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Lady of the Decoration

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Summer vacation will soon be here and I am planning a wild career of
self indulgence. I am going to Karuizawa, where I can get cooled off
and rested and invite my soul to my heart's content.

For two mortal weeks the rain has poured in torrents. The rainy season
out here isn't any of your nice polite little shower-a-day affairs, it
is just one interminable downpour, until the old earth is spanked into
submission. I can't even remember how sunshine looks, and my spirits
are mildewed and my courage is mouldy.

To add to the discomfort, we are besieged by mosquitoes. They are the
big ferocious kind that carry off a finger at a time. I heard of one
missionary down in the country, who was so bothered one night that he
hung his trousers to the ceiling, and put his head in one leg, and
made his wife put her head in the other, while the rest of the garment
served as a breathing tube!

It has been nearly a year since I was out of Hiroshima, a year of such
ups and downs that I feel as if I had been digging out my salvation
with a pick-ax.

Not that I do not enjoy the struggle; real life with all its knocks
and bumps, its joys and sorrows, is vastly preferable to a passive
existence of indolence. Only occasionally I look forward to the time
when I shall be an angel frivoling in the eternal blue! Just think of
being reduced to a nice little curly head and a pair of wings! That's
the kind of angel I am going to be. With no legs to ache, and no heart
to break--but dear me it is more than likely that I will get
rheumatism in my wings!

If ever I do get to heaven, it will be on your ladder, Mate. You have
coaxed me up with confidence and praise, you have steadied me with
ethical culture books, and essays, and sermons. You have gotten me so
far up (for me), that I am afraid to look down. I shrink with a mighty
shrivel when I think of disappointing you in any way, and I expand
almost to bursting when I think of justifying your belief in me.



KARUIZAWA, July, 1904.


Here I am comfortably established in the most curious sort of
double-barreled house you ever saw. The front part is all Japanese and
faces on one street, and the back part is foreign and faces on another
street a square away. The two are connected by a covered walk which
passes over a mill race. In the floor of the walk just over the water
is a trap door, and look out when I will I can see the Japanese
stopping to take a bath in this little opening.

I have a nice big room and so much service thrown in that it
embarrasses me. When I come in, in the evening, three little maids
escort me to my room, one fixes the mosquito bar, one gets my gown,
and one helps to undress me. When they have done all they can think
of, they get in a row, all bow together, then pitter patter away.

The clerk has to make out the menus and as his English is limited, he
calls upon me very often to help him. Yesterday he came with only one
entry and that was "Corns on the ear." In return for my assistance he
always announces my bath, and escorts me to the bath room carrying my
sponge and towels.

As to Karuizawa, it has a summer population of about four hundred,
three hundred and ninety-nine of whom are missionaries. Let us all
unite in singing "Blest be the tie that binds."

Everybody at our table is in the mission field. A long-nosed young
preacher who sits opposite me looks as if he had spent all his life in
some kind of a field. He has a terrible attack of religion; I never
saw anybody take it any harder. He told me that he was engaged to be
married and for three days he had been consulting the Lord about what
kind of a ring he should buy!

Sunday I went to church and heard my first English sermon in two
years. We met in a rough little shanty, built in a cluster of pines,
and almost every nation was represented. A young English clergyman
read the service, and afterward said a few words about sacrifice. He
was simple and sincere, and his deep voice trembled with earnestness
as he declared that sacrifice was the only true road to happiness,
sacrifice of ourselves, our wishes and desires, for the good and the
progress of others. And suddenly all the feeling in me got on a
rampage and I wanted to get up and say that it was true, that I knew
it was true, that the most miserable, pitiful, smashed-up life, could
blossom again if it would only blossom for others. I walked home in a
sort of ecstasy and at dinner the long-nosed young preacher said: "'T
was a pity we couldn't have regular preaching, there was such a peart
lot at meeting." This is certainly a good place to study people's
eccentricities, their foibles and follies, to hear them preach and see
them not practice!

One more year and I will be home. Something almost stops in my heart
as I write it! Of course I am glad you are going abroad in the spring,
you have been living on the prospect of seeing Italy all your
life. Only, Mate, I am selfish enough to want you back by the time I
get home. It would take just one perfect hour of seeing you all
together once more to banish the loneliness of all these years!

