paragraph of Robinson Crusoe or something, in the smart tone peculiar to Tokyo Middle School boys. And as he read, Mōri Sensei, putting his hand now and then to his purple necktie, went along carefully correcting his every wrong translation, of course, and even his slightest mispronunciation. There was something strangely affected in his pronunciation, but it was for the most part accurate and distinct, and he seemed in his own heart to have special confidence in himself in this direction.
But after the student had taken his seat and Mōri Sensei began his own translation of the passage, laughter arose again here and there among us. For this teacher, who was such a master in pronunciation, when he came to translate, knew so few Japanese words as hardly to seem like a Japanese. Or it may have been that, even if he did know them, he was not able to find them on the spur of the moment. For instance, to translate only one line, he said, “So at last Robinson Crusoe decided to keep it. As for why he decided to keep it, it was one of these queer animals—there are many of them at the zoo—what do you call them? Er—they’re clever at tricks—you all must know what I mean, don’t you? You know, they have red faces—what? Monkeys? Yes, yes, it was one of those monkeys. He decided to keep one of those monkeys.”
Of course, since he had that much trouble with the word “monkey,” when it came to any word that was a little difficult, he could not strike upon a suitable translation till he had gone all around it many times. Besides, he was at such times greatly flustered, and putting his hand to his throat so frequently that it seemed he must tear off his purple necktie, he lifted his anxious face and looked at us with panic-stricken eyes. And then, pressing his bald head in his two hands, he would put his face down on the desk and come to an abashed stop. At such times his naturally small body shrank up timidly exactly like a deflated rubber balloon, and even his legs, hanging down from the chair, seemed to float danglingly in space. And again, we students found that funny and tittered. Then while