Never mind Mate, I couldn't be frivolous if I wanted to down
here. Kobe would have proven fatal, for there are many foreigners
there, and the temptation to have a good time would have been too much
for me. I am rapidly developing into a hymn-singing sister, and the
world and the flesh and the devil are shut up in the closet. Let us
pray.



October 2nd, 1901.


At last, dear Mate, I am started at my own work with the babies and
there aren't any words to tell you how cunning they are. There are
eighty-five high class children in the pay kindergarten, and forty in
the free. The latter are mostly of the very poor families, most of the
mothers working in the fields or on the railroads. There are so many
pitiful cases that one longs for a mint of money and a dozen hands to
relieve them. One little girl of six comes every day with her blind
baby brother strapped on her back. She is a tiny thing herself and yet
that baby is never unstrapped from her back until night comes. When I
first saw her old weazened face and her eagerness to play, I just took
them both in my lap and cried!

One funny thing I must tell you about. From the first week that I got
here, the children have had a nickname for me. I noticed them laughing
and nudging each other on the street and in the school, and whenever I
passed they raised their right hands in salute, and gave a funny
little clucking sound. They seemed to pass the word from one to