We have done our first independent shopping to-day. I can’t get over my astonishment at the amount and quality of English spoken here; it is about as easy shopping in this store, the big department store, as it is at home—much easier as respects attention and comfort. They give us little wrappers or feet gloves to put over our shoes. Think of what an improvement that would be in muddy weather in Chicago.

This afternoon is sort of a lull after the storm of sociability and hospitality which reached its temporary height yesterday. Let me give the diary. Before we had finished breakfast—and we have eaten every morning at eight until to-day—people began to call. Then two gentlemen took us to the University in their car and we called on the President again. He is a gentleman of the old school, Confucianist I suppose, and your mother was much impressed at being taken in, instead of staying in the car, but I think he was much more pleased and complimented by her call than by mine. Then we were taken to the department store to which I have already alluded. Many people do all their buying there, because there are fixed prices with a reward for a discovery of any place where the same goods are sold cheaper, and absolute honesty as to quality. But they also said that was the easy way to visit Japan and learn about the clothes, ornaments, toys, etc., and also to see the people, as the Japanese from all over the country come there to see the sights. There were a group of country people in; they are called red blankets, not greenhorns, because they wear in winter a red bed blanket gathered with a string, instead of an overcoat. Then at night it comes in handy.

The stores are already displaying the things for the girls’ festival though it doesn’t come till early March—this is the peach fÊte, and the display of festive dolls—king and queen, servants, ladies of the court in their old costumes, is very interesting and artistic. They have certainly put the doll to uses which we haven’t approached. Then we had lunch at the store, a regular Japanese lunch, which tasted very good, and I ate mine with chop sticks. Then they brought us back to the hotel, and at two a friend came and took me to call on Baron Shibusawa—I suppose even benighted foreigners like yourself will know who he is, but you may not know that he is 83, that he has a skin like a baby’s, and shows all the signs of the most acute mental vigor, or that for the last two or three years he has given up all business and devoted himself to philanthropic and humanitarian activities. He does evidently what not many American millionaires do; he takes an intellectual and moral interest, and doesn’t merely give money. He explained for about half an hour or more his theory of life (he is purely a Confucianist and not a religionist of any kind), and what he was trying to do, especially that it isn’t merely relief. He is desirous to preserve the old Confucian standards only adapted to present economic conditions; it is essentially a morality of feudal economic relationships, as perhaps you know, and he thinks the modern factory employers can be brought to take the old paternal attitude to the employees and thus forestall the class struggle here. The radicals laugh at the notion here much as they would in the United States, but for my part if he can get in a swipe at the Marxian theory of social evolution and bring about another type still of social evolution, I don’t see why he should not have a run for his money. According to all reports there is very little labor and capital problem here yet, though the big fortunes made by the war and the increased prosperity of the workingmen have begun to make a change, it is said. Up to the present labor unions have not been permitted, but the government has announced that while they are not encouraged they will not be any longer forbidden.

But I must get back to the story. Another friend had asked us to go to the theater with him, the Imperial Theater, which has European seats and is a fine and large building, as fine as in any capital and not overdecorated like a New York one. The theater began at four, and, with about half an hour intermission for dinner, continued till ten at night; the regular Japanese theaters begin at eleven in the morning and continue till ten at night and you have your food brought to you; also they have no seats and you sit on your legs. None of the plays was strictly of the old historic type, but the most interesting one by far was adapted from a classic—it centers to some extent about a faithful horse, and the people are country farmers of several centuries ago. The least interesting was a kind of problem play—mostly philosophical discourse of the modern type—the right to expression of self and an artistic career, aphorisms having no dramatic appeal to even the Japanese audience. These people certainly have an alert intelligence—almost as specialized as the Parisian, for the audience was distinctly of the people, and no American audience could be got to pay the close attention it gave to performances where the merits, so far as they are not strictly artistic, in the technique of acting which is very highly developed, depend upon catching the play of moral emotions rather than upon anything very theatrical. However, the classic drama which is based upon old stories and traditions is more dramatic and melodramatic. The Japanese also say the old theater has much better actors than the semi-Europeanized one which is, I suppose, supported by the government. In the Imperial, the orchestra seats are one dollar and a half; they are more—on the floor at that—in the all-day theaters. Even in this one they have not introduced applause, though there was slight handclapping once or twice when the curtain went down. The Japanese have always had the revolving theater as a means of scene shifting; it works like a railway turntable apparently. Well, that ended the day yesterday. Except we had invited two gentlemen to dinner, and when we told our friends about it, they said, “Oh, just telephone them to come some other day,” which appears to be good Japanese etiquette, as it is also to make calls at any time of the day, so we did. But unfortunately they had to telephone to-day that they couldn’t come to-night.

To-day has been comparatively calm; we have only had four Japanese callers and two American ones. Of the two Japanese, one is a woman who is the warden of the Girls’ University, and the other is a teacher in it, a young woman of a wealthy and aristocratic family who has become too modern, I judge, for her family. I hope all you children will make a bow to every Japanese you meet and ask him what you can do to be of service to him. I shall have to spend the rest of my life trying to make up for some of the kindnesses and courtesies which so abound here.

I am afraid much of this is more interesting to me to write about than it is to you to read, to say nothing of being more interesting to go through than to read about. But you can then save the letter for us to re-read when we get old and return from our Odysseying, and wish to recover the memories of the days when people were so kind that they created in us the illusion of being somebody, and gave us the combined enjoyments of home and being in a strange and semi-magic country; semi-magic for us. For the mass of the people, one can only wonder at their cheerfulness and realize what a really old and overcrowded country is and how Buddhism and stoic fatalistic cheerfulness develop. Don’t ever fool yourself into thinking of Japan as a new country; I don’t any longer believe the people who tell you that you have to go to China and India to see antiquity. Superficially it may be so, but not fundamentally. Any country is old where birth and death are like the coming and dropping of leaves on a tree, and where the individual is of as much importance as the leaf. Old world and New world are not mere relatives; they are as near absolutes as anything.

We heard a whistle making its cry outside and Mamma thought it was the bank messenger, so I rang the bell for the boy to bring him in—but alas, it was much less romantic; it was the call of the macaroni peddler.