We worked our way across that tremendous town and at the end of a rikisha ride he showed me his chief pride—a plot of several lots he'd bought, and on them erected a splendid church at the very gates of one of Japan's chief universities of learning.
Ten thousand dollars had been donated toward the work by an American soap manufacturer who had visited Kioto and seen his work, and placed the cash in the young man's hands to build that church.
"Dominie," I asked, as we worked our way back to his home, via rikisha, trolleys and on foot, "what is your yearly budget for all this work you are carrying on here in Kioto?"
"Twenty-five hundred gold dollars," he told me. His and his wife's salary (he married a missionary) was $750.00 each.
Only one thousand dollars for the annual expense, outside their salaries, to pay for tracts and current expenses for the work—native preachers and teachers to keep the enterprise going—twenty-five hundred dollars came from the homeland to push the gospel in Kioto under his charge.
I mentally took this missionary's measure as he told me his story. He was more than preacher, as we know the ordinary type at home. Of necessity his was a wider range of activities; a business man, a man of affairs, keen, alert, his eye on the gun.
His heart was in his work, to hold up his end in bringing over to Christianity a constituency of half a million souls—a young man putting in ability which, if as intelligently and earnestly directed in a business career in America, should win him ten, twenty—who knows how many thousand dollars per year reward?
I doubt if a guarantee of that difference in pay would tempt the young man from his chosen work—at least that was the impression I got as he unburdened his heart to me.
The young man had a vision of things worth more to him than money.
We wound up the forenoon tour at one o'clock at a union meeting of missionaries—got in as the meeting was drawing to an end.