Lady of the Decoration
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Frances Little >> Lady of the Decoration
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It must be very beautiful at home about this time. The beech trees are
all green and gold, and the maples are blazing. I am thinking too
about the shadows on the old ice-house. I know every one of them by
heart, and they often come to haunt me as do many other shadows of the
sad, sad past.
HIROSHIMA, December, 1903.
God bless you honey, I've got a holiday and I've sworn vengeance on
anyone who comes to my door until I have written my Christmas
letters. I wish I was a doctor and a trained nurse, and a scholar, a
magician, a philosopher and a saint all combined. I need them in my
business.
I have spent this merry Christmas season, chasing from pillow to post
with bandages, hot water bags, poultices and bottles. We have had a
regular hospital. All the Christmas money I had saved to buy presents
for home went in Cod Liver Oil, and Miss Lessing, bless her soul, is
doing without a coat for the same purpose. When you see a girl
struggling for what little education she can get, and know what
sacrifices are being made for it, you just hate your frumpery old
finery, and you want to convert everything you possess into cash to
help her. All the teachers are doing without fires in their rooms this
winter, and it is rather chillsome to go to bed cold and wake up next
morning in the same condition. When I get home to a furnace-heated
house and have cream in my coffee, I shall feel too dissipated to be
respectable!
We have not been able to get a new cook since our old one died, and
the fact must have gotten abroad, for all the floating brethren and
sisters in Japan have been to see us! Y.M.C.A.'s, W.C.T.U.'s,
A.W.B.M.'s and X.Y.Z.'s have sifted in, and we have to sit up and be
Marthas and Marys all at the same time!
Sometimes I want to get my hat and run and run until I get to another
planet. But I am not made of the stuff that runs, and I have the
satisfaction of knowing that I have stuck to my post. If sacrificing
self, and knocking longings in the head, and smashing heart-aches
right and left, do not pass me through the Golden Gate, then I'll sue
Peter for damages.
It's snowing to-day, but the old Earth is making about as poor a bluff
at being Christmasy as I am. The leaves are all on the trees, many
flowers are in bloom, and the scarlet geraniums are warm enough to
melt the snow flakes.
My big box has arrived and I am keeping it until to-morrow. I go out
and sit on it every little while to keep cheered up. This is my third
Christmas from home, one more and then--!
There has been too much sickness to make much of the holiday, but I
have rigged up a fish pond for the kindergarten children, and each
kiddie will have a present that cost one-fourth of a cent! I wish I
had a hundred dollars to spend on them!
To-night when the lights are out, my little sick girl's stocking will
hang on one bed post, and mine on the other. I don't believe Santa
Glaus will have the heart to pass us by, do you?
HIROSHIMA, January, 1904.
Here it is January and I am just thanking you dear ones for my
beautiful Christmas box. As you probably guessed, Mate, our Christmas
was not exactly hilarious. The winter has been a hard one, the
prospect of war has sent the price of provisions out of sight, the
sick girls in the school have needed medicine and fires, so altogether
Miss Lessing, Miss Dixon and I have had to do considerable tugging at
the ends to get them to meet. None of us have bought a stitch of new
clothing this winter, so when our boxes came, we were positively dazed
by all the grandeur.
They arrived late at night and we got out of bed to open them. The
first thing I struck was a very crumpled little paper doll, with baby
Bess' name printed in topsy-turvy letters on the back. For the next
five minutes I was kept busy swallowing the lumps that came in my
throat, but Dixie had some peppermint candy out of her box, the first
I had seen since I had left home, so I put on my lovely new beaver
hat, which with my low-necked gown and red slippers was particularly
chic, and I sat on the floor and ate candy. It--the hat and the candy
too, went a long way towards restoring my equanimity, but I didn't
dare look at that paper doll again that night!
You ask if I mind wearing that beautiful crêpe de chine which is not
becoming to you? Well, Mate, I suppose there was a day when I would
have scorned anybody's cast-off clothes, but I pledge you my word a
queen in her coronation robes never felt half so grand as I feel in
that dress! Somehow I seem to assume some of your personality, I look
tall and graceful and dignified, and I try to imagine how it feels to
be good and intellectual, and fascinating, and besides I have the
satisfaction of knowing that I am rather becoming to the dress myself!
