LETTER XXXIV



Ito's Delinquency--"Missionary Manners"--A Predicted Failure.

HAKODATE, YEZO.

I am enjoying Hakodate so much that, though my tour is all planned
and my arrangements are made, I linger on from day to day. There
has been an unpleasant eclaircissement about Ito. You will
remember that I engaged him without a character, and that he told
both Lady Parkes and me that after I had done so his former master,
Mr. Maries, asked him to go back to him, to which he had replied
that he had "a contract with a lady." Mr. Maries is here, and I
now find that he had a contract with Ito, by which Ito bound
himself to serve him as long as he required him, for $7 a month,
but that, hearing that I offered $12, he ran away from him and
entered my service with a lie! Mr. Maries has been put to the
greatest inconvenience by his defection, and has been hindered
greatly in completing his botanical collection, for Ito is very
clever, and he had not only trained him to dry plants successfully,
but he could trust him to go away for two or three days and collect
seeds. I am very sorry about it. He says that Ito was a bad boy
when he came to him, but he thinks that he cured him of some of his
faults, and that he has served me faithfully. I have seen Mr.
Maries at the Consul's, and have arranged that, after my Yezo tour