I am glad Jack and Dr. Leet have struck up such a friendship. Jack
uses about the same care in selecting a friend that most men do in
selecting a wife. Tell Dr. Leet that I am glad he found me in a pigeon
hole of his memory, but that I am a long way from being "the blue-eyed
bunch of mischief" he describes. I wish you would tell him that I am
slender, pale, and pensive with a glamour of romance and mystery
hovering about me; that is the way I would like to be.

I knew you could get Jack out of his rut if you tried. The Browning
evenings must be highly diverting, I can imagine you reading a few
lines for him to expound, then him reading a few for you to explain,
then both gazing into space with "the infinite cry of finite hearts
that yearn!"

Dear loyal old Jack! How memories stab me as I think of him. It seems
impossible to think of him as other than well and strong and self
reliant. What happy, happy days I have spent with him! They seem to
stand out to-night in one great white spot of cheerfulness. When the
days were the darkest and I couldn't see one inch ahead, Jack would
happen along with a funny story or a joke, would pretend not to see
what was going on, but do some little kindness that would brighten the
way a bit. What a mixture he is of tenderness, and brusqueness, of
common sense and poetry, of fun and seriousness! I think you and I are
the only ones in the world who quite understand his heights and
depths. He says even I don't.



KARUIZAWA, July, 1904.


Since writing you I have had the pleasure of looking six hundred feet
down the throat of Asamayama, the great volcano. If the old lady had
been impolite enough to stick out her tongue, I would at present be a
cinder.

We started at seven in the evening on horseback. Now as you know I
have ridden pretty much everything from a broom stick to a camel, but
for absolute novelty of motion commend me to a Japanese horse. There
is a lurch to larboard, then a lurch to starboard, with a sort of
"shiver-my-timbers" interlude. A coolie walks at the head of each
horse, and reasons softly with him when he misbehaves. We rode for
thirteen miles to the foot of the volcano, then at one o'clock we left
the horses with one of the men and began to climb. Each climber was
tied to a coolie whose duty it was to pull, and to carry the
lantern. We made a weird procession, and the strange call of the
coolies as they bent their bodies to the task, mingled with the
laughter and exclamations of the party.

For some miles the pine trees and undergrowth covered the mountain,
then came a stretch of utter barren-ness and isolation. Miles above
yet seemingly close enough to touch rose tongues of flame and crimson
smoke. Above was the majestic serenity of the summer night, below the
peaceful valley, with the twinkling lights of far away villages. It
was a queer sensation to be hanging thus between earth and sky, and to
feel that the only thing between me and death was a small Japanese
coolie, who was half dragging me up a mountain side that was so
straight it was sway-back!

When at last we reached the top, daylight was showing faintly in the
east. Slowly and with a glory unspeakable the sun rose. The great
flames and crimson smoke, which at night had appeared so dazzling,
sank into insignificance. If anyone has the temerity to doubt the
existence of a gracious, mighty God, let him stand at sunrise on the
top of Asamayama and behold the wonder of His works!

I hardly dared to breathe for fear I would dispel the illusion, but a
hearty lunch eaten with the edge of the crater for a table made things
seem pretty real. The coming down was fearful for the ashes were very
deep, and we often went in up to our knees.

The next morning at eleven, I rolled into my bed more dead than
alive. My face and hands were blistered from the heat and the ashes,
and I was sore from head to foot, but I had a vision in, my soul that
can never be effaced.



HIROSHIMA, September, 1904.


Well here I am back in H. (I used to think it stood for that too but
it doesn't!) Curiously enough I rather enjoy getting back into harness
this year. Three kindergartens to attend in the morning, class work in
the afternoon, four separate accounts to be kept, besides
housekeeping, mothers' meetings, and prayer meetings, would have
appalled me once.

The only thing that phases me is the company. If only some nice
accommodating cyclone would come along and gather up all the floating
population, and deposit it in a neat pile in some distant fence
corner, I would be everlastingly grateful. One loving brother wrote
last week that he was coming with a wife and three children to board
with us until his house was completed, and that he knew I would be
glad to have them. Delighted I am sure! All I need to complete my
checkered career is to keep a boarding-house! I smacked Susie Damn
clear down the steps and sang "A consecrated cross-eyed bear," then I
wrote him to come, It is against the principles of the school to
refuse anyone its hospitality, consequently everybody who is out of a
job comes to see us.

