for he mentions the fact that he has
nine lives dependent upon him: wife, wife's mother, wife's father,
wife's adopted mother, wife's father's father, then servants, and a
Buddhist student.

This wouldn't do in America, he says to Ellwood Hendrik, but it is
nothing in Japan. The moral burden, however, was heavy enough; he
indulged in the luxury of filial piety, and it was impossible to let a
little world grow up round him, to depend on him, and then break it all
up--the good and evil results of "filial piety" are only known to
orientals, and an oriental he had now become. His people felt like fish
out of water, everything surrounding them was so different from their
primitive home in Izumo. A goat in the next yard, "_mezurashii
kedamono_," filled his little wife with an amused wonder. Some geese and
a pig also filled her with surprise, such animals did not exist in the
highlands of Japan.

The Kumamoto Government College was one of the largest in Japan,--came
next, indeed, to the Imperial University in Tokyo in importance. It was
run on the most approved occidental lines. A few of the boys still
adhered to their Japanese dress, but most of them adopted the military
uniform now, as a rule, worn in Japanese colleges. There were three
classes, corresponding with three higher classes of the _Jinjo
Chugakko_--and two higher classes. He did not now teach on Saturdays.
There were no stoves--only _hibachi_. The library was small, and the
English books were not good. There was a building in which Jiu-jitsu was
taught; and separate buildings for sleeping, eating, and bathing. The
bath-room was a surprise. Thirty or forty students could bathe at the
same time; and four hundred could sit down to meals in the great
dining-hall. There was a separate building, also, for the teaching of
chemistry, natural history, etc.; and a small museum.

Hearn apparently foregathered with none of the masters of the college,
except the old teacher of Chinese. The others he simply saluted morning
and evening, and in the intervals between classes sat in a corner to
himself smoking his pipe.

"You talk of being without intellectual companionship!" he writes to
Hendrik. "OH YE EIGHT HUNDRED MYRIADS OF GODS! What would you do if you
were me? Lo! The illusion is gone! Japan in Kyushu is like
Europe--except I have no friend. The differences in ways of thinking,
and the difficulties of language, render it impossible for an _educated_
Japanese to find pl