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165 up by our door for the New Year. For supper we had guests, Dr. and Mary Ferguson and Lucius Porter. We had a really fine supper with roast duck and all kinds of swank trimmings, and we talked and talked. We discussed politics, in which we had a little three cornered disagreement for a time, with Lucius and Dr. Ferguson firing heaviest from their corners. Then we got over into art, history, philosophy, and it was eleven o'clock before they went home. Dr. Ferguson admired our house, admired my study, enjoyed the dinner, and told Dorothy next day that it was an unheard of thin[[g]] for him to stay at a party so late of his own free will. We were distinctly delighted. Thursday, 11 February Dorothy went out in the morning, and stopped at the Mthodist Hospital to have her eyes looked at. In the afternoon we went "haori" hunting, and then up to the School. There we collected Mrs. Hunter and took her over to Lung Fo Ssu and the bird market. She had been wanting to get a bird, and said last Sunday that if we would help her buy one she would give it to us when she went home. We got a little yellow and red singer from the south, a bird called the "Incense-color bird", and a cage and food and all. Then we went into the fair itself and bought a little tea pot in the shape of a lotus flower on a base like three lotus leaves, in which a small alcoolc stove. I think it is Japanese, and I do not think it is very old, but it is quite unusual and just the thing I need for my study, to assist me in the brewing of my own tea. In the evening I went up to the library to hold down the desk and let the men get off early for their family celebrations tonight. Tomorrow our five-day holiday starts. While there I went over our set of the Japanese photographs of the Imperial City, made during Boxer year, and I was impressed with the poor condition of many of the buildings at that time. It looked as if the palace had begun to run down pretty badly long before the Republic took possession of it.