountain, whose position I knew, but who was hidden in the clouds. In the valley the ripe barley glowed golden, and between its little fields were the bare wet patches waiting for the rice to be planted out, and reflecting now the clouds that hung low in the sky. Brilliant emerald squares marked the nurseries of the tiny rice plants, growing in neat little oblongs by themselves, and still less than 6 inches high. Suddenly I felt an electric presence, and looked behind me at a cleft in the hill to see the slimmest silver curve of a new moon that I had ever seen. She rode in the sky so swiftly that, as I watched, I could fancy the waves of blue ether tossed from the prow of the little boat, and while I gazed she passed again behind the hill. So delicate a moon, a silver thread curved on a bow, but its fairy light was more bewitching than many a great round moon’s brilliance.

In the night the priest woke, and gave a cry to his wife, and I looked out, but the night was black, the fleet moon had lured every star away.

=June 2.=--Early they rose, and though I took about an hour leisurely eating my breakfast, it was finished before half-past eight. I went to the cycad trees for a while and worked at them. How huge they are! The one on which I am now sitting, eight feet or so above the ground, spreads all round me like a grove of trees, but is only one much-branched individual. At my feet, in the main trunk of the tree, is a minute temple, but I think the gods have deserted it, for within is only one image half a foot high, from which the paint has worn away.

Opposite me is a funny old cycad, not branched at all but bent. It grows on a slope, and is propped up with legs here and there. In the morning I saw Mount Fuji quite magnificently. She stands alone in the sky, three times higher in appearance (and more in fact) than any hill near, with a coronet of snow, and a cloak of clouds round her shoulders, which cut her off from the earth. Immensely more impressive than when seen from Tokio.

What a peaceful day! I stop in the midst of my examination of the cycads to fall into an aimless reverie, and am waked up by a frog croaking from a porcelain-green throat at my side. Big black butterflies come lumbering along, and one thinks they are stupid birds till they settle on a crimson azalea flower, and coming up from the rice fields is a low-toned rattling chorus of frogs and semi. Just before supper I went up the next little hill to see the temple of Kwannon on its top. There are 270 solid stone steps up to the temple, all neatly squared and nearly 8 feet wide--but the temple itself is built of mouldering wood. It commands a splendid view of the rice and barley fields, and then the sea, which lies but a mile away. Behind the temple is a hilly country with many trees and little cultivated patches here and there. There are lots of white Canterbury bells among the tall grasses, and the wild Fuji wistaria branches climb round many a trunk.

After supper the moon rode high in the pale grey sky--but it is so small even now, only what I would have thought was a first day moon in England. Perhaps the brilliantly clear air of Japan last night allowed me to see the crescent before it was really a moon at all, but was the soul of a moon before it was born.

=June 3.=--To get me to the station by 8.30 the good people started getting up at 5, and talked so that I could hear every word, repeating again and again the time that they must wake me. But once they had “waked” me, not a word did they say, and crept about like mice. The contrariness of the Japanese is incomprehensible. The _kuruma_ came an hour before I ordered it--and I kept him waiting more than an hour by their clock, and then got to the station sixty-five minutes too soon for the train!

After a few stations, I was struck by a pretty beach, and hopped off the train, determined to have a bathe and go on by the next, whenever it might be, to-day or to-morrow. The station-master was very nice, and took charge of my luggage, from which I extracted a towel. The village--Kanbara by name--was very small, and there were a good many fishing-boats at intervals along the shore, but they were nearly deserted. The water was just delicious, so warm that one could not feel it at all, I never bathed in such a perfect temperature, but I expect our creeping cold water is more bracing. I sunned on the beach for a while, and found a train at midday that will take me a good deal quicker than the one I left, as it is a semi-express.

I had to wait about twenty minutes on the platform for it, and was of course gazed at solemnly by a number of small children who did not offer a remark, they were so young that very likely I was the first foreigner they had really seen at close quarters. There was a good deal of difference of opinion as to my sex. My panama hat always bewilders them, as only men wear them here.

The station-master came up and had a little chat, and took me to his room, because there was a chair there, which was very nice of him; though the chair was no more comfortable really than the bench, the quiet and coolness of his room was pleasant.

