I am in the very thickest of Christmas, and yet such a funny, unreal
Christmas, that it does not seem natural at all. Hiroshima is busy
decorating for the New Year, and everything is gay with brilliant
lanterns, plum blossoms and crimson berries. The little insignificant
streets are changed into bowers of sweet smelling ferns and spicy
pines, and the bamboo leaves sway to every breeze, while the waxen
plum blossoms send out a perfume sweet as violets.
The shop-keepers and their families put on their gayest kimonos and
their most enticing smiles and greet you with effusion.
On entering a shop you are asked if your honorable eyes will deign to
look upon most unworthy goods. Please will you give this or that a
little adoring look? The price? Ah! it's price is greatly enhanced
since the august foreigner cast honorable eyes upon it. (Which is no
joke!) Whether the article is bought or not, the smile, the bow, the
compliment are the same. All this time the crowd around the door of
the shop has been steadily increasing until daylight is shut out, for
everyone is interested in your purchase from the man who hauls the
dray up to the highest lady in the land. The shop-keeper is very
patient with the crowd until it shuts out the light, then he invites
them to carry their useless bodies to the river and throw them in.
Once outside you see another crowd and as curiosity is in the air, you
crane your neck and try to get closer. The center of attraction is a
man in spotless white cooking bean cake on a little hibachi. The air
is cold and crisp, and the smell of the savory bean paste, piping hot,
makes you hungry.
Next comes the fish man with a big flat basket on each end of a pole,
and offers you a choice lot; long slippery eels, beautiful shrimp, as
pink as the sunset, and juicy oysters whose shells have been scrubbed
until they are gleaming white. Around the baskets are garlands of
paper roses to hide from view the ugly rough edges of the straw.
The candy shops tempt you to the last sen, and the toy shops are a
perfect joy. Funny fat Japanese dolls and stuffed rabbits and
cross-eyed, tailless cats demand attention. Perhaps you will see a
cheap American doll with blue eyes and yellow hair carefully exhibited
under a glass case, and when you are wondering why they treasure this
cheap toy, you happen to glance down and catch the worshipping gaze of
a wistful, half starved child, and your point of view changes at once
and you begin to understand the value of it, and to wish with all your
heart that you could put an American dolly in the hands of every
little Japanese girl on the Island!
It is getting almost time to open my box and I am right childish over
it. It has been here for two days, and I have slipped in a dozen times
to look at it and touch it. Oh! Mate, the time has been so long, so
cruelly long! I wake myself up in the night some time sobbing. One
year and a half behind me, and two and a half ahead! I remember mother
telling about the day I started to school, how I came home and said
triumphantly, "Just think I've only got ten more years to go to
school!"
Poor little duffer! She's still going to school!
Last night I had another mother's meeting for the mothers of the Free
Kindergarten. This time I gave a magic lantern show, and I was the
showman. The poor, ignorant women sat there bewildered. They had never
seen a piano, and many of them had never been close to a foreigner
before. I showed them about a hundred slides, explained through an
interpreter until I was hoarse, gesticulated and orated to no
purpose. They remained silent and stolid. By and by there was a stir,
heads were raised, and necks craned. A sudden interest swept over the
room. I followed their gaze and saw on the sheet the picture of Christ
toiling up the mountain under the burden of the cross. The story was
new and strange to them, but the fact was as old as life itself. At
last they had found something that touched their own lives and brought
the quick tears of sympathy to their eyes.
I am going to have a meeting every month for them, no matter what else
has to go undone.
It is almost time to hang up our stockings. Miss Lessing and Dixie
objected at first, but I told them I was either going to be very
foolish or very blue, they could take their choice. I have to do
something to scare away the ghosts of dead Christmases, so I put on my
fool's cap and jingle my bells. When I begin to weaken, I go to the
piano and play "Come Ye Disconsolate" to rag time, and it cheers me up
wonderfully.
