DEAR NISHIDA,--I do not know how to thank you enough for your last letter;--indeed I must tell you frankly that I felt ashamed of having put you to such trouble involuntarily, for I had no idea how complicated the matter was when I wrote to you for information about the origin of the belief. And now let me beg of you never to take so much trouble again on my account. I think I can hear you protesting that it was only a pleasure. I am sure it was a pleasure to help me; but I am too much of a literary man not to know exactly the time-cost of the work, especially in a language not your own. So I will again beg you not to take so much trouble for me at any future time--as it would cause me pain.
And now let me say something else about other letters. You spoke of _mistakes_. Do you know that I think your letters are very wonderful? There are extremely few mistakes; and there are very seldom even incorrectnesses in the use of idioms. This is rare in Japan. Very few Japanese, even among those who have been abroad, can write an informal letter without mistakes of a serious kind. You write letters much as a well-educated German or Frenchman would--showing only rarely, by some unfamiliar turn of expression, by the elision of a preposition, or (but this is very seldom indeed) by a sudden change of tense, that it is not an Englishman who writes. And in a few years more, even these little signs will disappear. It is very wonderful to me to see how a few Japanese have been able to master English without ever leaving Japan.
A point of much value to me in your explanation was the fact that too many souls are held to be as bad as too few. I had imagined the opposite to be the case, and had so written. But as I put the statement into the mouth of a story-teller, it will read all right enough; and I can correct the erroneous impression by a footnote.
There is rejoicing here over the non-abolition of the school. Your predictions have been well fulfilled. Several new books I recommended have been adopted; but there were changes made in my list, I think for the worse. Kingsley's "Greek Heroes" (Ginn, Heath & Co.'s school-text edition) has been adopted for the younger class. I recommended this book for the extreme purity and simplicity of its English, which reads like a song. I tried to get "Cuore" adopted, but could not succeed: they said it was "too childish." I tried Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome;" and that I think they will get. Then some classic texts--Burke's Essays (selected) were adopted instead of a volume of stories I proposed. They adopted also "The Book of Golden Deeds," a volume of anecdotes of virtue and courage. As for my own classes, they still give me no books at all; and I teach entirely by word of mouth and chalk. Still, considering the short time given to each class, I believe this is best. The main thing is to teach them to express themselves in English without books to help them. I have noticed that at one period of the course there is always a sudden improvement, as if there had been also a sudden development of intelligence,--between the third and fourth class. It corresponds to a change of capacity I noticed also in the Jinj[=o] Ch[=u]gakk[=o]. It might be indicated by lines, thus:--