a part of the house which was of
great age, but by my _futon_ there was laid an electric torch.

A pleasant thing during my visit was the presence of a dozen
intelligent, kindly students who early in the evening came and knelt
in a semicircle round us, "in order to profit by our talk." One of
them, a son of the house, an athlete (and now, after travelling in
Europe, his father's successor), did all sorts of services for me
during my stay, in the simple-hearted fashion that shows such an
attractive side of the Japanese character. One question asked by the
students was, "For what reasons does _Sensei_ believe that the
influence of women in public life would be good?" Another enquiry was,
"Which are the best London and Paris papers?" These lads could hardly
hope to get through the university before they were twenty-five or
twenty-six. Yet, compared with our undergraduates, they had very
little time for general reading, discussions and outdoor sports. I
remember a man of some experience in the educational world saying to
me, "Our students do not read enough apart from their studies; it is
their misfortune." They have not only the burden of having to learn
nearly several thousand ideographs,[209] three scripts and Japanese
and Chinese pronunciation. They have to acquire Western languages,
which, owing to their absolute dissimilarity from Oriental
tongues--for example, the word for "I" is _watakushi_--must be learnt
entirely from memory. It is not that the Japanese student does not
begin early as well as leave off late. A professor once said to me,
"For some little time after I first went to school I was still fed
from the bosom of my mother." In some ways it is no doubt a source of
strength for Japan that her men can spend from their earliest years to
the age of twenty-six on the acquirement of knowledge and
self-discipline--the privileges of the student class and the
generosity of their families and friends and the public at large are
remarkable--but the disadvantages are plain. No sight seems stranger
to a new arrival in Japan than that of so many men in their middle or
late twenties still wearing the conspicuous kimono and German bandsman
cap of the student.

To return to our host, he told us that tenants were "getting clever."
They were paying their rent in "worse and worse qualities of rice."
The landlords "encouraged" their tenants with gifts of tools, clothes
or sake in order that they might bring them the best ric