studies. Very soon the girls in the home begin lessons in light
household duties, sewing, weaving, and cooking. Koto-playing is an
accomplishment in the education of a girl, flower arrangement a
necessity. To this most difficult art is usually allotted a period of
five years. By tedious and patient practice the small hand must learn
delicacy of touch and deftness in twists, that each leaf and blossom
may express the symbol for which it stands. Every home festival and
feast calls for a certain “poem” in arrangement. This is the duty of
the young daughter of the house, who early must be well versed in the
legends and meaning of flowers.
In ceremonial tea, “O Cha No Yu,” there are especial lessons in
etiquette, which mean days and months of constant application and
repetition of certain attitudes and definite postures, before supple
muscles and youthful spirits are toned to the graceful formality and
modest reserve requisite to every well-bred Japanese girl. Should
the girl’s destiny point to the calling of geisha, or professional
entertainer, the training is severe. At the age of three or four
she is taken in hand by an expert in the business, and the strict
discipline of the training soon robs childhood of its rights. Should
a foolish law compel attendance for a year or so at school, it does
not in the least interfere with long hours of music lessons, dancing
lessons, flower arrangement, lessons in tea-serving, and the etiquette
peculiar to tea-houses. The girl is persuaded or forced into quiet
submission to the hard, tedious work by the glowing pictures of the
butterfly life that awaits her. There is only one standard in the
training of a geisha--attractiveness, and often the price of its
attainment is an irretrievable tragedy.
Education for the child of the East calls for different methods from
that of the West, and fully to understand the training of the Japanese
child one must know the influence and demand for ancestor-worship,
ethics, and the passion for patriotism. In fact, to understand any
part of the system of training, it must be remembered that the whole
moral and national education of the Japanese is based on the imperial
rescript given the people by the emperor in 1890. The rescript is
read in all the schools four times a year. The manner of reading, the
silence, breathless with reverence, in which it is received by the
students, young and old, is a profound testimony to the sacredness of
the emperor’s desires for his people.
The following is a translation, given by the president of the Tokio
University:
Know ye, Our Subjects:
Our Imperial Ancestors have founded Our Empire on a basis broad
and everlasting, and have deeply and firmly implanted virtue;
Our Subjects, ever united in loyalty and filial piety, have from
generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof. This is
the glory of the fundamental character of Our Empire, and herein
also lies the source of Our education. Ye, Our Subjects, be filial
to your parents, affectionate to your brothers and sisters; as
husbands and wives be harmonious; as friends, true; bear yourselves
in modesty and moderation; extend your benevolence to all; pursue
learning and cultivate the arts, and thereby develop intellectual
faculties and perfect moral powers; furthermore, advance public
good and promote common interests; always respect the Constitution
and observe the laws; should emergency arise, offer yourselves
courageously to the State; and thus guard and maintain the
prosperity of Our Imperial Throne coeval with heaven and earth.
So shall ye not only be Our good and faithful subjects, but render
illustrious the best traditions of your forefathers.
The Way here set forth is indeed the teaching bequeathed by Our
Imperial Ancestors, to be observed alike by Their Descendants and
the subjects, infallible for all ages, and true in all places. It
is Our Wish to lay it to heart in all reverence, in common with
you, Our Subjects, that we may all attain to the same virtue.
From the early days to the present, the educational system, which
enters more vitally into the training of a Japanese child than any
other influence, has survived many changes. The authorities have
sought earnestly in every country for the plan best adapted to the
peculiar demands of a country that was progressing by leaps. After the
Restoration, when every sentiment was swinging away from old customs
and traditions, there was a reorganization with the American plan as
a model. Soon, however, the wholesale doctrine of freedom proved too
radical for a country lately emerged from isolation and feudalism,
and much of the German system was introduced, and more rigid control
was exercised over the students. The schools assumed something of a
military atmosphere and the dangers of a too new liberty were laid low
for a while.
It would be difficult in a brief space to estimate the whole influence
of European and American methods on Japanese education. While these
influences, especially those of America, have enjoyed successive waves
of favor and disrepute, it is undoubtedly true that the educational
department is slowly but surely feeling its way to the final adoption
of a general American plan. So far, the most marked tendency of the
Western spirit has been a bolder assertion of individual freedom, less
tolerance of the teacher’s supreme authority, a demand for a more
practical education and not so much eagerness for the Chinese classics.
While to an outsider the present system in many instances seems
needlessly complex, and in frequent danger of a sad and sudden death
from strangulation by its endless red tape, yet a glimpse of the
internal workings of the department is reassuring.
