HIROSHIMA, November 14, 1902.


I have about fifteen minutes between classes, and I am going to spend
them on you. Now who do you suppose has come to the surface again?
Little Germany, who was on the steamer coming over. He wasted a great
many stamps on me for the first few months after we landed but he got
tired of playing solos. He was on his way to Thibet to enter a
monastery to study some ancient language. Heaven knows why he wants to
know anything more antique than the language he speaks! I don't
believe there is any old dusty, forgotten corner of the world that he
hasn't poked into.

Well you know the fatal magnetism I exert over fossils! They always
turn to me as naturally as needles turn to a loadstone. This
particular mummy was no exception.

I wrote him a formal stately answer, reminding him in gentle reproof
that I was a widow (God save the Mark) and that my life was dedicated
to my work. It was no use, he bombarded me with letters, with bigger
and bigger words and longer and fiercer quotations. In the last one
he threatens to come to Hiroshima!

If he does, I am going to shave my eye-brows and black my teeth! He
speaks seven languages, and yet he doesn't know the meaning of the one
word "no."

Jack used to say that if a man was persistent enough he could win a
woman in spite of the Devil. I would like to see him! I mean Jack, not