d we shall
watch out for the ancient ones when it comes their turn. I wish I
could give you an idea of the looks of the poor. The children up to
the age of about thirteen appear never to wipe their noses. Combine
this effect (more effect than in Italy) with several kimonos, one on
top of the other, made of cotton and wool of bright colors and
flowered, with a queer brown checked one on top; this wadded and much
too big, therefore hitched up round the waist. Swung in this outside
one a baby is carried on the back, the little baby head with black
bangs or still fuzzy scalp sticking out, nose never yet touched by a
handkerchief, wearer of the baby with a nose in the same condition if
at a tender age--I scream inside of me as I go about, and it is more
exciting than any play ever. We are as much curiosities to them as
they are to us, though we live where the most foreigners go. Now on
top of it all we can no more make a car driver understand where we
want to go than if we were monkeys. We can't find any names on the
streets, we can't read a sign except the few that are in English; the
streets wind in any and every direction; they are long and short and
circular, while a big canal circles through the part of the city where
we are and we seem to cross it every few minutes; every time we cross
it we think we are going in the same direction as the last time we
crossed it. About this stage of our search your father goes up to a
young fellow with an ulster on, and capes, and a felt hat that is like
a fedora except for a few inches taken out of its height, and says to
him, Tei-ko-ku Hotel, which would mean the Imperial Hotel if he had
pronounced it right, and the boy turns around and says, "Do you want
ze Imperialee Hoter?" And we say, "Yes" (you bet), and the fellow
says, "Eet is ze beeg building down zere," so we wade along some more
with all the clog walkers looking at our feet till we come to this old
barn of a place where we are paying as much as at a Fifth Avenue
hotel, and get clear soup for dinner. Just like any one of those
old-fashioned French places where they measure out with care all they
give you, and where the head is a most distinguished and conspicuous
jack-in-the-box who jacks at you all the time, bows every time you go
down the hall and all and all and all. It is all so screamingly funny.
The shops are nearly as big as our bedrooms at home with enough space
to step in and leave your shoes before you mount the tak