All I say is, Let us study them.--MATTHEW ARNOLD


For seven years in succession the men, old, middle-aged and young, who
had done the most remarkable things in the agriculture of the
prefecture had been invited to gather in conference. I went to this
annual "meeting of skilful farmers." Among the speakers were the local
governor and chiefs of departments who had been sent down by the
Ministry of Agriculture and the Home Office. According to our ideas,
everybody but the unpractised speakers--the expert farmers who were
called from time to time to the platform--spoke too long. But the
kneeling audience found no fault. Indeed, a third of it was taking
notes. It was an audience of seeking souls.

One of the impromptu speakers, a white-haired, toil-marked farmer,
told how forty years before he had gone to the next prefecture and
opened new land. "With his spectacles and moustache," explained the
chairman--if the man who takes the initiative from time to time at a
Japanese meeting may be properly called a chairman--"he looks like a
gentleman; but he works hard." And the man showed his hands as a
testimony to the severity of his labours.

"It was in the winter," he said, "that I went away from my home and
obtained a certain tract of waste. I had no acquaintance near. I
brought some food, but when I fell short I had no more. I had gone
with my third boy. We lived in a small hut and were in a miserable
condition. Then a fierce wind took off the roof. It was at four in the
morning when the roof blew off. In February I began to open a rice
field. Gradually we got a _chō_. At length I opened another _chō_,
but there was much gravel. Some of my newly opened fields are very