missionaries, robbed her by unjust treaties, forced her to pay monstrous
indemnities for trifling wrongs;--we have forced her to become strong,
and she is going to do without us presently, the future is dark. Happily
my folks will be provided for; and I expect to be able, if I must go, to
return in a few years. It is barely possible that I might get into
journalism in Japan,--but not at all sure. I suppose you know that is my
living profession: I understand all kinds of newspaper work. But as I am
no believer in conventions, I am not likely to get any of the big
sinecures. To do that one must be a ladies' man, a member of some
church, a social figure. I am no ladies' man: I am known to the world as
an 'infidel,' and I hate society unutterably. Were I rich enough to live
where I please, I should certainly (if unable to live in Japan) return
to the tropics. Indeed, I have a faint hope of passing at least the
winters of my old age near the Equator. Where the means are to come from
I don't know; but I have a kind of faith in Goethe's saying, that
whatever a man most desires in youth, he will have an excess of in his
old age. Leisure to write books in a warm climate is all I ask. Pray to
the Gods, if you believe in any Gods, to help the dream to be realised.

"Kajiwo is my nightmare. I am tortured all day and all night by the
problem of how to set him going in life before I become dust. Sometimes
I think how bad it was of me to have had a child at all. Yet before
that, I did not really know what life was; and I would not lose the
knowledge for any terms of gifts of years. Besides, I am beginning to
think I am really a tolerably good sort of fellow,--for if I had been
really such a monster of depravity as the religious fanatics declared,
how could I have got such a fine boy. There must be some good in me
anyhow. Nobody shall make a 'Christian' of Kajiwo if I can help it--by
'Christian' I mean a believer in absurd and cruel dogmas. The world
talks much about Christianity, but no one teaches it.

"--So glad to hear you are able to go out a little again. Perhaps a long
period of strong solid calm health is preparing for you. After the
trials and worries of maternity such happy conditions often come as a
reward. I hope to chat with you by a fire when we are both old, and Kaji
has shot up into a man,--looking like his aunt a little--with a delicate
aquiline face. But only the Eternities know what his face will be like.
It is chan