II

Three years after the visit of the Chicago—1897—another warship came on a similar friendly mission.

This was the battleship Fuji, of the Japanese Navy. In those days Japan was just beginning to step from her sun-lit shores down into the great world. She had awakened to the need for self-protection and had manifested her fighting power with modern weapons in the capture of Port Arthur. Captain Mimra, who commanded the Fuji, had been appointed Commandant of the fortress-city after the capture.

Irving thought it would be hospitable to ask the visitors to the play. On the night of April 2, Captain Mimra and his officers came. The play then running, Richard III., was one that took up Irving’s time from first to last during the evening so that it was not possible for him to have the privilege of meeting his guests personally. So I had to be deputy host. The party sat in the Royal box and the one next to it, the two boxes having been made into one for the occasion. After the third act of the play we all went into the “Prince of Wales’s Room”—the drawing-room attached to the Royal box—and drank a glass of wine together to a toast which was prophetic:

“England and Japan!”