Whatever criticism might be offered as to the methods of training or
defects thereof in school or home, one undeniable truth stands out
boldly: despite its faults, or because of its virtues, the system has
produced men splendidly brave and noble, and women whose lives stand
for all that is tender and beautiful in womanhood and motherhood.
[Illustration]
BROTHER LEO
BY PHYLLIS BOTTOME
WITH PICTURES BY W. T. BENDA
It was a sunny morning, and I was on my way to Torcello. Venice lay
behind us a dazzling line, with towers of gold against the blue lagoon.
All at once a breeze sprang up from the sea; the small, feathery
islands seemed to shake and quiver, and, like leaves driven before
a gale, those flocks of colored butterflies, the fishing-boats, ran
in before the storm. Far away to our left stood the ancient tower of
Altinum, with the island of Burano a bright pink beneath the towering
clouds. To our right, and much nearer, was a small cypress-covered
islet. One large umbrella-pine hung close to the sea, and behind it
rose the tower of the convent church. The two gondoliers consulted
together in hoarse cries and decided to make for it.
“It is San Francesco del Deserto,” the elder explained to me. “It
belongs to the little brown brothers, who take no money and are very
kind. One would hardly believe these ones had any religion, they are
such a simple people, and they live on fish and the vegetables they
grow in their garden.”
We fought the crooked little waves in silence after that; only the high
prow rebelled openly against its sudden twistings and turnings. The
arrowy-shaped gondola is not a structure made for the rough jostling
of waves, and the gondoliers put forth all their strength and skill to
reach the tiny haven under the convent wall. As we did so, the black
bars of cloud rushed down upon us in a perfect deluge of rain, and we
ran speechless and half drowned across the tossed field of grass and
forget-me-nots to the convent door. A shivering beggar sprang up from
nowhere and insisted on ringing the bell for us.
The door opened, and I saw before me a young brown brother with the
merriest eyes I have ever seen. They were unshadowed, like a child’s,
dancing and eager, and yet there was a strange gentleness and patience
about him, too, as if there was no hurry even about his eagerness.
He was very poorly dressed and looked thin. I think he was charmed to
see us, though a little shy, like a hospitable country hostess anxious
to give pleasure, but afraid that she has not much to offer citizens of
a larger world.
“What a tempest!” he exclaimed. “You have come at a good hour. Enter,
enter, Signore! And your men, will they not come in?”
We found ourselves in a very small rose-red cloister; in the middle of
it was an old well under the open sky, but above us was a sheltering
roof spanned by slender arches. The young monk hesitated for a moment,
smiling from me to the two gondoliers. I think it occurred to him that
we should like different entertainment, for he said at last:
“You men would perhaps like to sit in the porter’s lodge for a while?
Our Brother Lorenzo is there; he is our chief fisherman, with a great
knowledge of the lagoons; and he could light a fire for you to dry
yourselves by--Signori. And you, if I mistake not, are English, are you
not, Signore? It is probable that you would like to see our chapel. It
is not much. We are very proud of it, but that, you know, is because
it was founded by our blessed father, Saint Francis. He believed in
poverty, and we also believe in it, but it does not give much for
people to see. That is a misfortune, to come all this way and to see
nothing.” Brother Leo looked at me a little wistfully. I think he
feared that I should be disappointed. Then he passed before me with
swift, eager feet toward the little chapel.
It was a very little chapel and quite bare; behind the altar some monks
were chanting an office. It was clean, and there were no pictures or
images, only, as I knelt there, I felt as if the little island in its
desert of waters had indeed secreted some vast treasure, and as if
the chapel, empty as it had seemed at first, was full of invisible
possessions. As for Brother Leo, he had stood beside me nervously for
a moment; but on seeing that I was prepared to kneel, he started,
like a bird set free, toward the altar steps, where his lithe young
impetuosity sank into sudden peace. He knelt there so still, so rapt,
so incased in his listening silence, that he might have been part of
the stone pavement. Yet his earthly senses were alive, for the moment I
rose he was at my side again, as patient and courteous as ever, though
I felt as if his inner ear were listening still to some unheard melody.
We stood again in the pink cloister. “There is little to see,” he
repeated. “We are _poverelli_; it has been like this for seven hundred
years.” He smiled as if that age-long, simple service of poverty were
a light matter, an excuse, perhaps, in the eyes of the citizen of a
larger world for their having nothing to show. Only the citizen, as he
looked at Brother Leo, had a sudden doubt as to the size of the world
outside. Was it as large, half as large, even, as the eager young heart
beside him which had chosen poverty as a bride?
The rain fell monotonously against the stones of the tiny cloister.
“What a tempest!” said Brother Leo, smiling contentedly at the sky.
“You must come in and see our father. I sent word by the porter of your
arrival, and I am sure he will receive you; that will be a pleasure for
him, for he is of the great world, too. A very learnèd man, our father;
he knows the French and the English tongue. Once he went to Rome; also
he has been several times to Venice. He has been a great traveler.”
“And you,” I asked--“have you also traveled?”
Brother Leo shook his head.
“I have sometimes looked at Venice,” he said, “across the water, and
once I went to Burano with the marketing brother; otherwise, no, I have
not traveled. But being a guest-brother, you see, I meet often with
those who have, like your Excellency, for instance, and that is a great
education.”
We reached the door of the monastery, and I felt sorry when another
brother opened to us, and Brother Leo, with the most cordial of
farewell smiles, turned back across the cloister to the chapel door.
“Even if he does not hurry, he will still find prayer there,” said a
quiet voice beside me.
I turned to look at the speaker. He was a tall old man with white hair
and eyes like small blue flowers, very bright and innocent, with the
same look of almost superb contentment in them that I had seen in
Brother Leo’s eyes.
“But what will you have?” he added with a twinkle. “The young are
always afraid of losing time; it is, perhaps, because they have
so much. But enter, Signore! If you will be so kind as to excuse
the refectory, it will give me much pleasure to bring you a little
refreshment. You will pardon that we have not much to offer?”
The father--for I found out afterward that he was the superior
himself--brought me bread and wine, made in the convent, and waited on
me with his own hands. Then he sat down on a narrow bench opposite to
watch me smoke. I offered him one of my cigarettes, but he shook his
head, smiling.
“I used to smoke once,” he said. “I was very particular about my
tobacco. I think it was similar to yours--at least the aroma, which
I enjoy very much, reminds me of it. It is curious, is it not, the
pleasure we derive from remembering what we once had? But perhaps it is
not altogether a pleasure unless one is glad that one has not got it
now. Here one is free from things. I sometimes fear one may be a little
indulgent about one’s liberty. Space, solitude, and love--it is all
very intoxicating.”
There was nothing in the refectory except the two narrow benches on
which we sat, and a long trestled board which formed the table; the
walls were whitewashed and bare, the floor was stone. I found out later
that the brothers ate and drank nothing except bread and wine and their
own vegetables in season, a little macaroni sometimes in winter, and
in summer figs out of their own garden. They slept on bare boards,
with one thin blanket winter and summer alike. The fish they caught
they sold at Burano or gave to the poor. There was no doubt that they
enjoyed very great freedom from “things.”
It was a strange experience to meet a man who never had heard of a
flying-machine and who could not understand why it was important to
save time by using the telephone or the wireless-telegraphy system; but
despite the fact that the father seemed very little impressed by our
modern urgencies, I never have met a more intelligent listener or one
who seized more quickly on all that was essential in an explanation.
“You must not think we do nothing at all, we lazy ones who follow old
paths,” he said in answer to one of my questions. “There are only
eight of us brothers, and there is the garden, fishing, cleaning, and
praying. We are sent for, too, from Burano to go and talk a little with
the people there, or from some island on the lagoons which perhaps no
priest can reach in the winter. It is easy for us, with our little boat
and no cares.”
“But Brother Leo told me he had been to Burano only once,” I said.
“That seems strange when you are so near.”
“Yes, he went only once,” said the father, and for a moment or two he
was silent, and I found his blue eyes on mine, as if he were weighing
me.
“Brother Leo,” said the superior at last, “is our youngest. He is very
young, younger perhaps than his years; but we have brought him up
altogether, you see. His parents died of cholera within a few days of
each other. As there were no relatives, we took him, and when he was
seventeen he decided to join our order. He has always been happy with
us, but one cannot say that he has seen much of the world.” He paused
again, and once more I felt his blue eyes searching mine. “Who knows?”
he said finally. “Perhaps you were sent here to help me. I have prayed
for two years on the subject, and that seems very likely. The storm
is increasing, and you will not be able to return until to-morrow.
This evening, if you will allow me, we will speak more on this matter.
Meanwhile I will show you our spare room. Brother Lorenzo will see that
you are made as comfortable as we can manage. It is a great privilege
for us to have this opportunity; believe me, we are not ungrateful.”