I guess it's just about daylight with you now. Pete is tiptoeing in to
make the fires. I can hear him now saying: "Christmas Gif' Mister Sam,
Chris'mus Gif' Miss Bettie!" and the children are flying around in
their night clothes wild with excitement. Down in the sitting room the
stockings make a circle around the room and underneath each is a pile
of gifts. I can see the big log fire, and the sparkle of it in the old
book-case, and in the long glass between the windows. And in a few
minutes here you all come, you uncles and you cousins and you aunts,
trooping in with the smallest first. And such laughing, and shouting,
and rejoicing! and maybe in the midst of the fun somebody speaks of
me, and there's a little hush, and a little longing, then the fun goes
on more furiously than ever.
Well even if I am on the wrong side of the earth in body, I am not in
spirit, and I reach my arms clear around the world and cry "God bless
you, every one."
HIROSHIMA, March, 1903.
I have a strong conviction that I am going to swear before I get
through this letter, for this pen is what I would call, to use
unmissionary language, devilish. My! how familiar and wicked that word
looks! I've heard so many hymns and so much brotherly and sisterly
talk that it seems like meeting an old friend to see it written!
Here it is nearly cherry-blossom time again, and the days and the
weeks are slipping away into months before I know it. I am working at
full speed and wonder sometimes how I keep up. But I don't dare leave
any leisure for heartaches, even when the body is quivering from
weariness, and every nerve cries out for rest. I must keep on and on
and on, for all too easily the dread memories come creeping back and
enfold me until there is no light on any side. From morning until
night it is a fight against the tide.
Work is the only thing that keeps me from thinking, and I am
determined not to think. I suppose I am as contented here as I could
be anywhere. My whole heart is in the kindergarten and the success of
it, and maybe the day will come when my work will be all sufficient to
satisfy my soul's craving. But it hasn't come yet!
I almost envy some of these good people who can stand in the middle of
one of their prayers and touch all four sides. They know what they
want and are satisfied when they get it, but I want the moon and the
stars and the sun thrown in.
When things seem closing in upon me and everything looks dark, I flee
to the woods. I never knew what the trees and the wind and the sky
really meant until I came out here and had to make friends of them. I
think you have to be by yourself and a bit lonesome before Nature ever
begins to whisper her secrets. Can you imagine Philistine Me going out
on the hill top to see the sun-rise and going without my supper to see
it set? I am even studying the little botany that Jack gave me, though
my time and my intellect are equally limited.
And speaking of Jack leads me to remark that there is no necessity for
all of you to maintain such an oppressive silence concerning him!
Three months ago you wrote me that he was not well, and that he was
going south with you and sister. He must be pretty sick to stop work
even for a week. I have pictured you sitting with a loaf of bread and
a jug of wine beneath the bough quoting poetry at each other to your
heart's content.
You say when I come home I can rest on my laurels; no thank you, I
want a Morris chair, a pitcher of lemonade, all the new books and a
little darkey to fan me.
Mrs. Heath has asked me to visit her in Vladivostock this summer and I
am going if the cholera doesn't get worse. We are so afraid of it
that we almost boil the cow before we drink the milk!
Among the delicacies of our menu out here are raw fish, pickled
parsnips, sea-weed and bean-paste. As old Charity used to say I've
gotten so "acclamitized" I think I could eat a gum shoe.
When they send out my spring box from home, please tell them to put in
some fluffy white dresses with elbow sleeves. Then I want lots of
pretty ribbons, and a white belt. I saw in the paper that crushed
leather was the proper thing. It sounds like something good to eat,
but if it's to wear send it along.
My disposition will be everlastingly ruined if I write another line
with this pen. Good-bye.
HIROSHIMA, May, 1903.
Well the catastrophe arrived and we were prisoners for nearly a
week. It was not quite cholera but close enough to it to scare us all
to death. Both Eve and the apple were young and green, and the
combination worked disaster. When the doctor arrived, he shipped Eve
off to the inspection hospital, while we were locked up, guarded by
five small policemen, and hardly allowed to open our mouths for fear
we would swallow a germ. We were fumigated and par-boiled until we
felt like steam puddings. Nobody was allowed to go in or out, our
vegetables were handed to us in a basket on a bamboo pole over the
wall. We tied notes to bricks and flung them to our neighbors on the
outside. Thank Heaven, the servants were locked in too. Every day a
little man with lots of brass buttons and a big voice came and asked
anxiously after our honorable insides.
