"I think," said Miyakawa, "that the hardest of all things to understand is why men live in the world. From the time a child is born, what does he do? He eats and drinks; he feels happy and sad; he sleeps at night; he awakes in the morning. He is educated; he grows up; he marries; he has children; he gets old; his hair turns first gray and then white; he becomes feebler and feebler,—and he dies.
"What does he do all his life? All his real work in this world is to eat and to drink, to sleep and to rise up; since, whatever be his occupation as a citizen, he toils only that he may be able to continue doing this. But for what purpose does a man really come into the world? Is it to eat? Is it to drink? Is it to sleep? Every day he does exactly the same thing, and yet he is not tired! It is strange.
"When rewarded, he is glad; when punished, he is sad. If he becomes rich, he thinks himself happy. If he becomes poor, he is very unhappy. Why is he glad or sad according to his condition? Happiness and sadness are only temporary things. Why does he study hard? No matter how great a scholar he may become, what is there left of him when he is dead? Only bones."
Miyakawa was the merriest and wittiest in his class; and the contrast between his joyous character and his words seemed to me almost startling. But such swift glooms of thought—especially since Meiji—not unfrequently make apparition in quite young Oriental minds. They are fugitive as shadows of summer clouds; they mean less than they would signify in Western adolescence; and the Japanese lives not by thought, nor by emotion, but by duty. Still, they are not haunters to encourage.
"I think," said I, "a much better subject for you all would be the Sky: the sensations which the sky creates in us when we look at it on such a day as this. See how wonderful it is!"
It was blue to the edge of the world, with never a floss of cloud. There were no vapors in the horizon; and very far peaks, invisible on most days, now-massed into the glorious light, seemingly diaphanous.
Then Kumashiro, looking up to the mighty arching, uttered with reverence the ancient Chinese words:—
"What thought is so high as It is? What mind is so wide?"
"To-day," I said, "is beautiful as any summer day could be,—only that the leaves are falling, and the semi are gone."
"Do you like semi, teacher?" asked Mori.