19003 Samurai Persistence 



however, any Asiatic student who finds his way over- 

 seas is "one of a thousand," a person of superior 

 ambition. In recent years American-born Japanese 

 girls as well as boys have begun to enter our colleges; 

 these are thoroughly "assimilated," sometimes know- 

 ing little or nothing of the old mother tongue or of 

 native Japanese customs. 



Abe's experiences were interesting and typical of 

 samurai persistence. At twenty, not knowing a word adventure:i 

 of English, he left San Francisco bearing a placard, 

 "Send this man to Denver." There he became in 

 turn farm laborer, railway section hand, and appren- 

 tice to the trade of rubber cutting. From Denver 

 he went on to Peoria, thence to Arkansas where he 

 worked as railway gateman. Stricken with malaria, 

 he now returned to Illinois; growing profoundly 

 discouraged, however, he was tempted, he said, "to 

 curse God and die." But pulling himself together he 

 went back to Colorado to work for a time as a cowboy, 

 meanwhile studying English with a friendly judge, 

 who advised him to enter school at once. Dr. James 

 H. Baker, principal of the Denver High School (later 

 president of the University of Colorado), then helped 

 him to pay his way and finish his course by the sale 

 of Navajo blankets. In 1894 he entered the Univer- 

 sity of Chicago, but finding the climate unfavorable, 

 started for California with only ten dollars, and by 

 "beating it" through on the trains, arrived with a 

 margin of fifty cents. At Stanford he served as 

 cook in Gilbert's family. On receiving his degree in 

 1898, he returned to Japan, to become clerk in a 

 Tokyo steamship office. Now we found him, at the 

 age of thirty-four, married and relatively prosperous, 

 a magazine writer and advocate of rigorous moral 



C9 3 



