When I heard last from you I was in Izumo. There I became very strong by constant swimming and starving,--Japanese diet takes all the loose flesh from a man in short order. My lungs got quite sound, and my miserable eye _nearly_ well.
I suppose that I partly owe this place to my books, and partly to Professor Chamberlain's kind recommendation. The Japanese seldom notice literary work,--but they have paid considerable attention to mine, considering that I am a foreigner. My ambition, though, is independence in my own home,--an old-fashioned _yashiki_, full of surprises of colour and beauty and quaintness and peace. And a few years abroad with my boy,--who is very mischievous now, and beats his father occasionally.--Curious, how much better the Japanese understand children than we do. You remember as a boy the obligatory morning _dip_ in the sea, no doubt. This no Japanese parents would inflict on their child. I tried it with mine, but the folks said, "That is wrong: it will only make him afraid of the water." Which proved true. Moreover, he would not allow me to come near him any more in the sea,--but used to order me to keep away. "Go away, and don't come back any more." Then the grandmother took him in charge; and in a week he was as fond of the water as I,--had overcome his fear of it. But it requires great patience to treat children Japanese-style,--by leaving them _almost_ free to follow their natural impulses, and coaxing courage by little and little.
Awful weather,--floods, wreckings, ruinings, drownings. I think the deforestation of the country is probably the cause of these terrible visitations. In K[=o]be just before I left, the river, usually a dry sandbed, burst its banks after rain, swept away whole streets, wrecked hundreds of houses, and drowned about a hundred people. Then you know the tidal wave in the north--it was _only_ 200 miles long--destroyed some 30,000 lives. A considerable part of East Central Japan is still under water at this moment--river water. Lake Biwa rose and drowned the city of [=O]tsu.
Isn't it almost wicked of me to have fought for a foreign salary under such circumstances?--especially while students come to tell me: "My father and mother have educated me thus far by selling all their property,--piece by piece,--even mother's dresses and our lacquer-ware had to be sold. And now we have nothing, and my education is unfinished--and unless it is finished I cannot even hope for a position. Teacher, I shall work six years to pay the money back, if you will help me." Poor fellows!--their whole expense is only about $120 (Japanese) a year. But if I did not take the salary, another foreigner would ask even more; and I am working for a Japanese community of my own. Buying books is rather extravagant, but my literary work pays for that.