When I got off the train I had not told him that it was my intention simply to get a bathe, but had diplomatically said I wished to see his neighbourhood, which had evidently pleased him. I told him about the bathe afterwards, which seemed also to please him, for I had enjoyed it very much. I got to Tokio quite uneventfully before night.

=June 8.=--Fossil-cutting all day. In the afternoon there was a quite terrific thunder-storm, one peal seemed to break inside the very house. Then hail! The largest known for forty years, and really the hailstones were as large as eggs, some were measured by Professor P----, and were 2½ inches in diameter!

By a really quaint coincidence it was the Festival of the God of Thunder, and the storm took place in the middle of the temple festival. There seems some justification for a folk-belief in mythology. When the worshippers prayed for mercy from the fearful hail, the sun soon shone.

=June 9.=--Professor _F----_ came to tea in my house, which he now saw for the first time--and when I think how he had to arrange everything with my landlady in the last one, I feel quite proud of my progress. He is still ill, though a little better, and to-morrow goes away to some celebrated hot springs.

=June 11.=--Working at fossils all day: I developed some photos of cycads I took at Yejiri, but the weather is so hot the gelatine dissolves!

The air is now filled with mosquitoes and minute biting flies, and I would like to be a hedgehog. They sing so loudly outside the net that I can’t sleep, and though they don’t get inside the net much they are so vexed about it, and I am “so sweet to eat,” as my little maid says, they just howl on the top note of rage.

=June 12.=--A working day, in which the only attempt at excitement was the lunch at the Goten, but as Professor _S----_ was away it was a little like flat soda-water.

=June 13.=--I went to see the Agricultural University; it is at the end of the Aoyama tram, and quite away into the country. It possesses a very impressively beautiful stretch of ground, over which the different Institute Buildings are dotted. Dr. _M----_ met me and took me over. The botanical department is not very big, but those who do research there get every convenience. The only noteworthy thing was the curious arrangement of the paraffin oven, stuck right down in the ground like the hut of a cave-dweller, with steep steps into it and a metal entrance door. This is an old arrangement as a precaution against fire, for, of course, all the buildings are of wood. Of the other departments, I was principally interested in the silk-worm houses, where huge numbers of worms were reared. A scientist was there doing experiments with hybrids, and working at Mendel’s laws and the commercial value of different crosses. More convenient creatures for such a purpose one could hardly imagine. They need no cages, for they can neither fly nor run! When the moths hatch out you can pick them up, pop them down beside any other one you like, and they stay where you put them and mate, and you get a new generation in about thirty days. They are kind enough to fasten their eggs themselves in series on numbered cards, and are, in fact, as well behaved as any scientifically constructed animal could ever be imagined to be.

It was very wet, so the picnic planned for the afternoon did not come off, and I stayed a long time. It was interesting to notice some native Indians studying here, and to find that they, and one or two others who could not speak Japanese, had special classes held in English and given by a Japanese teacher for the various subjects. Who needs to learn any “world language” but English?

=June 15.=--An uneventful working day, but in the evening there was the Debate. We are going to have alternately afternoon and evening meetings, so as to try to please all varieties of people.

Miss B----’s paper was very amusing, as we all expected it would be, but very superficial also, so that I felt she had been convinced on the side of Hearn, for she brought no real serious argument against him. Miss G---- opposed her well, and brought far more solid reasons in favour of Hearn’s view of Japan; the two supporters were good, particularly “the Poetess,” who supported Hearn. Many of the audience spoke very well, but when it came to voting so many refrained that the votes were level, and I had to give the casting vote, of course in favour of Hearn.

=June 19.=--All yesterday the Institute had been undergoing extensive cleaning, and this morning was spent in expectation and preparation of exhibits--the great Dr. Koch, the world-famed German bacteriologist, was coming to see the Institute. Professor _F----_ was brought back from the mountain before his cure was finished to be on duty; my fossil slides were borrowed and put under microscope, and the spermatozoids of _ginkgo_ were on show. He came, after the whole Institute and Baron _H----_ had waited in a flutter of excitement for nearly an hour; he is a big stout man, not very intellectual-looking. Though interested he had evidently been trotted round a great deal. He seemed to like the fossils, and asked me to show him a section of a leaf, as well as those I had under the microscope.

Then he was trotted off to a purely masculine dinner at the garden house. The newspapers have been full of his coming, his doings, and sayings. They say they are going to put a telephone up Mount Fuji, so as to be able to interview him from the top!

