for all at once Hendricks slapped me on the leg and cried with perfect good humor: 'Now that's out of my system!" And he gave vent to a hearty laugh.

Nevertheless, I thought it wiser to take up a less combustible, if still a related, topic.

"What about the Scotts-that simple old Japan mission couple? You told me the other day you were a B. I. J.-bornin-Japan son of a missionary. You must know them well."

A strange bright look, like a negative shadow, passed over his ruddy face was it amusement or tenderness?

"Oh, the Scotts," he began slowly. "Oh, why, they're the salt of the earth. They"

But it had been announced that we should land at Honolulu early on the morrow for a day's lay-over, and a gay group coming back from a stroll forward to the bow claimed to have discovered a smudge of darker hue on the edge of the sea where the sun had set, and further quiet conversation was impossible.

Everybody was making vast preparations. "You must see the view from the Pali!" "Waikiki for me!" "And don't forget Kamēhamēha!" "Oh, you ukelele !"—were some of the blithe comments.

Clara's mother, whose name, I had heard, was Cummings, and whose state was a grass widow's, was by now being trailed by a round half-dozen of male admirers. And by the same token Clara, though seemingly as well cared for and prettily dressed as ever, was very much alone, and wandered about the public rooms and decks wistful and neglected.

"You little dear!" said old Mrs. Scott, in her soft contralto, pulling the child up on to the steamer-chair beside her. "Such big black eyes and big brown curls! Just the size of my Mary's Edna back in Brookfield! Cyrus, when you go ashore to-morrow you must buy a cocoanut for Clara!"

In another, earlier generation I could hear her saying: "When you go up-town, Cy, get a stick o' that striped store-candy for Clara!" Only the name would have been Clarissy, more probably.

"Yes, mother," said the actual Cyrus. "Clar-ah!" sounded in bell-like tones

from down the deck. "Come here! How many times have I told you!"

When we set sail two days later to the brass-blown strains of "Aloha," "Kimigayo," and "The Star-Spangled Banner," it was with the usual collection of garlands, coins, and shells, and enough bananas, pineapples, and other fruit, I verily believe, to sink a smaller ship.

And Clara's cocoanut had not been forgotten. When told to hold the gift carefully, she hugged it to her bosom as if it were the most precious treasure in all the world. And then she trotted off-to show her mother. But presently from a distance there arose identifiable howls, and five minutes later a white-coated room-steward brought back the cocoanut. "Mis' Cummings don' want. Baby no can have," he stated.

That was all. No recognition of good intentions was offered, no courteous note

Thus far it was only too evident that the Scotts constituted the voyage's standing joke. To all but me (and possibly Frank Hendricks) everything they did was stupid, clumsy-gauche. Of course little Clara liked them—and the stewards, when honest. I wondered then, and have wondered since, to what special dispensation I owed my comparative enlightenment; and candor compels the confession that it was probably due to the fact that I was quite alone. Mankind is so fond of pooling its conscience and opinions; it's so much easier to let one's mind be made up for one by the crowd. To be sure, there were other passengers travelling alone. But not crossing the Pacific, my friend, for the nineteenth time! There lay the secret of my strength: I could not acknowledge the infallibility of an inferior experience. Such, at least, is my explanation of the matter; call it sensible or foolish, as you will.

And they were funny-the Scotts-in their way.

"Know the latest?" I overheard one fair passenger ask another. "Tom Todd had an awful head on him the other morning, and she-the old lady, I mean— came up to him and asked him what was the matter. 'A headache, ma'am,' groans Tom Todd; 'too much celebration, I guess, yesterday in Honolulu.'

"You poor boy,' says she, putting her arm round his shoulder, 'I know exactly how you feel!' At least, that's what Tom swore to my husband she said."

"And it wouldn't be so bad," rejoined the other gossip, "if she'd wear decent clothes! Did you see the hat she wore aboard? My dear, Queen Victoria wouldn't have been seen in it to a dogfight!"

Passing over the solecism, not to mention the lèse-majesté, of the last remark, it will be agreed that the Scotts were not taken seriously by their shipmates.

