famous, but largely destroyed by a storm a few years ago.

We have a wonderful apartment to ourselves, mostly all windows, which in
this house are glass. A very large bedroom, a small dressing room, and a
study where I now sit with the sun coming in the windows which are all
its sides. We need this sun, though the hibashi, or boxes of charcoal,
do wonders in warming up your feet and drying hair, as I am now doing.
We are surrounded by all the books on Japan that modern learning has
produced, so we have never a waiting moment. The house is very large,
with one house after another covering the hilltop and connected by the
galleries that are cut off the sides of each room in succession. I shall
try to get a photo. At the extreme end of the house is Mr. X----'s
library of several rooms, and at the limit of that the tea room for the
tea ceremonies. Our host is not one of the new rich who buy sets at a
million dollars for performing this ceremony. He laughs at that. But
there is a gold lacquer table which is like transfixed sunshine, and
there are other pieces of old furniture, which are priceless now, and
which have come down in his family. You would be amused to see us at
breakfast, which O-Tei, the maid assigned to us, serves in our sun
parlor. First we have fruit. Two little lacquer tables to move wherever
we want to sit. The dishes and service are in our fashion in this house.
Nice old blue Canton plates and other things Japanese. After fruit she
makes toast over the charcoal in the hibashi, two little iron sticks
stuck in the bread to hold it. On these prongs she hands us the toast.
Meantime she teaches us Japanese and we teach her English which she
already knows, and she giggles every time we speak. Well, we put our
toast down on the plate and she disappears. The coffee pot is on a side
table and we desperately look for cups for ourselves, though with some
fear of disturbing the etiquette. No cups, she forgot them. After a
while she comes up again with the cups and we get coffee, then she goes
down again and brings scrambled eggs on the nice old blue plates. Then
she giggles a little more and talks in that soft voice that is like
nothing else we ever heard, as she hands us a nice hot piece of toast on
an iron spike; she is much pleased and giggles because I tell her the
toast is not harmed by dropping it on the clean floor, and she walks off
into the big bedroom to bring the coffee from the gas heater. It is all
like