The waves of my wrath break upon Miss Lessing for allowing herself to
be imposed upon, but she is as calm and serene as the Great Buddha of
Kamakura.

My special grievance this morning is cooked tomatoes and baby organs.
Our cook has just discovered cooked tomatoes, and they seem to fill
some longfelt want in his soul. In spite of protest, he serves them to
us for breakfast, tiffin and dinner, and the household sits with
injured countenance, and silently holds me responsible. As for the
nine and one wind bags that begin their wheezing and squeaking before
breakfast, my thoughts are unfit for publication! This morning I was
awakened by the strains "Shall we meet beyond the River?" Well if we
do, the keys will fly that's all there is about it! Once in a while
they side-track it to "Oh! to be nothing, nothing!" That is where I
fully agree and if they would only give me a chance I would grant
their desire in less time than it takes to write it. I am sure my
Hades will be a hard seat in a lonesome corner where I must listen to
baby organs all day and live on a perpetual diet of cooked tomatoes.

To-day they are bringing in the wounded soldiers from Liaoyang, and I
try to keep away from the windows so I will not see them. Those bright
strong boys that left here such a little while ago, are coming back on
stretchers, crippled and disfigured for life.

Yesterday while taking a walk, I saw about two hundred men, right off
the transport, waiting for the doctors and nurses to come. Men whose
clothes had not been changed for weeks, ragged, bloody and soiled
beyond conception. Wounded, tired, sick, with almost every trace of
the human gone out of their faces, they sat or lay on the ground
waiting to be cared for. Most of the wounds had not been touched
since they were hastily tied up on the battlefield. I thought I had
some idea of what war meant, but I hadn't the faintest conception of
the real horror of it.

Miss Lessing is trying to get permission for us to do regular visiting
at the hospitals, but the officials are very cautious about allowing
any foreigner behind the scenes.

Just here I hung my head out of the window to ask the cook what time
it was. He called back, "Me no know! clock him gone to sleep. He no
talk some more."

I think I shall follow the example of the clock.



HIROSHIMA, October, 1904.


Dearest Mate:

I have been to the hospital at last and I can think of nothing, see
nothing, and talk of nothing but those poor battered up men. Yesterday
the authorities sent word that if the foreign teachers would come and
make a little music for the sick men it would be appreciated. We had
no musical instrument except the organ, so Miss Lessing and I bundled
one up on a jinrikisha and trudged along beside it through the
street. I got almost hysterical over our absurd appearance, and
pretended that Miss Lessing was the organ grinder, and I the
monkey. But oh! Mate when we got to the hospital all the silliness was
knocked out of me. Thousands of mutilated and dying men, literally
shot to pieces by the Russian bullets. I can't talk about it! It was
too horrible to describe.

We wheeled the organ into one of the wards and two of the teachers
sang while I played. It was pitiful to see how eager the men were to
hear. The room was so big that those in the back begged to be moved
closer, so the little nurses carried the convalescent ones forward on
their backs.

For one hour I pumped away on that wheezy little old instrument, with
the tears running down my cheeks most of the time. So long as I live
I'll never make fun of a baby organ again. The joy that one gave that
afternoon justified its being.

And then--prepare for the worst,--we distributed tracts. Oh! yes I did
it too, in spite of all the fun I have made, and would you believe it?
those men who were able to walk, crowded around and _begged_ for
them, and the others in the beds held out their hands or followed us
wistfully with their eyes. They were so crazy for something to read
that they were even willing to read about the foreign God.

It was late when we got back and I went straight to bed and indulged
in a chill. All the horror of war had come home to me for the first
time, and my very soul rebelled against it. They say you get hardened
to the sights after a few visits to the hospital, but I hope I shall
never get to the point of believing that it's right for strong useful
men to be killed or crippled for life in order to settle a
controversy.

Before we went into the wards the physician in charge took us all over
the buildings, showed us where the old bandages were being washed and
cleaned, where the instruments were sharpened and repaired, where the
stretchers and crutches, and "first aid to the injured" satchels were
kept. We were taken through the postoffice, where all the mail comes
and goes from the front. It was touching to see the number of letters
that had been sent home unopened.

