n regard
as heroes. Since missionaries are not officials and do not have the
manners of heroes, it is not to be expected that the Japanese will
accept their leadership.

A few foreigners have, however, become heroes in Japanese eyes.
President Clark and Rev. S.R. Brown had great influence on groups of
young men in the early years of Meiji, while giving them secular
education combined with Christian instruction. The conditions,
however, were then extraordinarily exceptional, and it is a noticeable
fact that neither man remained long in Japan at that time. Another
foreigner who was exalted to the skies by a devoted band of students
was a man well suited to be a hero--for he had the samurai spirit to
the full. Indeed, in absolute fearlessness and assumption of
superiority, he out-samuraied the samurai. He was a man of impressive
and imperious personality. Yet it is a significant fact that when he
was brought back to Japan by his former pupils, after an absence of
about eighteen years, during which they had continued to extol his
merits and revere his memory, it was not long before they discovered
that he was not the man their imagination had created. Not many months
were needed to remove him from his pedestal. It would hardly be a fair
statement of the whole case to leave the matter here. So far as I
know, President Clark and Rev. S.R. Brown have always retained their
hold on the imagination of the Japanese. The foreigner who of all
others has perhaps done the most for Japan, and whose services have
been most heartily acknowledged by the nation and government, was Dr.
Guido F. Verbeck, who began his missionary work in 1859; he was the
teacher of large numbers of the young men who became leaders in the
transformation of Japan; he alone of foreigners was made a citizen and
was given a free and general pass for travel; and his funeral in 1898
was attended by the nobility of the land, and the Emperor himself made
a contribution toward the expenses. Dr. Verbeck is destined to be one
of Japan's few foreign heroes.

Among the signs of Japanese craving for heroes may be mentioned the
constant experience of missionaries when search is being made for a
man to fill a particular place. The descriptions of the kind of man
desired are such that no one can expect to meet him. The Christian
boys' school in Kumamoto, and the church with it, went for a whole
year without principal and pastor because they could not secure a man
of nationa