I was spending a week on Big Hat Mountain (Too Bo Soa) near Amoy and enjoying the comparative coolness, for 86° is really cool when you would be having 100° in the valley. One day

Extracts from Dr. Meyer's Letter the messenger brought us up some

mail, and to my surprise I found that since I had left Amoy the mission had decided that Miss Brink and I would better have a holiday, and they were going to send us to Japan the next Wednesday. With the prospect of seeing my brother in Nagasaki, I could not object to going.

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My brother was on hand to meet us and had found a place for us to stay. We rested a great deal that week, but we had two afternoon picnics down the bay to a pretty island where we went bathing first, then had our suppers and came back in the sunset. By the way, I ought to improve your minds with a bit of history, so I'll tell you that this island in the mouth of the beautiful Nagasaki harbor is called Takoboko by the Japanese, but its foreign name is Pappenberg, because at the time of the persecution of Japanese converts to the Romish church, this island was the place where the martyrs were put to death. My brother also tells the story that at the time of this same persecution—a century or two ago—the Dutch merchants in Nagasaki used to say in order to escape, "We're not Christians, we're Dutch."

Besides picnicking, we started on what has since proved to be one of our chief occupations-shopping. There are so many pretty things here and many of them are so inexpensive, that shopping is great fun, especially as we do not have to pay the bills. Don't imagine by this that we steal the things. But as shopping is well-nigh impossible in Amoy, we have commissions to fill from a dozen people or more and most of the people say, Just get what you think pretty and we'll be satisfied." And so we buy at our own sweet wills silk, bronze, lacquer, pictures and picture frames, carved wood, ivory, and a varied assortment of china. Wouldn't you like to be on hand to go shopping with me? And lest you should be scandalized at a missionary's extravagance, I must make haste to tell you that only a very few of these curios have cost over fifty cents.

On the way from Nagasaki to Yokohama we had a beautiful day, going through the Inland Sea, which you know is world famed for its beauty. Then we spent the day at Kobe shopping and sight-seeing, and Saturday evening we reached Yokohama. We left there Monday morning, but in the day and two nights that we were there we managed to get lost twice, though not permanently.

Monday we had an all day trip up to Karuizawa, a summer resort, where we spent two very enjoyable weeks in spite of the fact that we had mist or rain every day except the very last one we were there. The trip was lovely and at first while we were on the plain reminded me of New Jersey most of the way-even to the disfiguring advertisements. But in the afternoon we began to get into the mountains and then it was exquisite beyond any words of mine. We went through twenty-six tunnels before we reached the top, but between the tunnels we saw lovely ravines with foamy brooks, and hills and hills on every side.

Karuizawa I enjoyed more than any place since I left home. There were about six hundred foreigners there altogether during the summer, and though the season was nearly over, there were a great many left when we arrived. We met a lot of pleasant people and it did us good just to see a lot we didn't know. Then the settlement is on a plain high up and surrounded by lovely hills, with a most fascinating active volcano about nine miles away. We were there for two weeks and it wasn't till the last afternoon that it was clear enough to get a good view of Asamayama and we were very much afraid we should not see it in eruption. We sat watching it and I said I was sure if I could just give it a little shake it would go off. And sure enough in a minute, behind the cloud of vapor on top of the crater, I saw a curl of black smoke appear. I just screamed and sat and watched in great excitement and with many ohs and ahs as puff after puff of smoke rose high into the air and then blew off toward the north trailing showers of ashes with it. That was very fine, but we had a greater experience after we were in bed that night. I was almost asleep when I opened my eyes and saw through the open door the red glow from the crater. I woke the other two girls in the house and we watched breathlessly until after two or three minutes the glow faded. Then up rose the thick black smoke against the starlit sky, and through it like rockets shot occasional red-hot stones. It was fairly magnificent and I could scarcely go to sleep after it for fear of missing something. The next morning we left Karuizawa at six and as we rode to the station in the sunrise we saw still another eruption, and this time with the sunlight full against it the smoke was a wonderful pearly gray. We heard that nineteen eruptions had been counted in a single day this summer and we heard, too, that though many people ascend the mountain and see the fire in the crater from the top, it is most unusual to see it from the plain and that many old residents had never seen it.

