laughter did not turn into its usual guffaw, which was perhaps due to the fact that his shabby clothes and his expression as he ran shrilly on aroused in us a certain amount of sympathy, as if they were the hardships of life themselves. But though our laughter did not grow louder, after a moment the jujitsu champion sitting beside me suddenly put aside his Chivalrous World and stood up with the fierceness of a tiger. And as I wondered what he was going to do, he said,
“Sensei, we attend this class to be taught English. So if you don’t teach it to us, there’s no need of our staying in this classroom. If you go on talking like that, I shall go at once to the gymnasium.”
With that, he made as sour a face as he could and took his seat again most fiercely. I have never seen a man look so strange as Mōri Sensei did then. With his mouth still half open as if he had been struck by lightning, he simply stood like a poker by the stove for a minute or two gazing into that impetuous student’s face. But finally that imploring expression rushed into his animalish eyes and set them alight, and he suddenly put his hand to that purple necktie of his and lowering his bald head two or three times, said,
“Yes, I’m at fault. I’ve done wrong, so I apologize sincerely. To be sure, you’re all here to study English. I did wrong not to teach you English. Since I’ve done wrong, I apologize sincerely. You understand, don’t you? I apologize sincerely.”
And he repeated the same sort of thing over and over again, smiling such a smile that he seemed almost to be weeping. Through the door of the stove, the fire cast a red light aslant across his figure, making the worn places on his coat at the shoulders and waist stand out more clearly. At the same time, his bald head, every time he ducked it, shone with a fine coppery gloss and looked even more like an ostrich egg.
But this pitiful scene then seemed to me but the exposing of this teacher’s essential inferiority. Now he was trying to escape the danger of