Mme. Tamakai Miura hid behind a baggage truck and pressed her fingers into her miniature ears. It was her first visit to Chicago.
The Twentieth Century limited was backing out of the LaSalle Street Station.
“She is the first Japanese grand opera singer in the world, the first to sing in America and one of the best sopranos in the company!” shouted the press agent above the roar. He led the way to Mme. Miura. She stood half frightened and half amused, seeming like a figure that had escaped from a Japanese print and got lost in a Meissonier landscape. For Mme. Miura was still dressed in her native costume. She might have just wandered off the stage from a scene in “Madame Butterfly” in which she is going to sing for the Boston Opera Company.
She wore a purple robe, with a dull red and gold girdle. It enveloped her in folds and a dull pink scarf covered her patent leather colored hair. American shoes, an American handbag and American furs testified to her acquired cosmopolitanism.
“I like come here and sing,” said Mme. Miura, removing her fingers from her ears. “I been in London and all over the world. I am only singer in Japan. In Japan women don’ sing so much or do anything. They have no suffrage an’ only listen to the nightingale and the wind blow through the cherry tree. But art will liberate the ladies of Japan.”
Mme. Miura glanced coquettishly at a Japanese man who stood near her.
Becoming more accustomed to the baggage truck and the Twentieth Century, Madame Miura continued:
“When I come to America I all the time ’fraid people don’t like me because I hear about Japanese not being much liked, but when I come to New York everybody like me and is most nice to me. And I am sure everybody in Chicago like me. It is so full of noise, is it not? All America is full of noise.
“I like most American scenery which the railroad show me. It is better than English or German scenery, because in English scenery all the trees look like doll trees and in Germany all the trees look like they have been straightened with mower of the lawn. In American scenery everything is big and wild and maybe full of animals, is it not?
“And there is so much. I pass miles and miles in my ride, more than whole Japan.”