little soldiers on the outside, and very noisy and fierce little
soldiers on the inside, we fear no invasion of our peaceful compound.

On my walks around the barracks, I often pass the cook house, and
watch the food being carried to the mess room. The rice buckets, about
the size of our water buckets, are put on a pole in groups of six or
eight and carried on the shoulders of two men. There is a line about a
square long of these buckets, and then another long line follows with
trays of soup bowls. Tea is not as a rule drunk with the meals, but
after the last grain of rice has been chased from the slippery sides
of the bowl, hot water is poured in and sipped with loud appreciation.
Last Sunday afternoon we had to entertain ten officers of high rank,
and it proved a regular lark. Their English and our Japanese got
fatally twisted. One man took great pride in showing me how much too
big his clothes were, giving him ample opportunity to put on several
suits of underwear in cold weather; he said "Many cloth dese trusers
hab, no fit like 'Merican." They were delighted with all our foreign
possessions, and inspected everything minutely. On leaving, one
officer bowed low, and assured me that he would never see me on earth
again, but he hoped he would see me in heaven _first_!

The breezes from China waft an occasional despairing epistle from
Little Germany, but they find me as cold as a snow bank on the north
side of a mountain. The sun that melts my heart will have to rise in
the west, and get up early at that.



HIROSHIMA, May, 1904.