principal, to whose room I was ushered at once. With scant mustache,
dark-skinned and big-eyed, the principal was a man who looked like a
badger. He studiously assumed an air of superiority, and saying he would
like to see me do my best, handed the note of appointment, stamped big,
in a solemn manner. This note I threw away into the sea on my way back
to Tokyo. He said he would introduce me to all my fellow teachers, and I
was to show to each one of them the note of appointment. What a bother!
It would be far better to stick this note up in the teachers' room for
three days instead of going through such a monkey process.

The teachers would not be all in the room until the bugle for the first
hour was sounded. There was plenty of time. The principal took out his
watch, and saying that he would acquaint me particularly with the school
by-and-bye, he would only furnish me now with general matters, and
started a long lecture on the spirit of education. For a while I
listened to him with my mind half away somewhere else, but about half
way through his lecture, I began to realize that I should soon be in a
bad fix. I could not do, by any means, all he expected of me. He
expected that I should make myself an example to the students, should
become an object of admiration for the whole school or should exert my
moral influence, besides teaching technical knowledge in order to
become a real educator, or something ridiculously high-sounding. No man
with such admirable qualities would come so far away for only 40 yen a
month! Men are generally alike. If one gets excited, one is liable to
fight, I thought, but if things are to be kept on in the way the
principal says, I could hardly open my mouth to utter anything, nor take
a stroll around the place. If they wanted me to fill such an onerous
post, they should have told all that before. I hate to tell a lie; I
would give it up as having been cheated, and get out of this mess like a
man there and then. I had only about 9 yen left in my pocket after