It fits without a wrinkle and next summer with my big black hat,--!
Well, if Little Germany sees me, there will be something doing!
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:
I am breathless! For three weeks I have had a chase up hill and down
dale, to the top of pine clad mountains, into the misty shadows of the
deep valleys, up and down the silvery river, to and fro on the frosty
road. For why! All because I had lost my "poise," that treasured
possession which you said I was to hang on to as I do to my front
teeth and my hair. So when I found it was gone, I started in full
pursuit. Never a sight of its coat tails did I catch until Sunday,
when I gave up the race and sat me down to fight out the old fight of
rebellion, and kicking against the pricks.
It was a perfect day, the plum trees were white with blossom, the
spice bushes heavy with fragrance, the river dancing for joy, and the
whole earth springing into new, tender life. A saucy little bird sat
on an old stone lantern, and sang straight at me. He told me I was a
whiney young person, that it was lots more fun to catch worms and fly
around in the sunshine than it was to sit in the house and mope. He
actually laughed at me, and I seized my hat and lit out after him, and
when I came home I found I had caught my "poise."
To-day in class I asked my girls what "happiness" meant. One new girl
looked up timidly and said, "Sensei, I sink him just mean _you_."
I felt like a hypocrite, but it pleased me to know that on the outside
at least I kept shiny.
I tell you if I don't find my real self out here, if I don't see my
own soul in all its bareness and weakness then I will never see it. At
home hedged in by conventionality, custom, and the hundred little
interests of our daily life, we have small chance to see ourselves as
we really are, but in a foreign land stripped bare of everything in
the world save _self_, in a loneliness as great sometimes as the
grave, face to face with new conditions, new demands, we have ample
chance to take our own measurement. I cannot say that the result
obtained is calculated to make one conceited!
I fit into this life out here, like a square peg in a round hole. I am
not consecrated, I was never "_called_ to the foreign field," I
love the world and the flesh even if I don't care especially for the
devil, I don't believe the Lord makes the cook steal so I may be more
patient, and I don't pray for wisdom in selecting a new pair of
shoes. When my position becomes unbearable, I invariably face the
matter frankly and remind myself that if it is hard on the peg, it is
just as hard on the hole, and that if they can stand it I guess I can!
You ask about my reading. Yes, I read every spare minute I can get,
before breakfast, on my way to classes, and after I go to
bed. Somebody at home sends me the magazines regularly and I keep them
going for months.
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:
Don't I wish you were here to share all these thrills with me! War is
actually in progress, and if you could see me hanging out of the
window at midnight yelling for a special, then chasing madly around to
get someone to translate it for me, see me dancing in fiendish glee at
every victory won by this brave little country, you would conclude
that I am just as young as I used to be. I tell you I couldn't be
prouder of my own country! Just think of plucky little old Japan
winning three battles from those big, brutal, conceited Russians. Why
I just want to run and hug the Emperor! And the school girls! Why
their placid faces are positively glorified by the fire of
patriotism. Once a week a trained nurse comes to give talks on
nursing, and if I go into any corner afterward, I find a group of
girls practising all kinds of bandaging. Even the demurest little
maiden cherishes the hope that some fate may send her to the
battle-field, or that in some way she may be permitted to serve her
country.
I am afraid I am not very strict about talking in class these days,
but, somehow, courage, nobility, and self-sacrifice seem just as
worthy of attention as "motor ideas," and "apperceptions."
A British guest who hates everything Japanese says my enthusiasm "is
quite annoying, you know," but, dear me, I don't mind him. What could
you expect of a person who eats pie with a spoon? Why my enthusiasm is
just cutting its eye-teeth! The whole country is a-thrill, and even a
wooden Indian would get excited.
Every afternoon we walk down on the sea wall and watch the
preparations going on for a long siege. Hundreds of big ships fill the
harbor to say nothing of the small ones, and there are thousands of
coolies working like mad. I could tell you many interesting things,
but I am afraid of the censor. If he deciphers all my letters home,
he will probably have nervous prostration by the time the war is over.
Many of the war ships are coaled by women who carry heavy baskets on
each end of a pole swung across the shoulder, and invariably a baby on
their backs. It is something terrible the way the women work, often
pulling loads that would require a horse at home. They go plodding
past us on the road, dressed as men, mouth open, eyes straining, all
intelligence and interest gone from their faces.
