, but expressed in a supreme degree all the Japanese
virtues; docile to the degree of going to sleep when bidden, and of
laughing when it awakened. The eerie wisdom of its face seemed to
suggest a memory of all its former lives. The incident he relates also
of a little Samurai boy whom he and his wife had adopted is interesting
as showing the Spartan discipline exercised over Japanese children from
earliest youth, enabling them in later life to display that iron
self-control that has astonished the world; interesting, also, as
showing how nothing escaped Hearn's quick observation and assiduous
intellect. Hearn, at first, wanted to fondle the child, and make much of
him, but he soon found that it was not in accordance with custom. He
therefore ceased to take notice of him; and left him under the control
of the women of the house. Their treatment of him Hearn thought
peculiar; the little fellow was never praised and rarely scolded. One
day he let a little cup fall and broke it. No notice was taken of the
accident for fear of giving him pain. Suddenly, though the face remained
quite smilingly placid as usual, he could not control his tears. As soon
as they saw him cry, everybody laughed and said kind things to him, till
he began to laugh, too. But what followed was more surprising.
Apparently he had been distantly treated. One day he did not return from
school until three hours after the usual time; suddenly the women began
to cry--they were, indeed, more deeply affected than their treatment of
the boy would have justified. The servants ran hither and thither in
their anxiety to find him. It turned out that he had only been taken to
a teacher's house for something relating to school matters. As soon as
his voice was heard at the door, every one was quiet, cold, and
distantly polite again.

On September 17th he writes again to his sister, thanking her for a copy
she had sent him of the _Saturday Review_. "You could send me nothing
more pleasing, or more useful in a literary way. It is all the more
welcome as I am really living in a hideous isolation, far away from
books, and book-shops, and Europeans. When I can get--which I hope is
the next year--into a more pleasant locality, I shall try to pick out
some pretty Oriental tales to send to the little ones." He was not able,
he goes on, to go far from Kumamoto, not liking to leave his little wife
too long alone; so his vacation was rather monotonous. He travelled only
as far