To a casual observer, perhaps the strangest part of the whole affair lay in the fact that they received so little support from their natural allies, their fellow missionaries. But the strangeness is all on the surface. Be it known that the modern missionary, like the modern preacher and college professor, is thoughtful of his personal appearance; and the apparent thoughtlessness of the Scotts for theirs was resented by their colleagues, and particularly by their colleagues' wives, as a travesty on their order.

Not that the Scotts cared, seemingly, what figures they cut. This alone, one would think-at least now in retrospect, ought to have put us or our guard, aroused in us healthy suspicions, raised before us visions, say, of Napoleon in his old gray redingote surrounded by his marshals (his servants) in furs and diamonds! But the Scotts were so wholly unlike Napoleon, with his love for negative display. They weren't vulgar at all. They simply were incorrigibly old-fashioned. Their clothes were mended, their persons and linen spotlessly clean. Ergo, they were dressed and could give their minds to other things.

And yet they seemed to embody some mystery. More than once I had it on the tip of my tongue to ask Frank Hendricks about it; but now that we were crossing calm, tropic seas, his wife and fat baby were almost always present, and if I thought of the matter, the query, though often poised for flight, somehow would never actually fly.

Any scandal is but a nine-days' wonder, and had the trip been round the world instead of merely to the coast of eastern Asia, the Scotts would have been for

gotten before Singapore. Meanwhile, our floating microcosm had scarcely cleared from Honolulu before tongues began wagging about more serious delinquencies in another quarter. The fair widow, Mrs. Cummings, was being attacked; and as the besiegers in both her case and the Scotts' were chiefly feminine, the siege of the latter was partially raised in order to bring up reinforcements against the former.

Since I did not know the lady, my information, perforce, came through redheaded Todd, whose testimony, if not too accurate in details, was corroborated in its main outlines by other deponents.

"She's a peach, but also a fool. She can't stand drink and she throws her money around. She parks the kid all day long in the hotel and then goes all over Honolulu with Sam Oates. Lord knows where they were till they came aboard at 3 A. M. Sam says he put her through her paces, all right, and he has a bet up that at Yokohama

And so on. The other ladies-except Mrs. Scott-grew markedly cool toward Mrs. Cummings; and it was plain that she had become, to all save the most abandoned of the bolder and frailer element, persona non gratissima.

And so the ten days passed, with both scandals struggling for the centre of our little stage, until matters came to an unexpected crisis the very morning we steamed up Yokohama harbor.

I ought to state that for two or three days previous to that event poor, neglected little Clara had been ill. Nothing serious, rumor said-just a severe pain in the stomach.

On the last night, as usual, came the concert, and the awarding of prizes for the recently held deck-sports. Old Mr. Scott received a prize-I forget now for what: an egg-carrying race, I think it was. But I recall the ponderously witty presentation speech of the chairman, a New York banker in private life.

"Mr. Scott," he intoned, "I take great pleasure in presenting you with a proper reward for your valor. You won the race. Your love of races is well known. Indeed, it may be said that your love of the human race is your long suit."

"Has he another?" giggled a woman

near me.

And her companion laughed. But somehow neither sounded very malicious.

Next morning nearly every one was on deck as we went up Tokyo Bay to Yokohama harbor. Off to the left over the green hills towered the purple cone of Fuji; straight ahead, like a toy city, the settlement rose from the water's edge to the church spire on the bluff. The Japanese town could be seen encircling the bay beyond: docks, ships, junks-to the shipyards Tōkyō-ward, already black with smoke. (This was several years before the earthquake.) The President Adams sped swiftly over the blue water past white-sailed, outgoing fishing-boats, and at eight o'clock came to anchor outside the breakwater.

We were a little late, a tardiness which caused some fretting. We were to have landed at eight; now, what with quarantine, passport, and customs inspections, it was doubtful if any one would set foot on shore before ten.

As I say, we were nearly all on deck, gazing longingly at the land. Big Hendricks and his pretty wife and fat baby; Todd; Sam Oates, tilting a black Havana in perilous proximity to a broadbrimmed Panama; the Scotts; the Van Broghs; Miss Merrill, a little aloof, and thinking of first sentences of possible articles, doubtless; last night's jovial banker-chairman, thinking of nothing but his own importance; two hundred others -we were all there, milling aimlessly round getting in one another's and the sailors' and officers' way.

Only Mrs. Cummings was not in evidence, and it was rumored that during the night Clara had grown worse.

