At the end of our long train ride, Amorri, we went on the small boat bound for Hakodate, where we were met by the Consul, a jolly, big, whole-hearted man, who took us, metaphorically speaking, at once to his bosom and became as a long-lost brother. His wife, much to our surprise, was a tiny little Japanese woman, no bigger than a good-sized doll, and as pretty as a picture. They looked so incongruous together that one was inclined to smile. He weighed at least 250 lb., was over six feet tall; and I should think that when dressed in all her finery, Mrs. Consul might have weighed 85 lb. She was a well-educated, well-informed little woman, who needed all her charm and tact to keep her unruly family in order. It was a big one, the last, a boy, being the pride of the father’s heart, and as nearly spoiled as the clever mother would allow him to be by his worshipping father. When I knew them better it was a joy to me to see how she managed these children. The father, who had been at one time captain of a sailing vessel, always spoke to them as if they were at the top of a mast on a wintry night with a cyclone blowing. Tommy, the irrepressible, would get up on the window seat, and his father would hail him in a voice that could be heard by the boats coming from Kamschatka: “Tommy, get out of that window seat; you’ll break your neck.” Tommy would not move; again his father’s stentorian tone would offend the evening air. The quiet little mother would turn and give a nod of her pretty head to Tommy, and Tommy would immediately climb down from his perch and proceed to behave himself as young boys should.
The Consulate was partly foreign and partly Japanese, and the children while at home in the morning dressed in kimona and wooden clogs, but in the afternoon they were gay in “home” dresses and resplendent in hair ribbons, only showing by the little turn of the eyes that they were members of their mother’s race.