A Night at the Dormitory—Beginning English—Grammar—Pronunciation—School Moved—Mother’s Love.

It was September and the beginning of a new term. Father decided that I should leave the school I had attended hitherto and go to another one where English was taught. This was the second time that I had left school without finishing it, but I was destined not to fare any better at the new place. Indeed, I changed school four times without finishing, till I finally settled in a college. But this leaping habit—I am sorry to say that it took a semblance of habit at last—did not come from any changeableness on my or my father’s part, but all from the sincere desire to prepare me for life in the best way. This it was that drove me into the three years’ study of the Chinese classics, though I beat a rather dishonorable retreat from it, and again this it was that directed me to take up the foreign languages early. I was afraid, however, that I leaped too much this time, as I found that all my new schoolmates were much older than I, and, indeed, there were some who needed shaving every morning!

The school was at first very near to my house. The building was of brick; the first floor was used for the class-rooms and the second was made into a dormitory. This last was a novelty to me; I never knew before that boys stayed away from home in this fashion, and entertained a secret desire to share a bed once with somebody, just to see what it was like. This, however, was easily granted, as I soon grew to be a favorite with everybody because of my youthfulness, and one night I made a bundle of my night-shirt and went to the room of one of my classmates. I was at once devoured with curiosity in watching him make the bed. It was not such a simple process as I used to see at home—laying one or two quilts on the matted floor and another over them. But he had to build a bedstead first from a sliding door, and placed one end of it on his table and the other on his bookcases. Upon that he laid his thin quilt and blanket. I wondered why he had to do such a crazy thing.

“Don’t you know the reason?” He seemed to be surprised at my ignorance. “It is on account of the fleas. You can’t sleep on the floor. Look here.” And he showed me a bottle in which an army of captured fleas were drowned. After all, a dormitory was not a covetable place, I thought. But there was some fascination in the sliding door bed, which creaked like a cuckoo with every move of my body.

But I must tell you about my first experience in English. English was very encouraging to start with. The alphabet consists of only twenty-six letters, and when I mastered that and was provided with a handful of vocabulary, I felt as if I were already half an American. I went around and talked to everybody, especially to those who did not know anything of English, like this:

“It is a dog. See the dog! It is a cow. See the cow!” I could even play a trick by way of variation like this:

“Is it a dog? Yes, it is a dog.”

And my family, who were constantly spoken to in this unknown tongue, were surprised at my speedy progress.

And indeed I thought first that any number of words might be easily learned, because they were but combinations of letters in one way or other, which are limited to only twenty-six. But it did not take me long to change this view. As the length of the daily lesson increased I came to wonder more and more whether the English words were not charmed after all. They were as slippery as eels, and, indeed, written like eels too. I thought time and again that I had them secure in my mental box, but when I opened the lid the next day, they vanished like a spirit. Something must be done, I thought, to tie them down, and so I invented a certain scheme. It was that when I looked up a new word in my Anglo-Japanese dictionary, I put a black mark beside it to show that on that very moment it passed into my possession. The plan seemed to work very well, but before long I found I had to mark the same words three or four times, till my dictionary looked very much as if it were suffering from spotted fever!

Then came grammar. Grammar is the least familiar part of language study. We are never taught in that in learning vernacular Japanese. Somehow words come out of our mouths naturally and arrange themselves into smooth sentences. So when I had to commit to memory the definitions of the noun, verb, adjective, and so forth, and to classify English words into them, I came to doubt if I were not studying botany instead of language. Fortunately I did not make such a mistake as, “A verb is something to eat,” or “Every sentence and the name of God must begin with a caterpillar.” But it took me months to understand the difference between the transitive and intransitive verbs. I finally struck an original definition of them. It is this, that a verb is called transitive when it is ambitious and intransitive when it is not, because in the former case it takes an object and in the latter it does not. I wondered why some one among the learned teachers did not tell me that right away in the beginning. It would have saved me a lot of trouble. Again in parsing, any word parading with a capital was a relief to me: I had no hesitation in giving it as a proper noun, whether it appeared in the main body of a piece or—in the title!

Now there is one little part of speech which puzzled me a great deal. It is the article. In translation I had the great satisfaction of passing it over entirely, as we have no equivalent to it in Japanese, but in composition it was the first thing that puzzled and annoyed me. The Japanese formerly went out bareheaded, and their language is also free from this encumbrance of a head-gear—for the article is a head-gear to a noun—and I was liable to drop off the article entirely, or, if I tried, to use a wrong one every time. Surely this hat etiquette was difficult and capricious, too. I thought I could master its secret if I knew thoroughly when and what sort of a bonnet a girl should wear—of course including the case of wearing a derby on horseback! This occurred to me a long time afterward in America, however.

