sense is that?" the old fellow with the beard continued. "What do you mean by paragraphs? I tell you, we want to hang them, and you talk about paragraphs." So you see, every Russian village has become a Tower of Babel. The people don't understand your big words and formulas. They want something simple and direct and practical.'

A half-starved government clerk with a big family and a salary of thirty-seven rubles a month lived for years in the basement of one of our tenements. He used to rent each corner of his rooms to a different lodger. His children were pale and puny. His quarters were filthy beyond description, alive with vermin and black with soot. Then the Bolsheviki seized power, and my government clerk put on new plumage overnight. He got a job in a paper factory, where he used to steal quantities of tissue paper, and his boys sold it on the sly at fabulous prices. The two eldest sons enlisted in the Red Army. He either sold or burned his old, broken-down furniture; he had new paper put on the walls, and the kitchen whitewashed. Two of the rooms were finished in fiery red. He also had electric lights installed, and bought new clothes for the children, had flowers on the window-sills and rugs on the floors. But the family remained in their basement quarters. I never learned the source of all their opulence. They had meat every day, even in the worst times. When I questioned the clerk's wife about it, she answered modestly: 'It's from our rations.' I well remember the talk I had with this old clerk at the time when Denikin was said to be approaching Moscow. He asked me anxiously:

'Denikin! Is it really true that he is getting close?' 'Perhaps.'

'Against the working people! Won't the Western proletariat help us?' 'How long have you been a member of the proletariat?' I asked.

'All my life. Every time my chief in the government office used to speak to me, I would hang my head and think: "Just wait, you scum. You'll get your deserts some day." And so help me God he did!'

A little later this fellow was appointed president of the house committee, as he was considered a reliable Communist. Every night an automobile stopped at the door. Many a time I felt a thrill of fear when I heard it. I imagined it might be a requisition party. But no! The driver would hastily unload firewood, kerosene, alcohol, and carry them into one of the poorer tenements. Every morning there was secret trading at incredible prices, and the people grew visibly richer daily. One day I stopped the elegant, highly painted young Anna Petrovna as she was fluttering out of their apartment and asked her to request her nightly guests not to make so much noise with their motor, as my husband was ill.

'I could n't speak to the man that way,' she said mysteriously and naïvely. 'He's one of the biggest fellows in the Red Cross.'

'Aren't you afraid you'll be stood up against the wall for speculating?' 'No, they won't shoot us. He's one of the biggest.'

One night the gate creaked. There was no automobile, but several men entered the yard and knocked at the door of the former government clerk.

'We are from the Cheka. Show us immediately into the most expensive

'Is what possible?'

'Believe me or not, comrades, there are poor people everywhere here

little tenements proletarians every one of them. Perhaps you might call at Numbers 1 and 2. They are bourgeois apartments.'

Number 2 was where we lived. They promptly appeared, eight men or so, with revolvers and rifles.

'Give us whatever valuables you have, and be quick about it.'

I took them into the library and showed them our books.

'Don't try to make a joke of this. What do we want of your waste paper.' 'But they are the only valuable things we have.'

'Nonsense. You probably got something under the floor. I imagine, some seventeen poods of family silver.'

'Search for yourself. We sold everything.'

They immediately began tearing things to pieces in their quest for what they sought.

'Citizen,' I said, 'where is your warrant?'

'You'll get your warrant in the future life.'

'Would n't you like a cup of tea? The samovar is ready.'

The invitation simply struck them dumb. They stared at each other, shuffled their feet, and stopped hunting. 'Well-please- We 're tired out walking all over the town every night.' So we sat down together at table. Their faces assumed an entirely different expression-they were simply broad, childish, Russian peasant faces. I asked them where they came from.

'Mostly from Vladimir. Land's very scarce there, so we enlisted instead.'

'Do you think what you are doing is good service? After all, you are taking away people's property.'

'Property? They ought to give us anything valuable they have of their own free will. The Red Army is fighting against the generals and landlords. We can't let them get back. They've

We fled from the dirt and litter of the city for an outing in the vicinity of Moscow. I went up to a peasant woman standing in the doorway and asked her to sell us some milk.

"They won't let us sell it. Everything that we don't need ourselves the Committee takes for the children and the soldiers.'

'We only want a drink.'
'Well, come in.'

It was wonderfully rich milk, and it had been so long since we had tasted any. She studied us attentively and, asking whether we were from the city, inquired:

'Well, how are things there?'

'What do you mean?'

'Why, of course. Those robbers have driven us into a tight corner, sure enough -the scum!'

'Why did you put them in power, then? You peasants and working people did it.'

The buxom baba laughed heartily. 'Sure we did. We did it ourselves. No one else had a hand. It was interesting at first.'

'What was interesting?'

"To see the people there beat it for their dear lives,' she said, pointing to a big house beyond the grove. 'A countess lived there. It served her right! In the old days she used to come here and talk, and talk, and talk, until you felt like spitting in her faceyet we had to stand her.'

"Yet you say it is bad enough now.' 'It could n't be worse. We 're hiding everything underground. We have to. But it was interesting at first.'

If we teachers in Japan kept a notebook always with us, and troubled to jot down every charming thing that we heard expressed by Japanese students, we should soon have our book crammed full of delightful little gems of thought.

I venture to place some such memoranda before you quite uncorrected; and if my reader does not find something that touches his heartstrings in some of them, then he must indeed miss a great deal of the joy of living in Japan. The following short essays were written mostly by middle-school boys and youthful university students of Tokyo.