I used every inducement to get them to let me go out for exercise. I
fixed a tray with my prettiest cups and sent a pot of steaming coffee
and a plate of cake out to the lodge house. Word came back, "We are
not permitted to drink or taste food in an infected house." Then I
tried them on button-hole bouquets, and when that failed, I got
desperate, and announced that I was subject to fits, unless I got
regular outside exercise every day. That fetched them and they gave
the foreign teachers permission to walk in the country for half an
hour provided we did not speak to any one.
Eve was up and having a good time before the school gates were opened.
While a prisoner, I did all sorts of odd jobs, patched, mended,
darned, wrote letters, and chopped down two trees. The latter was a
little out of my line, but the trees were eaten up with caterpillars,
and as I could not get anybody to cut them down, I sallied forth and
did it myself. My chef stood by and admired the job, but he would not
assist for fear he would unwittingly murder one of his ancestors!
You would certainly laugh to see me keeping house with a cook book, a
grocery book and a dictionary. The other day I gave directions for
poached eggs, and the maid served them in a huge pan full of water.
There are one hundred and twenty-five yellow kids waiting for me so I
must hurry away.
VLADIVOSTOCK, SIBERIA, July, 1903.
I didn't mean that it should be so long a time before I wrote you, but
the closing of school, the Commencement, and the getting ready to come
up here about finished me. You remember the old darkey song, "Wisht I
was in Heaben, settin' down"? Well that was my one ambition and I
about realized it when I got up here to Mrs. Heath's and she put me in
a hammock in a quiet corner of the porch and made me keep blissfully
still for two whole days.
The air is just as bracing, the hills are just as green, and the
lights and shadows dance over the harbor just as of old. We have
tennis, golf, picnics, sails, and constant jollification, but I don't
seem to enjoy it all as I did last summer. It isn't altogether
homesickness, though that is chronic, it is a constant longing for I
don't know what.
Viewed impersonally, the world is a rattling good show, but instead of
smiling at it from the front row in the dress circle, I get to be one
of the performers every time.
We have been greatly interested in watching the Russians build a fort
on one of their islands near here. They insist there will be no war
and at the same time they are mining the harbor and building forts day
and night. The minute it is dark the searchlights are kept busy
sweeping the harbor in search of something not strictly Russian. I
hope I will get back as safely as I got here.
Did I tell you that I stopped over two days in Korea? I had often
heard of the Jumping Off Place, but I never expected to actually see
it! The people live in the most awful little mud houses, and their
poverty is appalling. No streets, no roads, no anything save a fog of
melancholy that seems to envelop everything. The terrible helplessness
of the people, their ignorance, and isolation are terrible.
The box from home was more than satisfactory. I have thoroughly
enjoyed wearing all the pretty things. The hat sister sent was about
the size of a turn-table; a strong hat pin and a slight breeze will be
all I need to travel to No Man's Land. Sister says it's
_moderate_, save the mark! but it really is becoming and when I
get it on, my face looks like a pink moon emerging from a fleecy black
cloud. I had to practice wearing it in private until I learned to
balance it properly.
I shall stay up here through July and then I am thinking of going to
Shanghai with Mrs. Heath's sister, who lives there. I am very fond of
her, and I know I would have a good time. I feel a little like a
subscription list, being passed around this way, but I simply
_have_ to keep going every minute when I am not at work.
They are calling up to me from the tennis court so I must stop for the
present.
SHANGHAI, CHINA, August, 1903.
The mail goes out this morning and I am determined to get this letter
written if I break up a dozen parties. As you see, I am in Shanghai,
this wonderful big understudy for Chicago, which seems about as
incongruous in its surroundings as a silk hat on a haystack! There
are beautiful boulevards, immense houses, splendid public gardens, all
hedged in by a yellow mass of orientals.
