losing his job even by humoring his students. So he was a teacher because he had to be to make a living and not because he had any interest in education itself. While hazily making such criticism, I now felt contempt not only for his clothes and scholarship, but for his character as well, and I rested my chin in my hands on my Choice Reader and hurled at him one impertinent laugh after another, as he stood in front of the blazing stove being burned at the stake, as it were, both in spirit and in the flesh. Of course I was not the only one. The jujitsu champion who had cornered him, when he turned red and apologized, cast a momentary glance my way and, smiling a cunning smile, promptly began again to “study” that adventure story of Oshikawa Shunro’s under his reader.
And until the bugle sounded for recess, our Mōri Sensei, more confused than ever, went on trying desperately to translate poor Longfellow. Deep down in my ears still rings his shrill, almost choking, voice, as with the perspiration beading his sallow round face and his eyes constantly pleading for something unknown, he read, “Life is real, life is earnest.” But the cry of millions of miserable human beings hidden in that shrill voice was too deep to stimulate our ear drums in those days. So there were many besides myself who even yawned brazenly aloud as we grew more and more weary during that hour. But Mōri Sensei, holding his small body erect in front of the stove, and utterly oblivious of the flying snow coating the window panes, went on brandishing his reader incessantly and shouting desperately as if a spring in his head had suddenly unwound. “Life is real, life is earnest! Life is real, life is earnest!”
Consequently, when the school term for which he had been employed was over and we could see Mōri Sensei no more, we were glad and never felt the least regret. No, I might better say that we were so indifferent to his going that we did not even feel glad. I, especially, was so entirely lacking in graciousness that, as I grew to manhood during seven or eight years, passing through the middle school, the high school and the university, I practically forgot the very existence of such a teacher.