=April 19.=--I spent the morning gardening; in my little garden nothing much is growing yet, the last people were very careless. I have dug and planted, the chief thing I planted being stones. I have learnt their value in a garden, and I also go out with a watering-can and water my poor little stones. Alas, all the really beautiful ones were too expensive to buy. I went in to lunch with the P----s, because they were having ice-cream, and afterwards went to tea with old Mr. G---- (father of the Mr. G---- I mentioned at the Takashima coal mines, near Nagasaki). His house is surrounded by an extremely lovely garden, with masses of flowers, and a view right across to Fujis. While we were standing on the lawn a lady visitor turned down her glove and rubbed some bites on her arm. Mr. G---- bent over her, and with an air of courteous solicitude, said, “That is not one of my fleas, I hope.” No one seemed to think the remark in any way curious till I said I wished I had a snapshot of that to send to _Punch_.
=April 22.=--Cutting fossils till 3.30, and then I went to Professor _M----_, and then on to the _S----s_ to pay my party call. Professor _S----_ was out, but Mrs. _S----_ at home, and as nice and talkative as could be expected in Japanese, when the concrete bounds the realm of my speech. When I got home I found Professor _S----_ had just been to see me! and we had each travelled 6 miles to visit each other, and crossed. I was very sorry. He had brought some butter, made by the agricultural students, hoping I should like it. I had once mentioned how difficult it was to get butter fit to eat in Tokio.
To-day I saw the first bewitchingly pretty child I have seen in this country--with great round black eyes, with a look of heaven in them. She was dressed in a scarlet flowered kimono that showed the outlines of her little limbs, and her hair was tied with scarlet ribbon in a little tuft at either side. She was dancing along with a parasol held high over her head, but she would not even smile at me, and I would gladly have taken her in my arms and kissed her, she looked so perfectly in tune with the dancing cherry clusters and the blue heavens.
=April 23.=--I feel that I can never go into a tram again. The horror of my last ride! A leper came and sat down beside me, almost on top of me, and the cars are so crowded I could not get away. He was not in the worst stages, of course, but some of his finger-tips were eaten away and one eye was blinded--there is none of the “white as snow” business about lepers, it is an eating away of the digits, and finally the limbs. I was only near him for five minutes, till the first stopping-place--but----. I have said before, I think, that the Japanese don’t think it really contagious; there was perhaps not the least danger, but we are accustomed to think mere contact with a leper fatal.