=June 22 and 23.=--Uneventful working days, with a little reading of Matthew Arnold’s _Essays in Criticism_ in the evening. I am reading aloud to Mrs. St----, who lives next door but one, and who must not use her eyes at present. We are doing Arnold pretty thoroughly, life, poems, and essays, and patted ourselves on the back when we found in an essay on his work that he “appeals exclusively to the cultured section of the educated classes!”

=June 24.=--At work all day; in the evening I gave a farewell party for the P----s (who leave on Friday), and invited about 30 people, of whom 26 or so accepted. It would have been preposterously ambitious in England, but here my little house, with the rooms thrown into one, and the garden lit with Chinese lanterns, made it a pleasure to play at entertaining. The room lit with lanterns looked very pretty; chairs and lemonade glasses I borrowed from next door, and all went merry as a marriage bell. Though it was the rainy season, the night was gloriously fine. The Dean and one or two Professors of the University, two clergymen and some minor folk from the Embassy disported themselves like children. Even the Poetess came, and entered into the games. We had a collection of 20 sen toys for Professor P----, and some of the things people brought were charming. By 11.30 all but a select few departed, but it was after 12 before these went. What a simple happy thing life in a Japanese house can be!

=June 25.=--Fossil-cutting all day. Miss _M----_, Mrs. _H----_, and President _N----_ came to see the fossil cutting-machine at work, and also some of the slides under the microscope. They were interested, but of course did not fully realise their significance, for fossils are principally for specialists.

=June 26.=--At 6.30 this afternoon Professor and Mrs. P---- left. What a crowd there was to see them off! By the same train the wife and daughter of the Austrian Ambassador were leaving, and that brought all the Legations’ representatives. Really the platform was so packed we could hardly move--and if there had been tea going round it would have seemed like a garden party. The train looked comfortable, with _wagons-lit_--and every one was entertained by the huge “send-off,” so that few tears were shed--but I am deeply sorry to lose the friends that train carries away.

=June 30.=--A good day’s work. In the evening there was a dinner where met all the botanists of Tokio. One or two could not come, but there were 18 men there. Seemingly foreign food is greatly appreciated--certainly there were more courses than the laws of health allow. It was amusing to note knives slipped furtively down after they had touched asparagus when their owners noted me holding a spike aloft in bare fingers--but otherwise the company behaved and looked much as a similar set of people would look anywhere. The sky, seen out of the windows, was the most astonishingly blue I have ever seen. The soft velvety depth of it suggested the impossibility of stars gleaming on its surface (as they usually do at night), they would have been drowned. The brilliant blueness like that of a cornflower or a solid mass of cornflowers that had flung off their colour into the surrounding air, till every particle for miles, each separate and distinct, was blue. Usually the sky seems a flat or a dome-shaped sheet of colour over us, to-night it was a solid vapoury mass of quivering blue particles--indescribable, but thrilling as an electric shock, and as unforgettable. After we had dined we talked, until I suggested Dr. _H----_ should give us a piece of _Nō_ recitation; he studies its peculiar singing-like declamation and renders it well. Then others sang, and I was convulsed by “Home, Sweet Home,” sung by one of the young lecturers, “to prevent me feeling home-sick.” His rendering of it was intensely funny, but his voice was pretty good. Afterwards he sang a long Japanese battle song. We left at 9.45, and some of us, I fear, will be ill after that dinner.

=July 1.=--An uneventful and solitary day’s work. Professor _F----_ too ill to come. I only suffered spasmodic anger from an outraged digestive mechanism, and continued my usual occupations, and dined with the Sh----s in the evening. The little Japanese girl I have mentioned as staying with her is pretty nice. Alas, to-morrow she is going to be put into foreign dress! She is going to marry Prince _S----_, however, who is very pro-English, and as she will be much about the court, is compelled to wear it by that sad decree of the Empress.

I heard one good story of a little English girl who went home after having spent all her early years in Japan. In the train between Southampton and London she was much interested with the outlook, the sheep particularly fascinating her, and she called on her mother to admire them: “Look, what a lot!” “Why, here is another!” “There, mother, look, look!” she kept exclaiming, when a benevolent old gentleman said, “Why are the sheep so interesting, little girl? Haven’t you seen a sheep before?”

