My Chinese Teacher—How I Was Taught—Versification—My Uncle—Clam Fishing—A Flatfish.

Some months after I entered the public school, my father came to a conclusion that what was taught there was too modern to have enough of culture value. My education had to be supplemented by the study of Chinese classics. And his intention would have been of great benefit to me if he had been equally wise in selecting a good private teacher. As it was, I gained but a fraction of it, undergoing a hard struggle.

There lived a Chinese scholar near by, who was second to none in his learning within three miles. Formerly he was a priest of Zen sect, the Unitarian of Buddhism. As it was considered most laudable to a man of his calling, he never ate fish or meat, and had two frugal meals a day, taking only a cupful of starch and sugar in the evening, till he came to lead a secular life. Starch and sugar!—so he must have come to have such white hair, I thought. Anyway, the snowy mass heightened the expression of his earnest face, rather youthful for a man of sixty. He was, indeed, the classic itself; the rhythm of it seemed to be ringing in his veins, whether awake or asleep. And he delighted in nothing so much as to eat his dinner listening to the clear-voiced chanting of boys reviewing their lesson, as if they were minstrels entertaining at a king’s feast! And, of course, I was sent to him.

I started from the beginning, which was, indeed, no beginning at all. The Chinese sages did not write their scriptures as graded school text-books, but their descendants believed so, anyhow. Genesis was the genesis of successful mastery. And so I began with that great sentence in the “Book of Great Learning:”

“Learning is a gateway to virtue.”

I envy those boys who tore Chinese authors, and whose books, when taken to a second-hand bookstore, were not bought even for a penny. My books were, on the contrary, just as clean as ever, as if they had been too loath to impart anything to the owner. And this was not from any effort on my part to take care of them, but simply from the little use I made of them. Now this was the way I studied them. Teacher would read with me about four pages in advance, and see once how I could read. I stuck; he prompted me; I stuck again; he prompted me again; I stuck for the third time, and for the third time he prompted me, and so on, and indeed continually, if I had gone on till I had thoroughly mastered it. But one review seemed to him sufficient for such easy passages, and my boyish heart responded too gladly to be released after a short lesson. And I laid my book by till the next day. I did not know how the teacher regarded me, but he must have thought me a very bright fellow for whom such a slow process as review was totally unnecessary. And he immediately took up the next four pages and went on in the usual manner. The first book was finished; the teacher’s instinct asserted itself, and he wanted me to read a few pages by way of a test before I proceeded. What a shame! I only recognized a box here and a starfish there, and that was all. The teacher was angry at the result. He saw that I was not prepared yet to take up the classics. And with his admirable pedagogical insight, he sent me to a primer the very next day. It was a Japanese history, written in easy Chinese prose. How I enjoyed the change! The passages rolled off on my tongue as easily as you might say, “Mary had a little lamb.” The teacher smiled at my ease, and soon recovered his humor. But his eyes were so constructed as to see nothing but the top and the foot of a mountain, and his mind worked like a spring-board, which either stays low or jumps high up. And on the third day I was ordered to begin the second book of the classics, called the “Doctrine of Mean!”

And I plodded on. I went through the “Book of Divination,” and “Odes of Spring and Autumn,” and came out only with some phantoms of angular, mysterious hieroglyphics dancing before my eyes. But my Chinese education included something more than reading. It was versification. Just think of requiring a ten-year-old boy to write verse in Latin or Greek. But every Saturday I was required to do the same sort of thing for two years. Oh, how I struggled! I hunted for something sensible to write, but while all sorts of nonsense would come up, even common sense, that most useful guide in a prosaic field, fled from me. Outside, merry shouts of boys—a happy group who cared for balls and kites more than dry-as-dust “culture”—were heard, and I mused in a corner of a room, consulting such help as a phrase book and a rhyming dictionary. Nothing but doggerel could be born of such a forced labor. Here is a specimen:

The Chinese training did me at least one good turn. It drove Confucius out of my head!

I should have been a blighted boy if Sundays had not come to my rescue. The real use to which the day should be put had not dawned on me, nor was it in the mind of those who introduced the institution. But I am glad to say that it did me good in many ways. With this, however, my uncle is invariably associated.I have not said anything about him, but he was a well-fed man with a goat’s beard. He was very nervous, however, and could not keep from pulling his beard. This accounted for its scantiness. It was very amusing to observe how easily his temper was disturbed out of its normal mood. When he was contradicted he pulled hard at his beard and wrung his hands furiously. His body seemed to expand with the inner fire when he ejaculated many an “Ahem!” preliminary to an eruption. Everybody had to find shelter and thrust his fingers into his ears, lest the drums should break. But when he was pleased, his face melted with laughter; he went to a cupboard to look for some nice thing for us, ordered dinner to be hurried for our sake, and went round and round us to see if we were really comfortable.

He was very alert, and was always looking for a new thing. He did well, too, to keep himself abreast of the age, and, indeed, mastered something of the English language, of which he could well boast in his day. His pronunciation, however, was rather painful to hear, and in his talk with foreigners his nervous hands played a large part to fill in the gaps in his vocabulary, with an intermixture of many a “you know.”

One good thing about him was his love for outdoor sports. He could not sit all day like my Chinese teacher, and if ever an eruption occurred, it was always on the occasion of such confinement to his room. His Sundays were scheduled for this or that kind of pleasure excursion. And of course I was wise enough to do what I could to please him in order that I might not be left out of his party.

