172 Japan and the Japanese. 
Education, Mr. Tanaka, arrived in America, with a large 
suite, prepared to visit Europe, to study European civiliza- 
tion, and report to his imperial master. This embassy 
required an interpreter, and the young man was selected to 
fill the post. In this capacity, he travelled through England, 
France, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, and Germany, finally re- 
turning to America for ordination. Inducements were held 
out to him to settle in America, but, remaining faithful in 
his patriotic love for Japan, he refused all offers, deciding 
to return and labour among his countrymen. By that time 
the old cruel law was repealed, or at least practically dead, 
so it was safe for him to return home. To-day, that young 
man, the Rev. Joseph Neesima, is resident in Tokio, pro- 
fessor in a college for training young men for the ministry. 
He is married, and finds in his wife a helpmeet in his work. 
Of the stndents in this college, Miss Bird says : " These 
young men bear their own expenses, and wear the Japanese 
dress, but their Japanese politeness has much deteriorated, 
which is a pity, and the peculiar style and manner and 
attitude, which we recognise as American, does not sit well 
upon them. They are an earnest body of students ; their 
moral tone is very high, they all abstain from sake^ they are 
all heartily convinced of the truth of Christianity, they are 
anxious to be furnished with every weapon against the old 
heathenism, and the new philosophies, and they mean to 
spend their lives in preaching Christianity. Several of 
them already preach in the vacation, and just now, one, 
named Hongma, is meeting with singular success at Hikone, 
on Lake Biwa, the changed lives of some of the converts 
being matters of notoriety. It is to such men as these that 
the conversion of Japan will be mainly owing, if their 
sanguine views are realized." 
With this institution, and this kind of doctrine in their 