“Of course I have,” she answered, drawing herself up; “of course--we have _two_ in the Zoo in Tokio.”

=July 2.=--Fossil-cutting all morning--I seem to be followed by misfortune, for the boy who works the engine has been away all this week, and my scientific colleague here only one afternoon! However, I keep at it, and slides are slowly accumulating, with a few nice things in them.

=July 3.=--Fossils in the morning and lunch at the Goten; Professor _S----_ jolly and talkative, and a great pleasure to meet. Professor _F----_ came in the afternoon, and we did a lot of looking through slides. There are a number of pretty little things among the fossils that puzzle us completely.

=July 5.=--There was a luncheon party with some nice neighbours to-day, and while we were there some strolling Japanese singers came to the door, and we gave them a few sen and watched them. There were an old woman and a young woman, both good-looking, and with the quaint huge round hats of their class, the young man wore a battered European-style hat--a jarring note, that was repeated in the little girl’s hat, red stockings, and European shoes. It is always the men and the children who wear the horrors of civilisation.

The child danced, clumsily and heavily with her feet, but moving her little body in all kinds of ways with wonderful grace and agility, and a strength in holding difficult curves; her hands too, so prettily shaped, were carefully posed and moved, now rigid, almost bending back, and now swiftly fluttering; she had an old gilt fan, which she opened and manœuvred, but her round pretty face was absolutely set. There was a haunting suggestion of bedraggled beauty in it all, beauty that had once adorned a noble’s palace and had been cast into the streets, and from soft white _tabi_ and silk robes had taken to tight cotton gowns and old red stockings, with a hole showing above the down-trodden heel of a shoe.

Yesterday the Ministry resigned--and the commercial people are on the verge of revolt against the fearful expenditure on army and navy, while the country is so poverty-stricken. I could weep with Hearn over this country, and the hats they wear are enough to start me off!

I have read every word of the cross-examination and trial of Bethell over the Korean matters; you have probably heard of it at home; in many ways I feel that the Japanese use their catch phrases, “love of country”--“love of Emperor,” as cloaks for unscrupulous behaviour public and private, just as our county councillors seem to lose private honesty in dealing with public affairs. The Japanese have 20,000 troops active in Korea, and cannot keep order--my only surprise is that any Koreans submit at all without decent open warfare; they were not conquered, but tricked and coerced into having their Government absolutely controlled by the Japanese Government. Were I a Korean I should at least demand to be properly conquered. Yet, of course, from the point of view of world politics Japan must control Korea, only--God pity the Koreans who have themselves a spark of “love of country” or “love of Emperor.”

=July 6.=--A solitary day’s work--on the way home I called to inquire after Mrs. _M----_, who has been in bed for about a month, and I noticed that the ceiling of their big drawing-room is all of satin, _embroidered_ with huge flowers and life-size peacocks and other birds. One can only think of the cost of it, and deplore that it was not put as hangings where one could admire the work.

I had to go by tram to-day, as the bicycle is in hospital, and noticed such a quaint sign over a shop. Most of the very funny ones have been gradually weeded out by thoughtless people informing the owners of their eccentricity, so that the streets are not nearly so entertaining as they were years ago.

This I saw, however:--

“Au Klnds wool are sell in her.”

I also noticed “Fruit’s Shops.”

How lazy a bicycle makes one, it feels a serious imposition to have to walk 2 miles of city road, though the Tokio streets do not seem to get any less entertaining because I am accustomed to them.

=July 7.=--We had a fine afternoon, so I did a little tidying up in my garden. During these many days of heavy rain the leaves have grown luxuriantly, but the flowers have quite ceased to come out in a world where they are only drenched with unkind torrents instead of being kissed by the warm sun they will get if they wait a few weeks longer. My four little lawns, altogether no bigger than a billiard table, are now like a jungle, and I planted them so few weeks ago. It is very pretty to watch the little side paths, where the moss and lichens and liverworts seem to grow every day; the small paths where O Fuji-san (my maid) does not walk are now quite green--more aged-looking than paths a hundred years old with us. The little stone lantern I bought the day of the paeony flowers, is also green, with a faint haze of centuries over it! It is the lovely greenness of Tokio that marks it out from every city I have seen before. To-day, bicycling along the road above the moat, I could well have believed myself far in the country, with the high green grass on the steep banks of the moat and the grey-green pines growing above and shading it. The green and the grey and the blue that lies in and over this city, blue in the sky and blue in the gowns of every one; grey on the tree trunks, the moats, and the houses; green everywhere there is foot-hold for a moss plant, are a harmony that thrills one’s very soul.

