precedent to show these country fellows any weakness, I lectured rather
loudly and in brusque tone. During the first part the students were
taken aback and listened literally with their mouths open. "That's one
on you!" I thought. Elated by my success, I kept on in this tone, when
one who looked the strongest, sitting in the middle of the front row,
stood up suddenly, and called "Teacher!" There it goes!--I thought, and
asked him what it was.

"A-ah sa-ay, you talk too quick. A-ah ca-an't you make it a leetle slow?
A-ah?" "A-ah ca-an't you?" "A-ah?" was altogether dull.

"If I talk too fast, I'll make it slow, but I'm a Tokyo fellow, and
can't talk the way you do. If you don't understand it, better wait
until you do."

So I answered him. In this way the second hour was closed better than I
had expected. Only, as I was about to leave the class, one of the
students asked me, "A-ah say, won't you please do them for me?" and
showed me some problems in geometry which I was sure I could not solve.
This proved to be somewhat a damper on me. But, helpless, I told him I
could not make them out, and telling him that I would show him how next
time, hastily got out of the room. And all of them raised "Whee--ee!"
Some of them were heard saying "He doesn't know much." Don't take a
teacher for an encyclopaedia! If I could work out such hard questions as
these easily, I would not be in such a backwoods town for forty yen a
month. I returned to the teachers' room.

"How was it this time?" asked Porcupine. I said "Umh." But not satisfied
with "Umh" only, I added that all the students in this school were
boneheads. He put up a whimsical face.