Twenty thousand sick soldiers are cared for in Hiroshima, and such
system, such cleanliness and order you have never seen. I have wished
for Jack a thousand times; it would delight his soul to see the skill
and ability of these wonderful little doctors and nurses.



HIROSHIMA, November, 1904.


To-morrow it will be four weeks since I have had any kind of mail from
America. It seems to me that everything has stopped running across the
ocean, even the waves.

I know little these days outside of the kindergarten and the
hospital. The former grows cuter and dearer all the time. It is a
constant inspiration to see the daily development of these cunning
babies. As for the visits to the hospital, they are a self-appointed
task that grows no easier through repetition. You know how I shrink
from seeing pain, and how all my life I have tried to get away from
the disagreeable? Well it is like torture to go day after day into
the midst of the most terrible suffering. But in view of the bigger
things of life, the tremendous struggle going on so near, the agony of
the sick and wounded, the suffering of the women and children, my own
little qualms get lost in the shuffle, and my one consuming desire is
to help in any way I can.

Last week we took in addition to the "wind bag" two big baskets of
flowers to give to the sickest ones. Oh! If I could only make you know
what flowers mean to them! Men too sick to raise their heads and often
dying, will stretch out their hands for a flower, and be perfectly
content to hold it in their fingers. One soldier with both arms gone
asked me for a flower just as I had emptied my basket. I would have
given my month's salary for one rose, but all I had was a withered
little pansy. He motioned for me to give him that and asked me to put
it in a broken bottle hanging on the wall, so he could see it.

If I didn't get away from it all once in a while, I don't believe I
could stand it. Yesterday was the Emperor's birthday and we had a
holiday. I took several of the girls and went for a long ramble in the
country. The fields were a brilliant yellow, rich and heavy with the
unharvested grain. The mountains were deeply purple, and the sky so
tenderly blue, that the whole world just seemed a place to be glad and
happy in. Fall in Japan does not suggest death and decay, but rather
the drifting into a beautiful rest, where dreams can be dreamed and
the world forgot. Such a spirit of peace enveloped the whole scene,
that it was hard to realize that the long line of black objects on the
distant road were stretchers bearing the sick and wounded from the
transports to the hospitals.



HIROSHIMA, December, 1904.


Last Saturday I had to go across the bay to visit one of our branch
kindergartens. Many Russian prisoners are stationed on the island and
I was tremendously interested in the good time they were having. The
Japanese officials are entertaining them violently with concerts,
picnics, etc. Imagine a lot of these big muscular men being sent on an
all-day excursion with two little Japanese guards. Of course, it is
practically impossible for the men to escape from the island but I
don't believe they want to. A cook has actually been brought from
Vladivostock so that they may have Russian food, and the best things
in the markets are sent to them. The prisoners I saw seemed in high
spirits, and were having as much fun as a lot of school boys out on a
lark. I don't wonder! It is lots more comfortable being a prisoner in
Japan than a soldier in Manchuria.

I only had a few minutes to visit the hospital, but I was glad I
went. As the doctor took me through one of the wards where the sickest
men lay, I saw one big rough looking Russian with such a scowl on his
face that I hardly dared offer him my small posy. But I hated to pass
him by so I ventured to lay it on the foot of the cot. What was my
consternation when, after one glance, he clasped both hands over his
face and sobbed like a sick child. "Are you in pain?" asked the
doctor. "No," he said shortly, "I'm homesick." Oh! Mate, that
finished me! Didn't I know better than anybody in the world how he
felt? I just sat down on the side of the cot and patted him, and tried
to tell him how sorry I was though he could hardly understand a word.

This morning I could have done a song and dance when I heard that he
had been operated on and was to be sent home.

Almost every day we are having grand military funerals, and they are
most impressive I can tell you. Yesterday twenty-two officers were
buried at the same time, and the school stood on the street for over
an hour to do them honor. The procession was very interesting, with
the Buddhist priests, in their gorgeous robes, and the mourners in
white or light blue. First came the square box with the cremated
remains, then the officer's horse, then coolies carrying small trees
which were to be planted on the grave. Next came a large picture of
the deceased, and perhaps his coat or sword, next the shaven priests
in magnificent raiment and last the mourners carrying small trays with
rice cakes, to be placed upon the grave. The wives and mothers and
daughters rode in jinrikishas, hand folded meekly in hand, and eyes
downcast. Such calm resigned faces I have never seen, many white and
wasted with sorrow, but under absolute control. Of the entire number
only one gave vent to her grief; a bent old woman with thin grey hair
cut close to her head, rode with both hands over her face. She had
lost two sons in one battle, and the cry of her human heart was
stronger than any precept of her religion.



