LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA

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CALLS FROM JAPAN. 165 me come there. He finds it quite hard to preach in Japanese. If I did not know him to be a careful man I would not believe that his statement is true, it seems so graphic and highly colored concerning the rapid growth of my country. I do not yet know my fu­ture {lestiny in Japan. I ha.ve not yet an idea where I shall be settled or how I shall be supported." In March he writes: "Dr. Clark, Secretary of the American Board, sent me word to call on him as soon as possible, in order to talk over with me my future plans. Accordingly I did so. He showed me a letter from Mr. Green, a missionary at Kobe, and asked me whether I was willing to offer myself to the mission­ary work in Japan. Of course I made an uncondi­tional surrender to this call." At the same time au urgent appeal for his presence and cooperation was received from the missionaries at Kobe, several of whom were his personal friends and had been associated with him as fellow-students. Even a pe1·fect morality must suffer from lame exposi­tion, and the need was felt of one who could speak in the Japanese tongue, who could interpret much that was harsh and forbidding, because foreign, to the Japanese mind, and who should add to intellectual power that of winning confidence and giving sym­pathy, a power which a native only could effectively exert. As a result of his conversation with Dr. Clark, Mr. Neesima definitely offered himself as a missionary under the auspices of the American Board, to whose secretaries he addressed the following letter : -

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