One day as Miss Lessing and I were resting by the roadside, one of
these women stopped for breath just in front of us. She was pushing a
heavy cart and her poor old body was trembling from the strain. Her
legs were bare, and her feet were cut by the stones. There was
absolute stolidity in her weather-beaten face, and the hands that
lighted her pipe were gnarled and black. Miss Lessing has a perfect
genius for getting at people, I think it is her good kind face through
which her soul shines. She asked the old woman if she was very
tired. The woman looked up, as if seeing us for the first time and
nodded her head. Then a queer look came into her face and she asked
Miss Lessing if we were the kind of people who had a new God. Miss
Lessing told her we were Christians. With a wistfulness that I have
never seen except in the eyes of a dog, she said, "If I paid your God
with offering and prayers, do you think he would make my work easier?
I am so tired!" Miss Lessing made her sit down by her on the grass,
and talked to her in Japanese about the new God who did not take any
pay for his help, and who could put something in her heart that would
give her strength to bear any burden. I could not understand much of
what they said but I had a little prayer-meeting all by myself.
HIROSHIMA, April, 1904.
Yesterday the American mail came after a three weeks' delay. None of
us were good for anything the rest of the day. Twenty letters and
fifty-two papers for me! Do you wonder that I almost danced a hole in
the parlor rug?
The home news was all so bright and cheery, and your letter was such a
bunch of comfort that I felt like a two year old. It was exactly like
you to think out that little farm party and get Jack into it as a
matter of accommodation to you. I followed everything you did, with
the keenest interest, from the all-day tramps in the woods, to the
cozy evenings around the log fire. I can see old Jack now, at first
bored to death but resolved to die if need be on the altar of
friendship, gradually warming up as he always does out of doors, and
ending up by being the life of the party. He once told me that social
success is the infinite capacity for being bored. I know the little
outing did him a world of good, and you are all the trumps in the deck
as usual.
Who is the Dr. Leet that was in the party? I remember dancing a
cotillon with a very good looking youth of that name in the
prehistoric ages. He was a senior at Yale, very rich and very good
looking. I wore his fraternity pin over my heart for a whole week
afterward.
We have been having great fun over the American accounts of the war.
Through the newspapers we learn the most marvelous things about Japan
and her people. Large cities are unblushingly moved from the coast to
an island in the Inland Sea, troops are passported from places which
have no harbor, and the people are credited with unheard of customs.
We are still in the midst of stirring times. The city is overflowing
with troops, and we are hemmed in on every side by soldiers. Of course
foreign women are very curious to them, and they often follow us and
make funny comments, but we have never yet had a single rudeness shown
us. In all the thousands of soldiers stationed here, I have only seen
two who were tipsy, and they were mildly hilarious from saki. There
is perfect order and discipline, and after nine o'clock at night the
streets are as quiet as a mountain village.
The other night, five of the soldiers, mere boys, donned citizens'
dress and went out for a lark. At roll-call they were missing and a
guard was sent to search for them. When found, they resisted arrest
and three minutes after they all answered the roll-call in another
world.
And yet although the discipline is so severe, the men seem a contented
and happy lot. They stroll along the roads when off duty hand in hand
like school girls, and laugh and chatter as if life were a big
holiday. But when the time comes to go to the front, they don their
gay little uniforms, and march just as joyfully away to give the last
drop of their blood for their Emperor.
I tell you, Mate, I want to get out in the street and cheer every
regiment that passes! No drum, no fife, no inspiring music to stir
their blood and strengthen their courage, nothing but the unvarying
monotony of the four note trumpets. They don't need music to make them
go. They are perfect little machines whose motive power is a
patriotism so absolute, so complete, that it makes death on the
battle-field an honor worthy of deification.
I look out into the play-ground, and every boy down to the smallest
baby in the kindergarten is armed with a bamboo gun. Such drilling and
marching, and attacking of forts you have never seen. That the enemy
is nothing more than sticks stuck at all angles matters little. An
enemy there must be, and the worst boy in Japan would die before he
would even _play_ at being a Russian! If Kuropatkin could see
just one of these awful onslaughts, he would run up the white flag and
hie himself to safety. So you see we are well guarded and with quiet
little soldiers on the outside, and very noisy and fierce little
soldiers on the inside, we fear no invasion of our peaceful compound.