Suddenly she came pushing through a crowded doorway, tears streaming furrows in her face-powder, lips twitching pitifully through their carefully applied covering of rouge. She clasped and unclasped her jewelled hands.

"Oh! Oh! Oh-h-h!"

"What's the matter?" issued solicitously from a dozen masculine throats. “Clara-oh, my baby!-Clara's got acute appendicitis!"

"Can't they operate?" Sam Oates, removing both hat and cigar, inquired kindly enough.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" asked a sweet contralto voice.

The frantic mother whipped about, fury dancing in her eyes:

"No, you old comic strip, there's not! Clara'd likely as not be all right now, if you had let her alone in the first place! Prob'ly either you or Foxy Grandpa there slipped her something. Oh-h-h, DAMN missionaries!"

I saw the gentle, upturned face wince, as from a physical blow, and the color mount slowly to cheeks and forehead from the thin, wrinkled neck. Probably she had never been cursed in her own language before.

As she turned away, some fool in the crowd tittered.

"I say it again!" screamed Mrs. Cummings, losing all control of herself— spitting out her words and stamping her foot. "You're a silly old fool, and DAMN missionaries!"

"It isn't appendicitis," snapped the doctor, in answer to my question, as he came out on deck for a breath of air. "Children that age seldom have appendicitis. It's acute intussusception, a sort of obstruction of the bowel developing from intestinal catarrh. I tried to tell that featherhead so, but she wouldn't listen. She actually behaves like a subject laboring under secondary dementia. Appendicitis-bosh!"

"Can't you operate?"

"Can't isn't quite the word," he replied more calmly. "The question is one of advisability. The ship has an operating-room for use in emergencies, as you know; but it is much better for a serious surgical case like this to be treated ashore, especially when you consider the commotion around a vessel when unloading and loading in port. Besides, this little girl disembarks at Yokohama."

"But is there time?"

"With the camphor injections and the other alleviatory means I'm employing I give her three hours before an operation will be absolutely necessary."

As he turned to go back to his small patient, however, something in his manner seemed to belie his verbal confidence.

The quarantine launch was momentarily expected, and finally sighted picking its way through the shipping inside

the breakwater. Rounding the end of the stonework it pointed its prow straight at us and fairly flew. With a sigh of relief, and with interest, too, as constituting their first contact with Japan, the crowd on deck watched its arrival. How immaculate it was the black roof and sides of its small cabin shone like polished lacquer! And how snappily the brown little white-clothed sailors stood to their stations and handled their craft! As a burly Briton near me put it: "When it comes to quarantine outfits, these Japanese surely do themselves well!"

A young official, also in white, with gold braid on his shoulders and around his cap, danced up the companion and saluting our officer politely, spoke to him in loud and excellent English:

"Are the Reverend and Mrs. Cyrus Scott of Kyūshū here?"

Little Mr. and Mrs. Scott stepped shyly forward.

And then a strange thing happened. The young fellow produced a large, important-looking envelope from his belt, and, offering it to the old couple, bowed from the waist, respectfully low. And when he spoke, with bared head, it was no longer as an official but rather as a child addressing revered parents:

“ ¢ 'Sensei, His Excellency the Governor, learning of your probable return by this steamer, has sent me to bid you a hearty welcome, and to place his launch at your service. His only regret is that urgent business prevents his coming to care for you himself."

It was revealing of Mrs. Scott, I thought afterward, that in that splendid moment she imaged not scenes, however dramatic, but persons.

"Oh, Cyrus," she exclaimed, raising clasped hands, "it's Saburo San! He's governor now!"

Also bowing from the waist, her husband thanked the young official in quiet, but I have no doubt adequate, Japanese. As for the rest of us-their hitherto supercilious fellow passengers-you could have bowled us all over with a word. With a dénouement like a Sunday-school book come true in real life, where, oh, where was the joke now? What mattered clothes? How fruitless snobbery! Many a woman there would gladly have

plunged into the sea, if afterward she could have said she had been rescued by an Imperial launch; many a man would have swum ashore had he thought by so doing to reach the Grand Hotel buffet sooner. And here were poor, old, unappreciative Mr. and Mrs. Scott invited guests-surely to the undeserving came all good things. Verily, damn the missionaries! But perhaps these thoughts came later. For the present, while the old couple were below superintending the removal of their luggage, we were too dazed to think. A deathly silence seemed to have descended upon us. Only Todd gave vent to a long-drawn-out, melancholy whistle, and then he, too, was still.

