s marvellous sea,
and see how quickly wonder sinks to interest, and interest to apathy. We
brought oysters with us from Nagasaki. I am much more interested in
their appearance at dinner to-night than in the shag-backed starfish of
an islet that has just slidden by like a ghost upon the silver-grey
waters, awakening under the touch of the ripe moon. Yes, it is a sea of
mystery and romance, and the white sails of the junks are silver in the
moonlight. But if the steward curries those oysters instead of serving
them on the shell, all the veiled beauties of cliff and water-carven
rock will not console me. To-day being the seventeenth of April, I am
sitting in an ulster under a thick rug, with fingers so cold I can
barely hold the pen. This emboldens me to ask how your thermantidotes
are working. A mixture of steatite and kerosene is very good for
creaking cranks, I believe, and if the coolie falls asleep, and you wake
up in Hades, try not to lose your temper. I go to my oysters.

_Two days later._ This comes from Kobe (thirty hours from Nagasaki), the
European portion of which is a raw American town. We walked down the
wide, naked streets between houses of sham stucco, with Corinthian
pillars of wood, wooden verandahs and piazzas, all stony grey beneath
stony grey skies, and keeping guard over raw green saplings miscalled
shade trees. In truth, Kobe is hideously American in externals. Even I,
who have only seen pictures of America, recognised at once that it was
Portland, Maine. It lives among hills, but the hills are all scalped,
and the general impression is of out-of-the-wayness. Yet, ere I go
further, let me sing the praises of the excellent M. Begeux, proprietor
of the Oriental Hotel, upon whom be peace. His is a house where you can
dine. He does not merely feed you. His coffee is the coffee of the
beautiful France. For tea he gives you Peliti cakes (but better) and
the _vin ordinaire_ which is _compris_, is good. Excellent Monsieur and
Madame Begeux! If the _Pioneer_ were a medium for puffs, I would write a
leading article upon your potato salad, your beefsteaks, your fried
fish, and your staff of highly trained Japanese servants in blue tights,
who looked like so many small Hamlets without the velvet cloak, and who
obeyed the unspoken wish. No, it should be a poem--a ballad of good
living. I have eaten curries of the rarest at the Oriental at Penang,
the turtle steaks of Raffles's at Singapur still live in my regretfu