Every nationality is represented here, and people meet, mingle, and
separate in an ever changing throng. At every corner stands a tall
majestic Sikh, with head bound in yards of crimson cloth, directing
the movements of the crowd. Down the street comes a regiment of
English soldiers, so big and determined that one well understands
their victories. The ubiquitous Russian makes himself known at every
turn, silent and grave, but in his simplest dealings as merciless and
greedy as the country he represents. Frenchmen and Germans, and best
of all, the unquenchable American, join in the panorama, and the
result is something that one does not see anywhere else on the
globe. I guess if my dear brethren knew of the theatre parties,
dinners and dances I was going to, they would think I was on a
toboggan slide for the lower regions! I am mot though. I am simply
getting a good swing to the pendulum so that I can go back to "the
field," and the baby organs and the hymn-singing with better grace. It
is very funny, but do you know that for a _steady diet_ I can
stand the saints much better than I can the sinners!
My friends the Carters live right on the Bund facing the water. They
keep lots of horses and many servants, and live in a luxury that only
the East can offer. Every morning before I am up a slippery Chinese,
all done up in livery, comes to my room and solemnly announces: "Missy
bath allee ready, nice morning, good-bye." From that time on I am
scarcely allowed to carry my pocket handkerchief!
The roads about here are perfect, and we drive for hours past big
country houses, all built in English fashion. There is one grewsome
feature in the landscape, however, and that is the Chinese graves. In
the fields, in the back and front yards, on the highways, any bare
space that is large enough to set a box and cover it with a little
earth, serves as a burying ground.
I am interested in it all, and enjoying it in a way, but, Mate, there
is no use fibbing to you, there is a restlessness in my heart that
sometimes almost drives me crazy. There is nothing under God's sun
that can repay a woman for the loss of love and home. It's all right
to love humanity, but I was born a specialist. The past is torn out by
the roots but the awful emptiness remains. I am not grieving over what
has been, but what isn't. That last sentence sounds malarial, I am
going right upstairs to take a quinine pill.
SOOCHOW, August, 1903.
Well, Mate, this is the first letter I have really written you from
China. Shanghai doesn't count. Soochow is the real article. The
unspeakable quantity and quality of dirt surpasses anything I have
ever imagined. Dirt and babies, there are millions of babies, under
your feet, around your heels, every nook and corner full of babies.
From Shanghai to Soochow is only a one night trip, and as I had an
invitation to come up for over Sunday, I decided to take advantage of
it. You would have to see the boat I came in to appreciate it. They
call it a house-boat, but it is built on a pattern that is new to
me. In the lower part are rooms, each of which is supplied with a
board on which you are supposed to sleep. Each passenger carries his
own bedding and food. In the upper part of the boat is a sort of loft
just high enough for a man to sit up, and in it are crowded hundreds
of the common people. A launch tows seven or eight of these
house-boats at a time. I will not ask you to even imagine the
condition of them; I had to stand it because I was there, but you are
not.
It was just at sunset when we left Shanghai, and I got as far away
from the crowd as I could and tried to forget my unsavory
surroundings. The sails of thousands of Chinese vessels loomed black
and big against the red sky as they floated silently by without a
ripple. In the dim light, I read on the prow of a bulky schooner,
"'The Mary', Boston, U.S.A." Do you know how my heart leapt out to
"The Mary, Boston, U.S.A."? It was the one thing in all that vast,
unfamiliar world that spoke my tongue.
When I went to my room, I found that a nice little Chinese girl in a
long sack coat and shiny black trousers was to share it with me. I
must confess that I was relieved for I was lonesome and a bit nervous,
and when I discovered that she knew a little English I could have
hugged her. We spread our cold supper on the top of my dress suit
case, put our one candle in the center, and proceeded to feast. Little
Miss Izy was not as shy as she looked, and what she lacked in
vocabulary she made up in enthusiasm. We got into a gale of laughter
over our efforts to understand each other, and she was as curious
about my costume as I was about hers. She watched me undress with
unfeigned amusement, following the lengthy process carefully, then she
rose, untied a string, stepped out of her coat and trousers, stood for
a moment in a white suit made exactly like her outer garments, then
gaily kicked off her tiny slippers and rolled over in bed. I don't
know if this is a universal custom in China, but at any rate, little
Miss Izy will never be like the old lady, who committed suicide
because she was so tired of buttoning and unbuttoning.
