To-day is a holiday, so we cannot go to the bank, but we can go to a meeting where they will discuss universal franchise and democratization generally. The Emperor is said to be indisposed, so he will not come to the celebration. His illnesses, like everything else about him, are arranged by the ministers and mistresses, as near as we can make out.

We are having so many interesting experiences and impressions that it is already difficult to catch up in writing them down. Yesterday morning we went to walk and in the afternoon we were taken out in a car so that we have got over the first impression of the surface. We saw the university and the park where the tombs of the shoguns are, and those tombs are wonderful, just to look at from the car. About to-morrow we may be able to go to the museum. The rows of stone lanterns are impressive beyond anything I had imagined; hundreds of them which must have given to the nights they illuminated a wonderfully weird spectral look.

It is not fully true that the Japanese are not interested in their history. At least the educated are, as in any other country. A friend told us about the revival of interest in the tea ceremony. He is going to arrange for us to go to one somewhere, he did not say where, but it will be accompanied by a grand dinner and will express the magnificence of the new rich as well as the taste of old Japan, to judge from the impressions he gave us. He told us of an old Chinese cup for the tea ceremony that a certain millionaire has recently paid 160,000 yen for. That means $80,000. He says the collectors have various sets, and each set will often represent a million dollars. This particular bowl is of black porcelain with decorations of bright color. He told us also of a tea which is now produced in China by grafting the tea branches on to lemon trees. He has some of this tea which was given him by the Chinese ambassador and so I hope we may get a taste of it.

Apropos of this hotel you will be interested to know the manager who runs the house has just come home from the Waldorf and from London where he has been learning how to do—people. The exchange rates they offered Papa seem to be an index of their line of development and they are going to build more. This is the one first-class hotel in Japan. At present they have only about sixty rooms or a little more.

In general, things are coming along promisingly. I should be through lecturing by the first of April here, which is just the time to begin traveling. It turns out a good scheme to come in winter, for the weather, while not cheerful, is far from really cold, though it is not easy to see just how the palms thrive in the snow. Japan seems to have developed a peculiar type of semi-tropical vegetation which endures freezing and winter. I can foresee that we are going to be busy enough, and for the next few weeks your mother is going to have more time for miscellaneous sightseeing than I. It is indescribably fascinating; in substance, of course, like the books and pictures, but nothing really prepares you for the fact that it is not only real in quality but on such a vast scale—-not just specimens here and there.