HALF ORIENT, HALF OCCIDENT IS CATHERINE

Baby Ostrander's Parents Are American, But She Is a Child of the Mikado.

Talks Japanese, Plays Japanese, Gets Angry Japanese, Has Japanese Nurse.

Born in the Far East and Knows Nothing of the English Language.

Up at the Washington Hotel there is a little wee tot of a girl who is all American and yet entirely Japanese. Her father and mother are citizens of your Uncle Sam, but the tiny subject of this sketch first saw the light of day in the flower-scented land of the Mikado, was raised by a Japanese nurse maid, who is with her today, and her English vocabulary is limited to a half-dozen words. She issues her orders, commands her servant, scolds her mamma, bosses her papa, and makes love to her doll, all in the Japanese language. Even when she cries her sobs are supplications to the gods of the Orient and in everything but face, form and complexion, she is as staunch a little subject of the Mikado as ever lived under the milk-white flag with its flaming red sun. And this is the way it happened.

Some years ago, when the business men on Puget Sound first began to appreciate the commercial possibilities in the Far East, the Centennial Mill Company of Seattle sent H.F. Ostrander to the Orient. Mr. Ostrander was accompanied by his wife, and while they traveled extensively in the Far East, they made their headquarters in Japan.

Two years and a half ago a daughter was born, and that same little baby today owns the Washington Hotel. It is hers in toto -- Manager Harbough gave it to her before she had been in the hotel an hour. She would have taken it anyway. She doesn't know what it is to have anyone say "No." All the playmates of her babyhood have been little Japanese people, and she is used to having them bow down to her, willing servants to satisfy her very wish, abject slaves to obey her tiny imperial will.

And you should see her as she patrols the corridors of Seattle's big hotel. No matter where she goes or what she does, there plodding along at her heels, wearing the Oriental smile of patience, goes her nurse clad in the queer, quaint garb that Dam Fashion has given to the Mikado's women. Catherine leads always and the nurse follows. Catherine commands and the nurse obeys. Catherine weeps and the nurse comforts. It's a picture of the Orient teaching the Occident.

Catherine Ostrander is an American in form and features, but otherwise she is a child of the Far East. She was born in the Orient and she has lived there. She has absorbed its customs, manners and speech. And there is a perpetual struggle going on in that little heart -- English vs. Japanese -- a struggle for the supremacy of that baby's brain.

She is probably the youngest American belle that was ever interviewed by a metropolitan newspaper. A reporter for The Times called upon her at The Washington yesterday afternoon and was formally introduced by Manager Harbough.

"How do you do, Miss Ostrander," said the reporter.

"Chow chow," replied Catherine, backing up in a corner and trying to hide behind the skirts of her nurse.

"It's a nice day, isn't it?" returned the newspaper man.

"Kriddledeumpoppycoxrittletyrottletybang," she ejaculated, looking up at her "amah" and stamping her foot.

The little Japanese nurse endeavored to convey to the reporter the idea that Catherine did not understand him, but in doing so she strayed as far away from the English language as had the child.

Consents to Be Photographed.

With Manager Harbaugh, Chief Clerk Wray and Mamie, the pretty telephone girl, to act as interpreters, the reporter managed to informe the "amah" that a photograph was wanted, and when that idea was in turn conveyed to Catherine, she marched out on the wide veranda and posed before the camera with as much seriousness as she would have assumed had she been passing upon the fate of the world.

And that isn't all that could be told about this baby who is all American and entirely Japanese. When she sits down to have a confiding chat with her kinmono-covered [kimono-covered] "amah," she doesn't use chairs, as other American children would, but she gracefully sinks on her dainty heels and sits in that way exactly as all Oriental women do. And her doll! While she loves it, and dresses it and croons a lullaby when she puts it to sleep, it is interesting to see her carry it. She never dreams of "toting" it United States fashion, but, placing it between her plump little shoulders, she holds it with her hands clasped behind her back, just as all Japanese women carry their offspring.

In a hundred similar ways, Catherine Ostrander gives evidence of her Japanese training.

Wouldn't you like to know an American baby who can express herself fluently in the Japanese language, but, who for the life of her, doesn't "savvy" the American talk?

Wouldn't you like to listen to an Oriental tongue in an American child?

Wouldn't you like to watch the Orient struggling for supremacy in the Occident?

It's a study, that all; and a study worth while.