Letters from China and Japan

								

already knows, and she giggles every time we speak. Well, we put our
toast down on the plate and she disappears. The coffee pot is on a side
table and we desperately look for cups for ourselves, though with some
fear of disturbing the etiquette. No cups, she forgot them. After a
while she comes up again with the cups and we get coffee, then she goes
down again and brings scrambled eggs on the nice old blue plates. Then
she giggles a little more and talks in that soft voice that is like
nothing else we ever heard, as she hands us a nice hot piece of toast on
an iron spike; she is much pleased and giggles because I tell her the
toast is not harmed by dropping it on the clean floor, and she walks off
into the big bedroom to bring the coffee from the gas heater. It is all
like a pretty play unmarred by any remote ideas about efficiency, and
time and labor-saving devices. Then two maids make our beds; then they
dust the floor, one holding up the sofa on edge while the other whisks
underneath it, and they smile and bow and take an interest in every move
we make as if we were their dearest friends.
Enter now the housekeeper who, with many bows, announces v-e-r-y
s-l-o-w-l-y that she would like to accompany me to go about the city and
to explain things to me, as I would thus teach her English. I asked if
she were going to church and she said she wasn't a Christian. Think what
a funny sound that has. She is the secretary of Mr. X---- and a student
in the new Christian college of which he is the President. She comes in
now to wait on us at breakfast and she stays and repeats English after
us. She knows a lot of English, but it is so literary that it is quite
amusing to turn her into the ways of ordinary talk. To get her to open
her mouth and break the polite Japanese whisper, in which the Japanese
women speak, is what I work most on. Yesterday we visited the Women's
University which is within walking distance of this house. The
President, Mr. Naruse, is dying of cancer. He is in bed but is able to
talk quite naturally. He has made a farewell address to his students,
has said good-bye to his faculty in a speech, and has named the dean,
who is acting in his place now, as his successor. At this University
they teach flower arrangement, long sword, and Japanese etiquette, and
the chief warden is a fine woman. She says I may come in as much as I
like to see those different things.
In the afternoon we had callers again, among them two women. Women are
rare. One, a Dr. R----, is an osteopath who has practiced here for
fifteen years and is an old friend of our host's. The second, Miss
T----, has just returned from seven years in our country. I heard much
of her at Stanford and brought letters to her. She has a chair in the
Women's University. It is a chair of Sociology, but she says the
authorities are afraid the time has not yet come for her to start on
sociology, so she will begin with the teaching of English and work into