We spent just two days and a half at Nikko and how we did "sight-see." The first morning we walked three or four miles up a side valley to some lovely falls, coming back past a little temple and the hundred Buddhas. The hundred Buddhas are a row of stone images along a path by the river, all alike and all weather-beaten and more or less covered with moss and lichen. They seemed more heathen than anything in Japan. I can hardly express the feeling they gave me, perhaps they seemed like an impersonation of heathenism, old and somewhat the worse for wear, yet strong, enduring, imperturbable in spite of some indifference and neglect.

The next morning before the train left we went to see what is said to be perhaps the finest temple in Japan, built three hundred years ago in honor of a great general. It is magnificent with lacquer and gold and fine carvings, some of which are very famous. At the top of two hundred stone steps, up which we climbed through a fine grove of the grand, straight, tall cryptomerias (trees for which Nikko is famous) is the tomb of the general. The guide told us that at the top of these steps we should find a “mausrum”. Knowing the Japanese difficulty with the letter "1" I promptly substituted, but I was much puzzled, for the most I could make out of it was Moslem, and

I couldn't see why I should find a Moslem anywhere in a Buddhist temple, but when I saw the tomb I laughed to think he was trying to say "mausoleum". We e saw a great many pilgrims and worshipers and some sight-seers. I always have a feeling that one oughtn't to go sight-seeing in a place of worship, but that feeling is not so strong when I see the business-like manner and lack of reverence of such worshipers as these.

I cannot tell you how much I thank you for sending me letters from Northfield. I wish so often in the summer that I could be at home just long enough for the girls' conference and I think often that when my furlough comes I shall have that pleasure, and one big part of it will be being with the Smith and Vassar delegations. When I cannot go myself I can think of you there in the scenes I know and love well, hearing the well-known voices and enjoying the Christian fellowship that I have always thought one of the greatest privileges of the conference. And no official report brings the con

ference so really to me as letters do.

At the open meeting of the Deutscher Verein on February 5, Professor Ernst H. Mensel spoke on "The Modern German Drama". He said that the first impulse towards a revival of the drama came at the close of the FrancoPrussian war. The first tendency was towards the revival of the classic models. Offers of prizes for the best dramas stimulated the poets to greater effort; and the tours of the Meiningen actors with their historical dramas played by good actors, while only an episode in the development, yet tended towards a purification of the stage and were another aid in encouraging the poets.

French influence came in at this time bringing with it artificiality and immorality and lack of patriotic and national dramas. But a strong reaction to the patriotic and national themes set in, led by Wildenbruch, who for a long time was the leading dramatist of this class. Later the tendency became realistic, then symbolic, and both classes of dramas are represented to-day. The realism is often grotesque, sometimes horrible; the symbolism is often excessive and unsatisfactory; and quantity rather than quality is the result of much of the dramatic effort. It is to be hoped that this is only a transition stage which is to lead to productions more nearly comparable with the achievements of the past.

After the lecture an informal reception was held at the Washburn House. HELEN CHASE MARBLE 1904.

Two of the usual large house dances have been given, this month, in the Alumnæ Gymnasium. The first, the Morris House Dance, was given on Wednesday evening. January 15; the second, the Wallace House Dance, was held two weeks later, on January 29.

At the open meeting of the Greek Club, held in the Reading Room on Thursday evening, January 9, Professor Tyler read his own translation of "The Frogs" of Aristophanes.

On Sunday evening, January 12, Rev. Edward Fairbank, missionary of the American Society to India, spoke before the Missionary Society on the "Causes of the Famine in India".

Feb.

CALENDAR

22, Washington's Birthday Exercise.

22, Alpha Society.

24, Lecture by Prof. Tracy Peck of Yale. Subject: Ancient Roman Monuments and Epitaphs.

26, Entertainment for the Students' Building.

Beatrice Hereford: Monologues.

28, Physics Club.

Miss

Open Meeting. Lecturer, Prof.

Loomis of Princeton. Subject: Determination

of Freezing Points.

March 1, Phi Kappa Psi Society.

5, Société Française. Open Meeting.

8, Gymnastic Drill.

12, Glee Club Concert.

14, Address by Mr. John Graham Brooks.

The Work of the Consumers' League.

15, Alpha Society.

Subject: