Identifier: lifelettersoflaf02hear (find matches)
Title: The life and letters of Lafcadio Hearn
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850-1904 Bisland, Elizabeth, 1861-1929
Subjects:
Publisher: Boston, New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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niforms and peculiar capswith Chinese letters on them; but only a small per-centage regularly wear the uniform. The old dis-cipline has been relaxed; and there is a generalreturn to sandals and robes and hakama, — the capalone marking the university man. About seventy-five per cent of the students oughtnot to be allowed in the university at all forcertain branches. Some who know no Europeanlanguage but French attend German lectures onphilosophy; some who know nothing of any Euro-pean language attend lectures on philology. What isthe university, then ? — is it only a mask to imposeupon the intellectual West ? No: it is the best Japancan do, but it has the fault of being a gate to publicoffice. Get through the university, and you havea post — a start in life. Fancy the outside Orientalpressure to force lads through — the influences inter-crossing and fulminating ! Accordingly, the powerwithin is little more than nominal. Who rules infact.^ Nobody exactly. Certainly the Directing
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HI—I w Q< C W TI TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK 283 President does not, — nor do the heads of colleges,except in minor matters of discipline. All, or nearlyall, are graduates of German, English, or French orAmerican universities; — they know what ought tobe — but they do only what they can. Somethingnameless and invisible, much stronger than they, —political perhaps, certainly social, — overawes thewhole business. . I ought not to say anything, and wont except toyou. No foreign professor says much,—even afterreturning home. None have had just cause to com-plain of treatment received. Besides, if things wereas they are in the West, I would nt be allowed toteach (there would be a demand for a *Christianand gentleman). I lecture on subjects which I do notunderstand; and yet without remorse, because Iknow just enough to steer those who know muchless. After a year or two I shall probably be morefit for the position. Studying in one class, for a university text,Tennysons Princess (my

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