have rigged up a fish pond for the kindergarten children, and each
kiddie will have a present that cost one-fourth of a cent! I wish I
had a hundred dollars to spend on them!

To-night when the lights are out, my little sick girl's stocking will
hang on one bed post, and mine on the other. I don't believe Santa
Glaus will have the heart to pass us by, do you?



HIROSHIMA, January, 1904.


Here it is January and I am just thanking you dear ones for my
beautiful Christmas box. As you probably guessed, Mate, our Christmas
was not exactly hilarious. The winter has been a hard one, the
prospect of war has sent the price of provisions out of sight, the
sick girls in the school have needed medicine and fires, so altogether
Miss Lessing, Miss Dixon and I have had to do considerable tugging at
the ends to get them to meet. None of us have bought a stitch of new
clothing this winter, so when our boxes came, we were positively dazed
by all the grandeur.

They arrived late at night and we got out of bed to open them. The
first thing I struck was a very crumpled little paper doll, with baby
Bess' name printed in topsy-turvy letters on the back. For the next
five minutes I was kept busy swallowing the lumps that came in my
throat, but Dixie had some peppermint candy out of her box, the first
I had seen since I had left home, so I put on my lovely new beaver
hat, which with my low-necked gown and red slippers was particularly