The next morning we were in Soochow, at least outside of the city
wall. They say the wall is over two thousand years old and it
certainly looks it, and the spaces on top left for the guns to point
through make it look as if it had lost most of its teeth. Things are
so old in this place, Mate, that I feel as if I had just been born! I
have nearly ran my legs off sightseeing; big pagodas and little
pagodas, Mamma Buddhas and Papa Buddhas, and baby Buddhas, all of whom
look exactly like their first cousins in Japan.
Soochow is just a collection of narrow alley-ways over which the house
tops meet, and through which the people swarm by the millions, sellers
crying their wares, merchants urging patronage, children screaming,
beggars displaying their infirmities, and through it all coolies
carrying sedan chairs scattering the crowd before them.
In many of the temples, the priests hang wind bells to frighten the
evil spirits away. I think it is a needless precaution, for it would
only be a feeble-minded spirit that would ever want to return to China
once it had gotten away!
HIROSHIMA, October, 1903.
In harness again and glad of it. I've opened the third kindergarten
with the money from home; it's only a little one, eighteen children in
all, and there were seventy-five applicants, but it is a
beginning. You ought to see the mothers crowding around, begging and
pleading for their children to be taken in, and the little tots weep
and wail when they have to go home. I feel to-day as if I would almost
resort to highway robbery to get money enough to carry on this work!
My training class is just as interesting as it can be. When the girls
came to me two years ago they were in the Third Reader. With two
exceptions, I have given them everything that was included in my own
course at home, and taught them English besides. They are very
ambitious, and what do you suppose is their chief aim in life? To
study until they know as much as I do! Oh! Mate, it makes me want to
hide my head in shame, when I think of all the opportunities I
wasted. You know only too well what a miserable little rubbish pile of
learning I possess, but what you _don't_ know is how I have
studied and toiled and burned the midnight tallow in trying to work
over those old odds and ends into something useful for my girls. If
they have made such progress under a superficial, shallow-pated thing
like me, what _would_ they have done under a woman with brains?
I wish you could look in on me to-night sitting here surrounded by all
my household goods. The room is bright and cozy, and just at present I
have a room-mate. It is a little sick girl from the training class,
whom I have taken care of since I came back. She belongs to a very
poor family down in the country, her mother is dead, and her home life
is very unhappy. She nearly breaks her heart crying when we speak of
sending her home, and begs me to help her get well so she can go on
with her studies.
Of course she is a great care, but I get up a little earlier and go to
bed a little later, and so manage to get it all in.
We are getting quite stirred up over the war clouds that are hanging
over this little water-color country. Savage old Russia is doing a lot
of bullying, and the Japanese are not going to stand much more. They
are drilling and marching and soldiering now for all they are
worth. From Kuri, the naval station, we can hear the thunder of the
guns which are in constant practice. Out on the parade grounds, in
the barracks, on every country road preparation is going on. Officers
high in rank and from the Emperor's guard are here reviewing the
troops. Those who know say a crash is bound to come. So if you hear
of me in a red cross uniform at the front, you needn't be surprised.
HIROSHIMA, November, 1903.
My dear old Mate:
I am just tired enough to-night to fold my hands, and turn up my toes
and say "Enough." If overcoming difficulties makes character, then I
will have as many characters as the Chinese alphabet by the time I get
through. The bothers meet me when the girl makes the fire in the
morning and puts the ashes in the grate instead of the coal, and they
keep right along with me all day until I go to bed at night and find
the sheet under the mattress and the pillows at the foot.
It wouldn't be near so hard if I could charge around, and let off a
little of my wrath, but no, I must be nice and sweet and polite and
_never_ forget that I am an Example.
Have you ever seen these dolls that have a weight in them, so that you
can push them over and they stand right up again? Well I have a large
one and her name is Susie Damn. When things reach the limit of
endurance, I take it out on Susie Damn. I box her jaws and knock her
over, and up she comes every time with such a pleasant smile that I
get in a good humor again.