LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA

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HUNGER FOR KNOWLEDGE. 5 that 'you can write Japan very well, and you can earn yourself enough with it. I£ you don't run out from there any more I will give you more wages. With what reason will you like foreign knowledge? Per­haps it will ,mistake yourself.' I said : 'Why will it mistake myself ? I guess every one must take some knowledge. If a man has not any knowledge I will worth him as a dog or a pig.' Then he laughed very hard about it, and said to me : ' You are stable boy.' Beside him, my grandfather, parents, sisters, friends, and neighbors, heated or laughed for me about it. But I never took care to them, and held my stableness very fast. After few months I got many business in the office, and I could not get out from there. Ah ! it made me many musings in my head and made me some sickness too. I would not like to see anybody, and would not desire to go out to play myself, but I liked only to stay in a peaceful room. I knew it is bad sickness, therefore I went to some doctor, hoping to get some medicine. After he stay my sickness many times, he told me, 'Your sickness comes from your mind, therefore you must try to destroy your warm mind, and must take walk for healthfulness of your body, and it would be more better than many medicines.' The prince gave me many times to feed my weakness, and my father gave me some money to play myself. But I went every day to my master's house to learn Holland. I read up Holland grammar, spending many times, and I took a small book of na­ture, and I pleased to read it so much as I would say that this book would be more better than doctors' medicine to my sickness. When my sickness got bet­ter, after few months, the prince picked me up again to write his daily book. and I must stay in the office

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