The weather is simply glorious, like our best October days at
home. Nothing could be more unlike than Russia and Japan! one is a
great oil painting, tragic, majestic, grand, while the other is an
exquisitely dainty water color full of sunshine and flowers.

Callers have come so I must close. Life is a very pretty game after
all, especially when you get wise enough to look on.



VLADIVOSTOCK, SIBERIA, September 1, 1902.


Just a short letter to tell you that we leave Vladivostock to-night. I
am all broken up; it has been the happiest summer that I have had for
years and I can't bear to think of it being over.

It has been so long since Peace and I have been acquainted that I
hardly yet dare look her full in the face for fear she will take
flight and leave me in utter darkness again. Even if she has not come
to live with me, she is at least my next door neighbor, and I offer
her incense that she may abide.

Now I might as well confess that if it were not for Memory there is no
telling what Peace might do! Poor old Memory! I'd like to throttle her
sometime and bury her in a deep hole. Yet she has served me many a
good turn, and often laid a restraining hand on impulse and
thought. But she is like a poor relation, always turning up at the
wrong time!