hungry carp.

I saw Jack off at the station, and went hack to the little house. Charity had sent the cook home and with her own hands served all the beloved dainties of my long-ago childhood, trying to coax me into forgetfulness. As you remember, Mate, dinner has always been the happiest hour of the day in our small domain. Now? Well, everything was just the same. The only difference was Jack. And the half circle of bare tablecloth opposite me was about as cheerful as a snowy afternoon at the North Pole. I wandered around the house for awhile, but every time I turned a corner there was a memory waiting to greet me. Now the merriest of them seemed to be covered with a chilly shadow, and every one was pale and ghostly. All night I lay awake, playing at the old game of mental solitaire and keeping tryst with the wind which seemed to tap with unseen fingers at my window and sigh,

  "Then let come what come may
  . . . . . .
  I shall have had my day."

Is it possible, Mate, that my glorious day, which I thought had barely tipped the hour of noon, is already lengthening into the still shadows of evening?

It was foolish but, for the small comfort I got out of it, I turned on the light and looked inside my wedding-ring. Time has worn it a bit but the letters which spell "My Lady of the Decoration," spelled again the old-time thrill into my heart.

What 's the use of tying your heartstrings around a man, and then have ambition slip the knot and leave you all a-quiver?

Far be it from me to stand in Jack's way if germ-stalking is necessary to his success. Just the same, I could have spent profitable moments reading the burial service over every microbe, home-grown and foreign.

Really, Mate, I 've conscientiously tried every plan Jack proposed and a few of my own. It was no use. That day-after-Christmas feeling promptly suppressed any effort towards contentment.

At first there was a certain exhilaration in catching pace with the gay whirl which for so long had been passed by for homier things. You will remember there was a time when the pace of that same whirl was never swift enough for me; but my taste for it now was gone, and it was like trying to do a two-step to a funeral march. For once in my life I knew the real meaning of that poor old worn-to-a-frazzle call of the East, for now the' dominant note was the call of love.

I heard it above the clink of the teacups. It was in the swish of every silk petticoat. If I went to the theater, church or concert, the call of that germ-ridden spot of the unholy name beat into my brain with the persistency of a tom-tom on a Chinese holiday.

Say what you will, Mate, it once took all my courage to leave those
I loved best and go to far-away Japan. Now it required more than I
could dig up to stay—with the best on the other side of the
Pacific.

The struggle was easy and swift. The tom-tom won and I am on my way to be next-door neighbor to Jack. Those whom it concerned here were away from home, so I told no one good-by, thus saving everybody so much wasted advice. If there were a tax on advice the necessities of life would not come so high. Charity followed me to the train, protesting to the last that "Marse Jack gwine doubt her velocity when she tell him de truf bout her lady going a-gaddin' off by herse'f and payin' no mind to her ole mammy's prosterations." I asked her to come with me as maid. She refused; said her church was to have an ice-cream sociable and she had "to fry de fish." This letter will find you joyfully busy with the babies and the "only man." Blest woman that you are.

But I know you. I have a feeling that you have a few remarks to make. So hurry up. Let us get it off our minds. Then I can better tell you what I am doing. Something is going to happen. It usually does when I am around. I have been asked to chaperone a young girl whose face and name spell romance. If I were seeking occupation here is the opportunity knocking my door into splinters.

STILL AT SEA. June, 1911.

Any time you are out of a job and want to overwork all your faculties and a few emotions, try chaperoning a young room-mate answering to the name of Sada San, who is one-half American dash, and the other half the unnamable witchery of a Japanese woman; a girl with the notes of a lark in her voice when she sings to the soft twang of an old guitar.

If, too, you are seeking to study psychological effect of such a combination on people, good, middlin' and otherwise, I would suggest a Pacific liner as offering fifty-seven varieties, and then some.

The last twinge of conscience I had over coming, died a cheerful death. I 'd do it again. For not only is romance surcharging the air, but fate gives promise of weaving an intricate pattern in the story of this maid whose life is just fairly begun and whom the luck of the road has given me as traveling mate. Now, remembering a few biffs fate has given me, I have no burning desire to meddle with her business. Neither am I hungering for responsibility. But what are you going to say to yourself, when a young girl with a look in her eyes you would wish your daughter to have, unhesitatingly gives you a letter addressed at large to some "Christian Sister"! You read it to find it's from her home pastor, requesting just a little companionship for "a tender young soul who is trying her wings for the first time in the big and beautiful world"! I have a very private opinion about reading my title clear to the Christian Sister business, but no woman with a heart as big as a pinch of snuff could resist giving her very best and much more to the slip of a winsome maid, who confidingly asks it—especially if the sister has any knowledge of the shadows lurking in the beautiful world.

Mate, these steamers as they sail from shore to shore are like giant theaters. Every trip is an impromptu drama where comedy, farce, and often startling tragedy offer large speaking parts. The revelation of human nature in the original package is funny and pathetic. Amusement is always on tap and life stories are just hanging out of the port-hole waiting to attack your sympathy or tickle your funny bone. But you 'd have to travel far to find the beginning of a story so heaped up with romantic interest as that of Sada San as she told it to me, one long, lazy afternoon as I lay on the couch in my cabin, thanking my stars I was getting the best of the bare tablecloth and the empty house at home.

Some twenty years ago Sada's father, an American, grew tired of the slow life in a slow town and lent ear to the fairy stories told of the Far East, where fortunes were made by looking wise for a few moments every morning and devoting the rest of the day to samisens and flutes. He found the glorious country of Japan. The beguiling tea-houses, and softly swinging sampans were all too distracting. They sang ambition to sleep and the fortune escaped.

He drifted, and at last sought a mean existence as teacher of English in a school of a remote seaside village. His spirit broke when the message came of the death of the girl in America who was waiting for him. Isolation from his kind and bitter hours left for thought made life alone too ghastly. He tried to make it more endurable by taking the pretty daughter of the head man of the village as his wife.

My temperature took a tumble when I saw proofs of a hard and fast marriage ceremony, signed and counter-signed by a missionary brother who meant business.

You say it is a sordid tale? Mate, I know a certain spot in this Land of Blossoms, where only foreigners are laid to rest, which bears testimony to a hundred of its