he older brothers smiled between
their tears:--'Well said, little fellow! So canst thou well boast of
being our father's child.' When they had placed him between them, Sakon
thrust the dagger into the left side of his own abdomen and
asked--'Look, brother! Dost understand now? Only, don't push the dagger
too far, lest thou fall back. Lean forward, rather, and keep thy knees
well composed.' Naiki did likewise and said to the boy--'Keep thy eyes
open or else thou mayst look like a dying woman. If thy dagger feels
anything within and thy strength fails, take courage and double thy
effort to cut across.' The child looked from one to the other, and when
both had expired, he calmly half denuded himself and followed the
example set him on either hand."

The glorification of _seppuku_ offered, naturally enough, no small
temptation to its unwarranted committal. For causes entirely
incompatible with reason, or for reasons entirely undeserving of death,
hot headed youths rushed into it as insects fly into fire; mixed and
dubious motives drove more samurai to this deed than nuns into convent
gates. Life was cheap--cheap as reckoned by the popular standard of
honor. The saddest feature was that honor, which was always in the
_agio_, so to speak, was not always solid gold, but alloyed with baser
metals. No one circle in the Inferno will boast of greater density of
Japanese population than the seventh, to which Dante consigns all
victims of self-destruction!

And yet, for a true samurai to hasten death or to court it, was alike
cowardice. A typical fighter, when he lost battle after battle and
was pursued from plain to hill and from bush to cavern, found himself
hungry and alone in the dark hollow of a tree, his sword blunt with
use, his bow broken and arrows exhausted--did not the noblest of
the Romans fall upon his own sword in Phillippi under like
circumstances?--deemed it cowardly to die, but with a fortitude
approaching a Christian martyr's, cheered himself with an impromptu
verse:

"Come! evermore come,
Ye dread sorrows and pains!
And heap on my burden'd back;
That I not one test may lack
Of what strength in me remains!"

This, then, was the Bushido teaching--Bear and face all calamities and
adversities with patience and a pure conscience; for as Mencius[20]
taught, "When Heaven is about to confer a great office on anyone, it
first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with