One Sunday we were to go clam-fishing. When it was announced on Friday before, I thought of a great time and could hardly sleep for joy. After a tedious labor of writing verse was over the next Saturday, I busied myself the rest of the afternoon with the preparation for the next day. I kept going to my uncle’s to see whether we had the same things that they had, and also to suggest the necessity of providing things we had and they had not. Many conferences for this purpose were held at the door-sill with Tomo-chan. Small hand-rakes were bought, one for each; small and large baskets, knives, thick-soled socks, small sashes, and so forth, were collected from various sources. To this I added a net three by four feet large, with two poles to meet the exigency of encountering some large fish—perhaps a whale. But of this I did not speak to anybody.

Mother was also busy preparing our lunch. For this she got up very early in the morning and boiled rice, which she made into triangular, round, or square masses, speckled with burned sesame seeds. She packed them in several lacquered boxes, with fresh pickles and cooked vegetables. We relied on our clams for chief dishes; so some cooking utensils were necessary. Also some tea and a teapot, cups and dishes, together with chop-sticks and toothpicks, even.

The day was not fair, but it was just the kind of weather for the season, dull and somewhat hazy, but bespeaking a calm sea. The tide was fast ebbing when we started in a boat. There was a good company of us, including uncle, aunt, mother, Tomo-chan, and me. As we emerged into the bay from the canal, the extended view was delightful. On one side green masses of pine-trees overhung the stone mounds and merged into a leafy hill, which stretched itself like an arm into the sea. On the other, beyond reedy shoals, the old forts, with a lighthouse on one of them, dotted the expanse. The view was washed in gray, and even the sails of junks, hanging lazily from the masts, were scarcely lighter than the background.

All was calm. But as we sighted from a distance some other parties already on the scene, we soon forgot everything for the excitement and let the boatman hurry with all his strength. It was nine when we arrived at the desired spot, and we had three hours to enjoy ourselves. We fixed our boat to a pole, from the top of which was drooping a piece of red and white cloth. This served as our mark to enable us to find the boat quickly in the case of need. So each party had something of its own design. Purple, green, white, and red in all sorts of combinations and forms were displayed, while a coat, a shirt, or even an improvised scarecrow was not denied use.

So we went into water, our sleeves and skirts being tied up and our legs bared to the knees. Each was provided with a basket and a hand-rake—except myself, who, in addition to the implements, took out secretly my net, wound round the poles. My people were all too busy to observe me, however. We went on raking for clams. There seemed to be lots of black or white shells which we did not want, but I soon found that clams were rather a matter of chance, and a chance would come no more than once in every fifteen minutes! I luckily struck on three nice ones in a short time, and dug diligently for some thirty minutes, but without any result. So I grew tired, and began inspection. Aunt had ten, mother eight, and uncle five. When I approached him, he looked up, red in the face. I wondered if he was not angry. But it was not so, for he heaved a sigh and straightening up and striking his back with his fist, said, “O dear!”

“Uncle, you will soon be quitting your job, just as I shall, I think,” said I.

“Pshaw! How many have you?”

“Three, sir.”

“You can’t have more than that for your lunch, you understand, unless you get more. Now don’t be in my way.” And again he doubled his corpulent body to work. But I was right in thinking that he could not keep himself in the same posture for another three minutes. Now I passed on to Tomo-chan. Poor Tomo-chan had only two! She was all but weeping for the bad luck. She, however, looked comforted to find that I did not fare much better. But what was her surprise when I threw all my clams in with hers!

“Keep them, Tomo-chan. I am going to fish with this net.” Her eyes looked gratitude. “Oh, thank you ever so much. But I’ll catch fish with you if I don’t fare any better.”

“All right.” And I went on thinking that if I could not get clams for my lunch, I should have fish to the envy of all. I looked among the rocks for some shadow of them. Surely I saw something shooting away now and then, without waiting for me to find out whether it was large or not. But anyway, they were all right if I could get a number of them, and so I fixed my net and tried to drive them into it, little thinking that the very whiteness of my net—I appropriated a net made for the purpose of keeping flies off—scared every fish. I got irritated with my ill-success, and finally splashed the water vigorously to punish them.

By this time my uncle had quit his work, as I predicted, and was engaging with hen-like anxiety to look after his flock. He kept his eyes on them, and would go like a shepherd dog to fetch any one who went too far away from the boat. He looked at his watch to see if the tide was not turning on, and went occasionally to the boat to see if anything was lost. He seemed to like this kind of work better than clam-fishing, for I could see even from a distance that he was pulling at his beard, as he was wont to do when his mind was occupied. Presently he heard me splashing the water far away, and started at once to bring me back. Time could not be lost, he must have thought, but I did not know anything of his approach till I heard a shriek behind me. Surprised, I turned round when I found him just recovering his balance and looking intently into the water.

“What’s matter, uncle?” I hastened toward him.

“Stop. A flatfish somewhere.” Seeing me with a net, he exclaimed, “Quick with your net.”

“A flatfish?” I queried in excitement.

“Yes, I stepped on him and he gave me a slip.... Oh, here he is; cover him quick!” And we covered him with my net without much ado. I was surprised to see how easily I could catch him compared with other fish that I had tried for. As I raised him, however, I found he was already crushed dead under my uncle’s weight!

But it was a large one, and I could have an honorable share at lunch.

A Typical Japanese Street.