The Days of a Man (Volume 2); Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher, and Minor Prophet of Democracy (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN At Tokyo our loyal Abe left us, glad to have seen so places Abe jc of jg native land in our company and to have gathered material for an essay on "Japan as Seen through Foreign Eyes." Otaki, equally energetic, more demonstrative, and less given to philosophy, now succeeded to all duties and privileges. The northern tour (on which we set forth without delay) proved quite as rich in scientific results as that through the south, and even more interesting because the fish-fauna of the north had never been studied before. Moreover, we now found the country people in general more spirited and sympathetic, and, on the whole, better educated than their southern fellows. Physically, they have longer faces and average rather larger and stronger, the round head characteristic of Kyushyu, still more of the Ryukyu Islands farther south, being rarely observed by us northward from Tokyo. After a long day's ride we reached Sendai, the largest town in northern Japan. But while yet some forty miles away, caught without coats or collars because of the heat, and wearing a general air of doubtful respectability, we were met by a delegation of Dr. leading citizens. At the head appeared Dr. David B. Schneder, the wise and devoted president of North Japan College and for thirteen years a missionary of the Dutch Reformed Church in Sendai. At the station, thirty more men awaited us. On being introduced by Schneder, each proffered his card, then 19003 Sendai held out a hand in uncertain fashion as though practicing a new and strange rite, allowing us to shake it as we chose. But I had carelessly come without cards, for hitherto we had found people incurious and so had had little need to exchange these mementos. The double ceremony over, the stack I held amounted to about sev...