18th—My letter to Miss Pine Leaf (who wept with me reading Keats’ love-letters one mournful night) is as follows:
“Matsuba San:
‘Hitofude mairase soro.
‘I have the honour to present a brief writing.’
“Let me omit the shopworn form of Japanese letter-writing! Its redundant ‘honourables’ are more cheap than honourable.
“Satetoya!
“Shall I begin my letter with a deep bow?
“Bow?
“I use it occasionally before Meriken San for sport’s sake. But it is degenerating, in my opinion, to comic opera, like the tortoise-shell-framed spectacles of a Chinese doctor.
“Now I address you with a thousand kisses.