A DOLL'S CORRESPONDENCE

Chrysantheme has brought but few things with her, knowing that our
domestic life would probably be brief.

She has placed her gowns and her fine sashes in little closed recesses,
hidden in one of the walls of our apartment (the north wall, the only one
of the four which can not be taken to pieces). The doors of these niches
are white paper panels; the standing shelves and inside partitions,
consisting of light woodwork, are put together almost too finically and
too ingeniously, giving rise to suspicions of secret drawers and
conjuring tricks. We put there only things without any value, having a
vague feeling that the cupboards themselves might spirit them away.

The box in which Chrysantheme stores away her gewgaws and letters, is one
of the things that amuse me most; it is of English make, tin, and bears
on its cover the colored representation of some manufactory in the
neighborhood of London. Of course, it is as an exotic work of art, as a
precious knickknack, that Chrysantheme prefers it to any of her other
boxes in lacquer or inlaid work. It contains all that a mousme requires
for her correspondence: Indian ink, a paintbrush, very thin, gray-tinted
paper, cut up in long narrow strips, and odd-shaped envelopes, into which
these strips are slipped (having been folded up in about thirty folds);
the envelopes are ornamented with pictures of landscapes, fishes, crabs,
or birds.

On some old letters addressed to her, I can make out the two characters
that represent her name: Kikousan ("Chrysantheme, Madame"). And when I
question her, she replies in Japanese, with an air of importance: