=November 24.=--From an early hour preparations were made to have a Botanical Demonstration for Sven Hedin. _Ginkgo_ and cycas spermatozoids were provided, yeast of the native wine, fossil slides under the microscope--all in working order. But the poor man is being rushed all over Tokio to such an extent that but a short time was available for each thing. He was cordial and nice, and professed to like the fossils, and seemed fairly intelligently interested, and made every one feel pleased with him.
He lunched in the festival rooms at the foot of the garden, and when he had gone Professor _S----_ sang a Te Deum, and Professor _K----_ came back and looked at the fossils again, and with Professor _F----_ we had a merry tea-party. After the day was done I called in at the Embassy on the Z----s, who returned recently, and found them at home with a few guests. It amuses me very much to note the conversations in the different Tokio sets. The continual cry among the diplomats is, “There are _no_ women in Tokio!” “So few women, we can’t give dinners,” etc. etc. Up the old cry came again to-day. But in the houses of the permanent residents, the clergy, missionaries, University professors, etc., the cry is, “There are so many, too many, girls, so difficult to get men for the dances.” Professedly the two sets mix, but practically they don’t to any real extent. But the tactless bad manners of the diplomats, who will announce to the ordinary people in Tokio that there are no women in Tokio, while those same ordinary people know that there are, and that the diplomats know that there are, is very amusing to one outside it all. One of my secret seldom-expressed ambitions, even as a girl at College, was to be an Ambassadress. Who would believe it? But now I am only too thankful that I know what a life it is, and will never need to fear that I drop into it dazzled and unawares. It is an endless round of calling and dining: they profess to complain of it themselves, but take little interest in anything else. Some one said to me, “The diplomats have no interest but themselves, and no subject of conversation but themselves,” and it really isn’t far from the truth.
=November 25.=--After working till it was dark, and worrying the laboratory attendants (for, nominally, we should all clear off at 4 now, but I can’t get out of the habit of working later, particularly now that there is so much to do), I called on Mrs. _N----_. She is the American wife of a Japanese journalist--a writer whose articles I have noticed. We started a correspondence, and she came to see me, but I was out. It was no easy job to find the house, for she had recently moved, so I went to the old house, but as it led to a little incident which illustrates the courtesy of the nice Japanese, I will relate it. I went to the house called No. 90, but, as I have remarked before, there may be twenty houses of the same number. Of course it was the wrong one, but they told me the _N----s_ had left the house, and gone to Kamakura. The little lady of the house at which I inquired sent her maid to fetch the address, and asked me to sit down while she went. Then, with gentle voice, she asked all the polite questions--where I lived? how long I had been in the country? what was my native land? All capped by compliments on my Japanese. She fetched a book of picture post cards to entertain me, and when her maid returned, sent her again to make sure if Mrs. _N----_ was not living in the neighbourhood. When she found that she was, the lady herself came with me a little way to show me the road to follow, as if I had been an honoured guest.