HIROSHIMA, December, 1904.


You remember the Irishman's saying that we could be pretty comfortable
in life if it wasn't for our pleasures? Well I could get along rather
well in Japan were it not for the Merry Christmases. Such a terrible
longing seizes me for my loved ones and for God's country that I feel
like a needle near a magnet. But next Christmas! I just go right up
in the air when I think about it.

This school of life is a difficult one at best, but when a weak sister
like myself is put about three grades higher than she belongs, it is
more than hard. I don't care a rap for the struggle and the heart
aches, if I have only made good. When I came out there were two
kindergartens, now there are nine besides a big training
class. Anybody else could have done as much for the work but one thing
is certain, the work couldn't have done for anyone else what it has
done for me. Outwardly I am the same feather-weight as of old, but
there is a big change inside, Mate, you'll have to take my word for
it. I am coming to take the slaps of Fate very much as I used to take
the curling of my hair with a hot iron, it pulled and sometimes
burned, but I didn't care so long as it was going to improve my looks.
So now I use my crosses as sort of curling irons for my character.

Your sudden decision to give up your trip to Europe this spring set me
guessing! I can't imagine, after all your planning and your dreams,
what could have changed your mind so completely. You don't seem to
care a rap about going. Now look here, Mate, I want a full report. You
have turned all the pockets of my confidence inside out. What about
yours? Have you been getting an "aim" in life, are you going to be an
operatic singer, or a temperance lecturer, or anything like that? You
are so horribly high minded that I am prepared for the worst.

I wish it would stop raining. The mountains are hid by a heavy gray
mist, and the drip, drip of the rain from roof and trees is not a
cheering sound. I am doing my best to keep things bright within, I
have built a big fire in my grate, and in my heart I have lighted all
the lamps at my little shrines, and I am burning incense to the loves
that were and are.

Just after tiffin the rain stopped for a little while and I rushed out
for a walk. I had been reading the "Christmas Carol" all morning, and
it brought so many memories of home that I was feeling rather
wobbly. My walk set me up immensely. A baldheaded, toothless old man
stopped me and asked me where I was "coming." When I told him he said
that was wonderful and he hoped I would have a good time. A woman with
a child on her back ran out and stopped me to ask if I would please
let the baby see my hair. Half a dozen children and two dogs followed
me all the way, and an old man and woman leaned against a wall and
laughed aloud because a foreigner was so funny to look at.

If anyone thinks that he can indulge in a nice private case of the
blues while taking a walk in Japan, he deceives himself. I started out
feeling like Napoleon at St. Helena, and I came home cheerful and
ravenously hungry.

I have been trying to read poetry this winter, but I don't make much
progress. The truth is I have gained five pounds, and I am afraid I am
getting too fat. I never knew but one fat person to appreciate poetry
and he crocheted tidies.

By the way I have learned to knit!! You see there are so many times
when I have to play the gracious hostess when I feel like a volcano
within, that I decided to get something on which I could vent my
restlessness. It is astonishing how much bad temper one can knit into
a garment. I don't know yet what mine is going to be, probably an
opera bonnet for Susie Damn.



KYOTO, December, 1904.


You are not any more surprised to hear from me in Kyoto than I am to
be here. One of the teachers here, a great big-hearted splendid woman,
knowing that I was interested in the sick soldiers, asked me to come
up for a week and help the Red Cross nurses. For six days we have met
all the trains, and given hot tea, and books to both the men who were
going to the front and to those who were being brought home. We work
side by side with Buddhist priests, ladies of rank, and coolies,
serving from one to four hundred men in fifteen minutes! You never saw
such a scrimmage, everybody works like mad while the train stops, and
the wild "Banzais" that greet us as the men catch sight of the hot
tea, show us how welcome it is.

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