Hendricks, a little apart from the others, leaned on the rail chuckling to himself.

"Now tell me," I said. "Who are they?"

"I told you: the salt of the earth.”
"But this reception!"

"Oh, that? That's nothing. I'm surprised they didn't turn out the troops! Half the people on the pier are waiting for them. And they will turn out the schools to welcome them when they cross the boundary of their own province! They are the Scotts, man, the Scotts, of Kyūshū."

Seeing my continued look of puzzlement, he kindly went into details.

"No; they're not ordinary missionaries. Forty years ago they went into a village in the centre of the southern island-a real wilderness then. They built a church there first, and in time a hospital, and still later a school. But these things were only incidental-after all, only externals; others have built churches, hospitals, and schools. Their special gift was a supreme genius for friendship. Their hearts knew no guile, something, by the way, simple folk everywhere are quick to recognize. Every one they touched they touched personally. They knew no such word as 'converts'only friends, and in time, as the seed sprouted, brethren in Christ. Somehow, in some fashion, something of their own lofty soul entered into those they reached; and now in high places and low their influence is living in many parts of this empire. The governor of Kanagawa Pre

fecture is not merely their old pupil, but also their present and very loving boy." Hendricks lowered his voice.

"The secret of their success lies in their absolute devotion to their people and their work. No sacrifice has been too great for them, no obstacle too difficult. They look poor and they are poor; besides daily essentials they give away everything -themselves and their possessions included. If the board would only let them, they would be travelling third class.

"You have noticed, perhaps, the fact that Mrs. Scott is not well. She is dying of cancer. My father told me this. She underwent an operation for cancer of the breast last year at Rochester. The doctors have told her that her time is limited -more so if she returns to Japan. They give her three or four years at the most. Her daughter Mary begged her to stay at home; but she felt that her place was with her husband, and that the place of both of them was, like that of good soldiers, facing the enemy on the field of battle. She well knows that this ship is her final direct contact with America. But come, here they are now; let's watch them leave."

He took my arm and led me through the crowd to a spot near the head of the companion.

And now we were treated to a fresh surprise revealing the quality of the Scotts. Out of the doorway came a tiny stretcher on which Clara lay hidden from our gaze under white sheets. Immediately behind followed her mother, heavily veiled, leaning on Mrs. Scott's frail arm. Mr. Scott, laden with impedimenta belonging to both ladies, closed the little procession.

It was the decent-the Christianthing to do, of course, to offer of their bounty to those who needed it most. But many, remembering the vulgar rebuff suffered as late as fifteen minutes before,

would not have recognized the obligation. Others, intoxicated with their own sudden grandeur, would have forgotten to share it at all. And-now this is my point-nearly any one else would have shared it condescendingly. Not so the Scotts. As the gentle-eyed elder woman led the weeping younger one to the companionway, they looked for all the world like mother and daughter; or if one saw but the clothes, like servant and mistress -only that no modern servant would have been willing to dress so poorly.

"Good-by, Aunt Mary," said Hendricks softly.

"Good-by, Frank," she smiled, and at the head of the ladder shook hands with our officer, who for some reason swallowed hard and then blushed furiously.

So the white stretcher, borne by two sturdy sailors, descended the companionway and disappeared within the cabin of the shiny launch; the little old sensei and his wife, who in the hour of their triumph remembered that like their own great Teacher they had come not to be ministered unto but to minister, followed; while the rest of us, still awed into silence, lined the rail above and stared down on one of the simplest and at the same time strangest scenes it was probable any of us would ever behold.

And as, like a burnished arrow released from its bow, the launch shot toward purple Fuji and then slowly careened in to the Yokohama shore, the humor of the situation burst over me in a flood, and I laughed and laughed until I think even Hendricks was a bit ashamed of me. I pounded the rail with my fist-until the crowd which had been stupidly watching the lessening speck of the launch turned to find out what was the matter. And still I laughed. For they were funny, these missionaries; at least the Scott kind were: as funny as a bracing wind at sea, as funny as the sun at dawn!