'I live! I bathe in sunlight, and breathe in the clear atmosphere; I live! Truly I live! See, that beautifully colored arch of a sky! And see, this black earth on which these naked feet of mine walk with firm step! Luxuriant trees and grasses, flying and frisking birds and beasts, and better stillthe love of little children. Ah, I would live, I would live! Up to this day I have known many, many griefs; but it is because the more I suffer the more I like this world. Life, I cling to you!

'Lovable world! I would play in the forests of my dreams. I want to live for a thousand years, forever! May I dream on, and on forever!'

'My school broke up on the 18th of July, and I started for my home on

1 From the Japan Times and Mail (Tokyo English-language daily), weekly edition, August

19

that day. My mother and sisters were waiting for me near the end of the village, and as soon as they saw me they ran up to me. They embraced me, and how happy was I. We were happiness itself. I stayed at my home all the summer vacation. I did not climb the high mountains, and to the sea shore I did not go. We could not delight ourselves on a ship, feeling the fanning cool breeze of the great ocean; but only in true friendship and in our love did I spend this summer vacation, and we spent a thousand times more of happy days.'

'I dream, I dream of her, a fair one of mine. She is here

She is not as intelligent as a small bird, She can feel the true grief and gladness Even if it is a small grief.

She loves the beauty of the things in form

And the things of no form.

She knows the soft words and she knows The manners of the people of "Yedo." She is pure as a pink shell at the gray sea-shore.

But, my dream wife dies; she dies As the morning glory's flower dies, In the evening, before her beauty goes from her perfumingly.

She dies
She dies
I dream I dream.

But, Ah!-nowhere is she- in this world;

She is only the wife of my sweet dreams.'

"Hana" is the name of our maid

servant. She has served us quite faithfully for six years. She is a very stout woman. On account of this, I wish to tell you the following story.

'While she was one morning sweeping our garden, some mischievous boys passed near by and saw her. "How are you, Miss Two Regiments?" they said in loud voice to her. "What do you mean by calling me such a name?" she asked. "It's your nickname; and it means you may eat enough rice for two regiments!" And the rudely boys ran away.

'But, indeed she is very stout, but I have watched her, and she does not eat so much. Hana is very honest and obliging, and is treated with affection by all our folks. She is fond of songs, and times when my little sister goes to her school, she follows her; and there she wants to stay, to learn some new children songs.

'As she makes our curry, and stirs it with a long stick, she sings in the kitchen in a peculiar tone, "Momotaro," and "Hato poppo.'

some money. Oh, how admirable she is in her filial love!'

'We students have learned English for about five or six years, and now we cannot even read books or newspapers properly, and what is still curious, we cannot speak at all. We all fear that we shall graduate from the university without knowledge about English, but with the little Gakushi.

'But we have consumed a lot of energy for English. I am sure that if some of us did not study English we would have been wiser in other things.

'I suppose this follows from the bad educational system of Japan. How oldfashioned and bad it is with all its examinations that make nothing of most of us. The educational authorities think that boys are only educated in their schools; therefore year by year there increase more students who want to enter upper colleges and high schools; then the hard examinations for entrance take place everywhere. Little is our sleep, and sometimes little is our food too at these times. The students must study only for examinations and not for themselves. In these cases, we manage to translate short sentences into Japanese, but we cannot read and catch the meaning the good authors want to tell us. Oh, English is so hard to some of us students.'

In response to an editorial request, I propose to try to write on the subject of 'Writings That Have Influenced Me'; not because I think that my experiences are in any way remarkable, but in the hope that my account may stimulate other ingenuous youths to take an interest in serious things and throw their energies into the direction of solid work, without which it seems to me hardly possible to accomplish anything of value, unless it is necessary to make allowance for the exceptional case of a few geniuses. But I was early led to mistrust dependence on genius of any kind, and to realize that natural ability must be reënforced by determination, perseverance, and hard work.

The narration of my experience must to a certain extent be autobiographical in form, with due apology for apparent egoism. And as influence is chiefly exerted during the malleable years of youth, I may divide the periods mainly dealt with into childhood, schooldays, and youth, covering the first twenty or twenty-five years of my life.

I learned to read at a very early age, and cannot remember a time when I could not read. I used to get absorbed in books, and had a very retentive memory; but I do not remember reading in childhood anything of special importance. The first book I read to myself was one of Captain Mayne Reid's; it was called The Plant Hunters, and is a (probably rather dreary) story

1 From T. P.'s and Cassell's Weekly (London popular journal), March 27 and April 3

of the adventures in the Himalayas of two explorers and a native guide called Ossaroo among ice and crevasses and immense caves, in which they lost their way, having ultimately no lights but what they could manufacture out of the fat of a bear. Apparently they never got out of those solitudes, and how their memoirs reached the outer world was not clear; but details like that did n't trouble me.

Another book of infancy was the well-known Sandford and Merton, which combined a certain amount of information with the story; and another was The Swiss Family Robinson.

But apart from books, I had at an early age an enthusiasm for any kind of mechanism, especially prime movers, and picked up anything about the steam engine that I could, partly by instinct and inspection, and partly from any source of information that came my way; and I had a longing to be an engineer that persisted until school killed a longing for anything except home. I knew nothing of science, however, till long afterward, but was enthusiastic about any scraps of astronomy, such as were contained in geographies and especially in a book reporting an eloquent course of lectures by Professor Mitchell, of Cincinnati, called The Orbs of Heaven. No sort of poetry, nor any literature, came within my ken till several years later.

At the age of eight I went to a grammar school, then conducted on very oldfashioned lines, and I remember my schooldays only as a rather dreary