LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA

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CHAPTER VII. LAST YEARS AND DEATH. DURING the last ten months of his stay in America Mr. Neesima was busy in presenting his plans for the Doshisha to the churches. He sailed from San Fran, cisco in November, arriving at Yokohama December 12, 1885. On reaching the railway station at Kyoto he found over five hundred friends,-students, teach­ers, relatives, and prominent citizens of the city,~ assembled there to greet him. On the following day the tenth anniversary of the foundation of the Doshi­sha was celebrated, and Mr. Neesima laid the comer­stones of two new buildings. As one reads his account of this joyful home-coming, and sees him alighting from the train in this once secluded and holy city of the empire to receive the welcome of so many friends, one remem hers the poor boy who, twenty years before, in opposition to those claims of filial duty so strong to Japanese hearts, stole away by night from a remote seaport in the north, a lonely exile under penalty of death. December 23d he wrote to Mrs. Hardy : -"How happy I was then to be received by so many greetings I cannot express. At home I found my aged parents impa#ently waiting for me. My wife had prepared a regular Japanese supper, and we sat on our heels in the Japanese fashion. It was a happy day with us indeed. When I attempted to translate your kind letters to my wife and parents I was obliged

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