=July 9.=--Work till 5.30, and then dinner at 6, with Professor _S----_. This was arranged to suit Professor B----, from New Zealand, who goes to bed at 8.30 or so. Professor _O----_, the seismologist, and Professor _T----_, the anthropologist, were also there. It was, of course, a “foreign style” dinner, and was done with great magnificence. Professor B---- talked with almost no comments from any one, but the conversation was never dull.

Professor _S----’s_ garden was more of a dream than ever,--lit with stone lanterns and with a few red roses among the green, the moon being in a watery mist, and we turned the light down, and listened to the bell-like tones of a little “Bell insect,” hanging in a 2-inch cage in the garden. The note was slightly muffled, but musical, penetrating, and sad--one of those notes that act as an “Open Sesame” to the gate of emotions--that is, I should say, to some people’s emotions. Professor B---- had the insect under a “scientific scrutiny” for a whole minute, and then produced his note-book, and the light was turned up while he wrote down his observation that the noise is made by the rubbing of the wings where they slightly overlap.

=July 10.=--The last day’s lunch at the Goten, and a lot of work of one sort and another got out of hand. Collecting plant-material, etc., takes more time than one would think. The fossil lab.-boy is ill again, and fossils are hanging fire a little, for I can’t do more than three things at once.

=July 12.=--Writing all morning; the weather is glorious, and the rainy season seems to be pretty well over, and has been a record one. The rain came at the right time, lasted the right length of time, and was cool instead of “steamy hot,” as it often is--we cannot be too thankful for these mercies. Even as it is, the inside of my writing case and the whole of my shoes and straps are covered with blue mould.

I paid several calls in the afternoon--my neighbours are off to the mountains first thing to-morrow morning--lucky people! How I wish I could feel free to do the same, instead of grinding over these old fossils. Soon Tokio will be empty of all the sane people who inhabit it in the winter.

As I am writing I hear the tune of “Auld Lang Syne” set to Japanese and sung lustily. It is one of the favourite foreign tunes among the Japanese, and many sing it without knowing it isn’t Japanese, I believe.

=July 13.=--I was in the garden with Professor _F----_ for the first time this year. We were getting some gymnosperm material, and found a brilliant green frog sitting in the sunshine on a brilliant green leaf. He told me he would be brown on a barky branch, so I picked the frog up and put him on the curve of a broad brown branch, and, sure enough, the webs of his feet went quite brown in a minute, and his back went a much darker, duller green, but we couldn’t wait to see him all turn brown, it took too long.

=July 14.=--Absolutely alone all day. The engine and fossil boy and Professor _F----_ are all ill again, and the other people not visible. I felt more than a little ill myself, and my bicycle was so bad it had to go into hospital. A very grey day--and in the evening torrents of rain fell from the heavens, and I began to feel inclined to weep also, when Mrs. _F----’s_ little daughter came round to ask me to go in to dinner, as the weather was so depressing. Eastern life has its share of compensations.

=July 15.=--At 11 I started my work, and took some micro-photos, and I am also seeing about chemical analysis of nodules, covering glasses of great size for fossil slides, printing of photos, artificial cultivation of _ginkgo_ prothallia (and the wretches insist on going mouldy, like my boots), collecting of gymnosperm material, and half a hundred other things that are pulling me in as many directions as the points of a compass for a universe of six dimensions. Why I was such an ass as to undertake both fossil and recent work, I can’t imagine--one must go to the wall.

Coming home late to-day (Professor _F----_ turned up about 3.30), I passed through the road to a temple where there was a children’s festival, along whose sides were rows of gay little stalls with all manner of bright things to tempt the children, who throng in holiday attire. I never saw more children and fewer elders, and all the children were so bright, and, excepting for the crude, almost savage decorations in their hair, so prettily dressed. The various toys and eatables are indescribable, all brilliant and all ridiculously cheap, from half of a farthing up to a penny or so being the normal prices. Among the eatables were little brown germinating beans, with long white rootlets sticking out, then there was a special stall for a kind of clear seaweed jelly, which was squeezed into a glass cup through a bamboo squirt.