I think this little bit of natural remorse is also worth the writing down:—
"I was eight years old when I first went to school. I was a bad boy. I remember on the way home from school I had a quarrel with one of my playmates,—younger than I. He threw a very little stone at me which hit me. I took a branch of a tree lying in the road, and struck him across the face with all my might. Then I ran away, leaving him crying in the middle of the road. My heart told me what I had done. After reaching my home, I thought I still heard him crying. My little playmate is not any more in this world now. Can any one know my feelings?"
All this capacity of young men to turn back with perfect naturalness of feeling to scenes of their childhood appears to me essentially Oriental. In the Occident men seldom begin to recall their childhood vividly before the approach of the autumn season of life. But childhood in Japan is certainly happier than in other lands, and therefore perhaps is regretted earlier in adult life. The following extract from a student's record of his holiday experience touchingly expresses such regret:
"During the spring vacation, I went home to visit my parents. Just before the end of the holidays, when it was nearly time for me to return to the college, I heard that the students of the middle school of my native town were also going to Kumamoto on an excursion, and I resolved to go with them.
"They marched in military order with their rifles. I had no rifle, so I took my place in the rear of the column. We marched all day, keeping time to military songs which we sung all together.
"In the evening we reached Soyeda. The teachers and students of the Soyeda school, and the chief men of the village, welcomed us. Then we were separated into detachments, each of which was quartered in a different hotel. I entered a hotel, with the last detachment, to rest for the night.
"But I could not sleep for a long time. Five years before, on a similar 'military excursion,' I had rested in that very hotel, as a student of the same middle school. I remembered the fatigue and the pleasure; and I compared my feelings of the moment with the recollection of my feelings then as a boy. I could not help a weak wish to be young again like my companions. They were fast asleep, tired with their long march; and I sat up and looked at their faces. How pretty their faces seemed in that young sleep!"
III
The preceding selections give no more indication of the general character of the students' compositions than might be furnished by any choice made to illustrate a particular feeling. Examples of ideas and sentiments from themes of a graver kind would show variety of thought and not a little originality in method, but would require much space. A few notes, however, copied out of my class-register, will be found suggestive, if not exactly curious.