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MEN, MONKEYS, HOUSES, AND SOTS. 157
machine subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions,
decimals, extraction of square and cube root,
and many other arithmetical problems can be done
much more rapidly than by our common methods.
In
old time, when Mr. Honda was a boy, the only
books and literature
studied were Chinese, which is
to Japanese very much as Latin is to English.
Through the influence of Mr. Rai, Doctor Sano, and
men of like mind Japanese was introduced and seriously
studied for the first time about the year that
Rai Taro first entered school. A few were beginning
to master Dutch, and these found it such hard
work that, though they persevered, they were called
by the fencing boys of old-fashioned methods " paleface-and-big-top-knot
fellows." The ultra conservatives
also despised the students of arithmetic, which
had been introduced into the course of studies after
a struggle, considering that men who had handled
money, whether samurai or traders, must necessarily
be thieves. In this they were not so far wrong, for
in the day of spies and bribery and oppression of
one class by another, two and two did not commonly
make four. Among the shopkeepers too the idea
seemed to be to get rich by defrauding customers,
and then to lock up the money in a strong-box or
to bury it in the ground. Between the idle privileged
classes and the toiler without right or proper
protection against the strong or insolent there was
little love lost.
Before the age of thirteen the son of a samurai
was necessarily a vassal or retainer of the lord in