A Letter From Japan
I have been interested in The Mentor ever since a warm morning in June four years ago when, as a delegate to the General Federation of Women’s Clubs held that year in Chicago, I found in my seat a sample copy. “American Sculptors” was the title of the number. I was delighted with it. I asked if it would be all right to take some extra copies, and I was told “yes.” So I loaded myself down with them, thinking of the many young men in Tokyo with whom we were in touch, who would be so delighted to have them. This was exactly the case. Every Mentor I brought was used in the best way possible, and many of the pictures were given out singly, so that more could have them.
Fortunately my mother has been sending The Mentor to me. She began to take it through seeing my copy, and it is one of the delightful visitors to our home.
I have been much interested in the letters that you have printed. No one has said how helpful The Mentor is to a missionary. First: to keep one from forgetting what has been seen and known; second, to make friends for one of the things one ought to know; third, for the sake of one’s children, who find a great education in the twice-a-month text and pictures.
Aside from the personal value to the missionary and his children, is the value to the foreign people with whom he associates. His home is a center, and many an ideal of a foreign home comes from his. Those of us that teach students, and children especially, are forming standards of taste. The Mentors on the library table are valuable because they are attractive to look at, and the brief descriptions on the backs of the pictures are easy to understand by anyone who knows a bit of English.
I have at present a very interesting class of university men, with whom I talk once a week. We have had some delightful times using The Mentor pictures. The foreign things shown in Japan are usually crude. With such a heritage of good art of her own, Japan should know more of our best things—and The Mentor gives this to them. This is my plan for our own seven-year-old lad: I have six frames the size of The Mentor gravures, and I change the pictures as often as new ones come.
With every good wish for your continued success,
F. ELIZABETH COLEMAN.
10 Hinoki Cho, Ahasaka, Tokyo.
The Mentor Association
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