A Japanese School of the Present Day.

Let me mention another difficulty. This was the pronunciation. A number of new sounds were introduced, the most conspicuous of which are those in which th, l, f, and v are found. The th-sound was bad enough, but l was next to impossible. Finding this to be the case, an American teacher would draw a cross-section of a face on the blackboard, only with a scant outline of the mouth and nose (once he drew the head, too, but it caused an unusual amount of merriment among the boys, as it was as bald as his, and he never finished the picture again), and explain the position of the tongue in uttering the sound, which we industriously copied. And he also would have us say, “Rollo rode Lorillard,” instead of “Present,” or “Here,” when the roll was called. But the semi-historical passage fell from the boys’ lips rumbling like a thunder:

“Rorro rode Rorirrard!”

One year passed happily in the new school, when it moved to its new buildings on the other side of the city, about five miles away. It was at first a short walk from my house, but when it increased from two minutes to two hours, with no convenience of street-cars to help my feeble feet, I naturally hesitated to go. I had to walk if I continued to attend, as boarding out in the dormitory was too expensive for our means. The school, however, was too good to be given up at that time, and so I made up my mind not to discontinue it.

To cover ten miles a day, spending four to five hours, was not a light task for a boy of thirteen. It was all I could do on fine days. In stormy weather the feat would become a struggle, and I was more than glad to accept the kind offer of one of my schoolmates to break the trip at his home for the night.

I had to start early to be on time at the eight o’clock exercise. Five o’clock was the time for me to get up, but my mother rose at least at half-past four to make me a hot breakfast of boiled rice and bean soup.

My mother was the sort of woman who expresses herself in work rather than in words. And in this she was regularity itself. One thing which impressed me in this more than anything else was her management of my dresses. Japanese decency requires eight suits a year for any one just for ordinary use, and of course I needed, or rather my mother believed that I needed that: eight suits—four in summer, two in winter, and one each in spring and in autumn. The dresses were not always made from new pieces, and so gave much more trouble. She made over the old clothes, washed and turned or dyed, if necessary, before doing so. My notion of her regularity, however, must be augmented five times, as she was doing the same thing—though I did not notice it at the time—with the other members of the family.

And so this early rising on her part for my sake went like clockwork morning after morning. If this means steadiness of her devotion to her son and to all related dearly to her, she had it.Again she was not wordy in any case. I never had a long lecture from her, though, I am sorry to say, I had some short ones. On the contrary, she had the secret of speaking in silence. There was some magic power in her touch. I love to look back to my childhood, when she used to dress me in the morning, at the end of which she would whisper in my ear just a word: “Be good all the day, dear child.” It was simply pleasure.

So at this hour when the world was still asleep, as I sat without a word at a short morning repast before her, with the lamp shining and every manifestation of motherly love around me, I was under an unspeakable spell, and learned to love her most.

I had to start soon, however. I descended to the door and opened it. It was still dark and the sky was starry. There was something that held me back for a moment. But I took heart and went out. Mother wanted to go with me for some distance. Naturally, I declined the offer, wishing not to seem cowardly, but also because I did not want to give her such a trouble. So she just stood at the door with a lantern and saw me off till I turned the corner.

I thought she turned and stepped inside after that, as I heard the noise of the sliding door being shut, and, being satisfied, I hurried on my way. But one morning something happened that revealed the truth. There was a bridge at the second turning, two blocks away from my house, and from that a long street ran. I was away some distance on this road when one of the fastenings of my clog-straps broke off. It is sad when this occurs. We cannot walk at all. We should be provided with material for repair, but it seldom happens that we are. To return was to lose time, and I must be going. So I did what boys usually do under such a circumstances. I hunted a wedge-shaped pebble, and, holding the broken end of the fastening in the hole, where it had been kept tight, drove it with another piece of stone. I was able to walk a short distance, but again it broke off. I was irritated, but there was no use in fussing: so I again went patiently to repair. I was hammering the clog with a stone when I heard the noise of hurried steps approaching. I was too busy to look back, but a voice came which made me drop the stone.

“Sakae!”

I turned, and there my mother stood with a strip of cloth ready to help me! I was surprised, but was too glad for help to ask any question.

As I trod on, I reasoned to account for her appearance in this way: that after seeing me turn the corner, my mother was wont to put out the light, shut the door, and follow me to the bridge, and from there was watching to see that I was safe. She saw that day that I was in trouble, and divined the whole case by the knocks I gave at the clog. So she was there with her help. As I thought of that, a silent tear trickled down my cheek.