DEAR E. H.,--I have been reading your last over and over again--because it is very pretty indeed, one of the very prettiest letters I ever read. There is altogether something so deliriously _assured_ about it--so full of happy confidence, that I feel quite comfortable and jolly about you ... notwithstanding the fact that I am tolerably sure you will be taken utterly away from me in the end. For this shall a man leave not only his friend, but his father and his mother,--saith the Sacred Book. You know that particular passage makes the Japanese mad,--but not quite so mad as the observation: "Unless a man shall hate his father and his mother," etc., which has knocked the wind out of much missionary enterprise.
I can't write much more about yourself, because I don't know anything yet. So I shall talk about T[=o]ky[=o].
As you know, I have been somewhat idle--for a month at least. And the loneliness thickens. And certain gentlemen make it a rule to spit upon the ground with a loud noise when I pass by. I believe the trick is not confined to the Occident, having found Japanese skilful at it; but these be nevertheless manners of Heidelberg doctors! Nevertheless, it won't work.
But really the conditions are very queer. I felt instinctively before going to T[=o]ky[=o], that I was going into a world of intrigue; but what a world I had no conception. The foreign element appears to live in a condition of perpetual panic. Everybody is infinitely afraid of everybody else, afraid to speak not only their minds, but to speak about anything except irrelevant matters, and then only in a certain formal tone sanctioned by custom. They huddle together sometimes at parties, and talk all together loudly about nothing,--like people in the expectation of a possible catastrophe, or like folks making a noise to drive away ghosts, or fear of ghosts. Somebody, quite accidentally, observes--or rather drops an observation about facts. Instantly there is a scattering away from that man as from dynamite. He is isolated for several weeks by common consent. Then he goes to work to reform a group of his own. Gradually he collects one--and rival groups are formed. But presently some one in another party or chat talks about something as it ought to be. Bang-fizz--chaos and confusion. Then all the groups unite to isolate that wicked tongue. The man is dangerous--an intriguer--ha! And so on--_ad lib_.