November 27th, 1901.


I told you it would come! My prophetic soul foresaw it. I had to lead
the prayer in chapel this morning. And I play the organ in Sunday
School and listen to two Japanese sermons on Sunday.

I tell you, Mate, this part of the work goes sadly against the
grain. They say you get used to hanging if you just hang long enough,
so I suppose I'll become reconciled in time. You ask me _why_ I
do these things. Well you see it's all just like a big work shop,
where everybody is working hard and cheerfully and yet there is so
much work waiting to be done, that you don't stop to ask whether you
like it or not.

I can't begin to tell you of the hopelessness of some of the lives out
here. Just think of it! Women working in the stone quarries, and in
the sand pits and on the railroads, and always with babies tied on
their backs, and the poor little tots crippled and deformed from the
cramped position and often blind from the glare of the sun.

What I am crazy to do now is to open another free kindergarten in one
of the poorest parts of the city. It would cost only fifty dollars to
run it a whole year, and I mean to do it if I have to sell one of my
rings. It is just glorious to feel that you are actually helping
somebody, even if that somebody is a small and dirty tribe of Japanese
children. I get so discouraged and blue sometimes that I don't know
what to do, but when a little tot comes up and slips a very soiled
hand into mine and pats it and lays it against his cheek and hugs it
up to his breast and says, "Sensei, Sensei," I just long to take the