It has been nearly a year since I was out of Hiroshima, a year of such
ups and downs that I feel as if I had been digging out my salvation
with a pick-ax.

Not that I do not enjoy the struggle; real life with all its knocks
and bumps, its joys and sorrows, is vastly preferable to a passive
existence of indolence. Only occasionally I look forward to the time
when I shall be an angel frivoling in the eternal blue! Just think of
being reduced to a nice little curly head and a pair of wings! That's
the kind of angel I am going to be. With no legs to ache, and no heart
to break--but dear me it is more than likely that I will get
rheumatism in my wings!

If ever I do get to heaven, it will be on your ladder, Mate. You have
coaxed me up with confidence and praise, you have steadied me with
ethical culture books, and essays, and sermons. You have gotten me so
far up (for me), that I am afraid to look down. I shrink with a mighty
shrivel when I think of disappointing you in any way, and I expand
almost to bursting when I think of justifying your belief in me.



KARUIZAWA, July, 1904.


Here I am comfortably established in the most curious sort of
double-barreled house you ever saw. The front part is all Japanese and
faces on one street, and the back part is foreign and faces on another
street a square away. The two are connected by a covered walk which
passes over a mill race. In the floor of the walk just over the water