On my walks around the barracks, I often pass the cook house, and
watch the food being carried to the mess room. The rice buckets, about
the size of our water buckets, are put on a pole in groups of six or
eight and carried on the shoulders of two men. There is a line about a
square long of these buckets, and then another long line follows with
trays of soup bowls. Tea is not as a rule drunk with the meals, but
after the last grain of rice has been chased from the slippery sides
of the bowl, hot water is poured in and sipped with loud appreciation.
Last Sunday afternoon we had to entertain ten officers of high rank,
and it proved a regular lark. Their English and our Japanese got
fatally twisted. One man took great pride in showing me how much too
big his clothes were, giving him ample opportunity to put on several
suits of underwear in cold weather; he said "Many cloth dese trusers
hab, no fit like 'Merican." They were delighted with all our foreign
possessions, and inspected everything minutely. On leaving, one
officer bowed low, and assured me that he would never see me on earth
again, but he hoped he would see me in heaven _first_!
The breezes from China waft an occasional despairing epistle from
Little Germany, but they find me as cold as a snow bank on the north
side of a mountain. The sun that melts my heart will have to rise in
the west, and get up early at that.
HIROSHIMA, May, 1904.
Well commencement is over and my first class is graduated. Now if you
have ever heard of anything more ridiculous than that please cable me!
If you could have seen me standing on the platform dealing out
diplomas, you would have been highly edified.
Last night I gave the class a dinner. There were fourteen girls, only
two of whom had ever been at a foreign table before. At first they
were terribly embarrassed, but before long they warmed up to the
occasion and got terribly tickled over their awkwardness. I was
afraid they would knock their teeth out with the knives and forks, and
the feat of getting soup from the spoon to the mouth proved so
difficult that I let them drink it from the bowl. Sitting in chairs
was as hard for them as sitting on the floor for me, so between the
courses we had a kind of cake walk.
Next week school begins again, and I start three new kindergartens,
making seven over which I have supervision. I am so pleased over the
progress of my work that I don't know what to do. Not that I don't
realize my limitations, heaven knows I do. Imagine my efforts at
teaching the training class psychology! The other day we were
struggling with the subject of reflex action, and one of the girls
handed in this definition as she had understood it from me! "Reflex
action is of a activity nervous. It is sometimes the don't understand
of what it is doing and stops many messages to the brain and sends the
motion to the legs." What little knowledge I start with gets
cross-eyed before I get through.
The Japanese can twist the English language into some of the strangest
knots that you ever saw. There is a sign quite near here that reads
"Cows milk and Retailed."
Since writing you last, I have sent my little sick girl home. It
almost broke us all up, but she couldn't stay here alone during the
summer and there was nobody to take care of her. I write to her every
week and try to keep her cheered up, but for such as she there is only
one release and that is death.
If Jack's hospital ever materializes, I am going to offer my services
as a nurse. This poor child's plight has taken such a hold upon me
that I long to do something for all the sick waifs in creation.
HIROSHIMA, June, 1904.
It is Sunday afternoon, and your Foreign Missionary Kindergarten
Teacher, instead of trudging off to Sunday School with the other
teachers, is recklessly sitting in dressing gown and slippers with her
golden hair hanging down her hack, writing letters home. After
teaching all week, and listening for two hours to a Japanese sermon
Sunday morning, I cross my fingers on teaching Sunday School in the
afternoon.
This past week I have been trying to practice the simple life. It was
a good time for we had spring cleaning, five guests, daily
prayer-meetings, two new cooks, and an earthquake. I think by the time
I get through, I'll be qualified to run a government on some small
Pacific Isle.
The whole city is in confusion, ninety thousand soldiers are here now,
and eighty thousand more are expected this week. Every house-holder
must take as many as he can accommodate, and the strain on the people
is heavy. We heard yesterday of the terrible disaster to the troops
that left here on the 13th, three transports were sunk by the
Russians. Five hundred of the wounded from South Hill battle have been
brought here, and whenever I go out, I see long lines of stretchers
and covered ambulances bringing in more men. It is intolerable to be
near so much suffering and not to be able to relieve it. We are all so
worked up with pity and indignation, and sympathy that we hardly dare
talk about the war.
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