morning less than a week later. Snow had been falling since the night before, and the roof of the drill-shed stretching out below the windows was covered so deep that no shade of the tiles showed through, but in the classroom a coal fire blazed red in the stove, and even the snow that fell on the window panes melted away before it had time to throw in its pale blue reflected light. Sitting in a chair in front of the stove, Mōri Sensei was squeezing out his shrill voice as usual, earnestly teaching us the “Psalm of Life” from the Choice Reader , but of course not a single student was seriously listening. Worse yet, a certain jujitsu champion seated beside me had all along been reading a story of adventure by Oshikawa Shunro in the Chivalrous World spread out under his reader.
This went on for probably twenty or thirty minutes. Then Mōri Sensei, suddenly getting up from his chair, began to discuss the question of life in connection with the Longfellow poem he was reading. I do not remember the gist of his talk at all, but I think that, rather than an argument, it was something impressionistic built around his own life. For I faintly remember that he said something like this as he babbled on in an agitated tone, lifting and lowering his arms constantly just like a plucked bird:
“You don’t understand life yet. Do you? Even if you want to, you can’t. That itself doubtless makes you happy. When you get like me, you know life perfectly. You know it, but it’s mostly hardships. Understand? It’s mostly hardships. I myself have two children. Well, I must send them to school. When I send them—er—when I send them—tuition? Yes, that’s it. Tuition is necessary. Isn’t it? So it’s mostly hardships all right.”
But of course we could not be expected to understand the feelings of this teacher who, whether he intended to or not, actually appealed against the troubles of life even to us unsophisticated middle school students. Rather, we who saw only the ridiculous side of the fact that he was making the appeal as he went on speaking, all began to snicker. Only our