It would have been of no use to try to explain to him that it was for
us to feel gratitude. It was apparent that none of the brothers had
ever learned that important lesson of the worldly respectable--that
duty is what other people ought to do. They were so busy thinking
of their own obligations as to overlook entirely the obligations of
others. It was not that they did not think of others. I think they
thought only of one another, but they thought without a shadow of
judgment, with that bright, spontaneous love of little children, too
interested to point a moral. Indeed, they seemed to me very like a
family of happy children listening to a fairy-story and knowing that
the tale is true.
After supper the superior took me to his office. The rain had ceased,
but the wind howled and shrieked across the lagoons, and I could hear
the waves breaking heavily against the island. There was a candle on
the desk, and the tiny, shadowy cell looked like a picture by Rembrandt.
“The rain has ceased now,” the father said quietly, “and to-morrow the
waves will have gone down, and you, Signore, will have left us. It is
in your power to do us all a great favor. I have thought much whether
I shall ask it of you, and even now I hesitate; but Scripture nowhere
tells us that the kingdom of heaven was taken by precaution, nor do I
imagine that in this world things come oftenest to those who refrain
from asking.”
“All of us,” he continued, “have come here after seeing something of
the outside world; some of us even had great possessions. Leo alone
knows nothing of it, and has possessed nothing, nor did he ever wish
to; he has been willing that nothing should be his own, not a flower
in the garden, not anything but his prayers, and even these I think he
has oftenest shared. But the visit to Burano put an idea in his head.
It is, perhaps you know, a factory town where they make lace, and the
people live there with good wages, many of them, but also much poverty.
There is a poverty which is a grace, but there is also a poverty which
is a great misery, and this Leo never had seen before. He did not know
that poverty could be a pain. It filled him with a great horror, and
in his heart there was a certain rebellion. It seemed to him that in a
world with so much money no one should suffer for the lack of it.
“It was useless for me to point out to him that in a world where there
is so much health God has permitted sickness; where there is so much
beauty, ugliness; where there is so much holiness, sin. It is not that
there is any lack in the gifts of God; all are there, and in abundance,
but He has left their distribution to the soul of man. It is easy for
me to believe this. I have known what money can buy and what it cannot
buy; but Brother Leo, who never has owned a penny, how should he know
anything of the ways of pennies?
“I saw that he could not be contented with my answer; and then this
other idea came to him--the idea that is, I think, the blessèd hope of
youth: that this thing being wrong, he, Leo, must protest against it,
must resist it! Surely, if money can do wonders, we who set ourselves
to work the will of God should have more control of this wonder-working
power? He fretted against his rule. He did not permit himself to
believe that our blessèd father, Saint Francis, was wrong, but it was
a hardship for him to refuse alms from our kindly visitors. He thought
the beggars’ rags would be made whole by gold; he wanted to give them
more than bread, he wanted, _poverino!_ to buy happiness for the whole
world.”
The father paused, and his dark, thought-lined face lighted up with a
sudden, beautiful smile till every feature seemed as young as his eyes.
“I do not think the human being ever has lived who has not thought that
he ought to have happiness,” he said. “We begin at once to get ready
for heaven; but heaven is a long way off. We make haste slowly. It
takes us all our lives, and perhaps purgatory, to get to the bottom of
our own hearts. That is the last place in which we look for heaven, but
I think it is the first in which we shall find it.”
“But it seems to me extraordinary that, if Brother Leo has this thing
so much on his mind, he should look so happy,” I exclaimed. “That is
the first thing I noticed about him.”
“Yes, it is not for himself that he is searching,” said the superior.
“If it were, I should not wish him to go out into the world, because I
should not expect him to find anything there. His heart is utterly at
rest; but though he is personally happy, this thing troubles him. His
prayers are eating into his soul like flame, and in time this fire of
pity and sorrow will become a serious menace to his peace. Besides, I
see in Leo a great power of sympathy and understanding. He has in him
the gift of ruling other souls. He is very young to rule his own soul,
and yet he rules it. When I die, it is probable that he will be called
to take my place, and for that it is necessary he should have seen
clearly that our rule is right. At present he accepts it in obedience,
but he must have more than obedience in order to teach it to others; he
must have a personal light.
“This, then, is the favor I have to ask of you, Signore. I should like
to have you take Brother Leo to Venice to-morrow, and, if you have the
time at your disposal, I should like you to show him the towers, the
churches, the palaces, and the poor who are still so poor. I wish him
to see how people spend money, both the good and the bad. I wish him to
see the world. Perhaps then it will come to him as it came to me--that
money is neither a curse nor a blessing in itself, but only one of
God’s mysteries, like the dust in a sunbeam.”
“I will take him very gladly; but will one day be enough?” I answered.
The superior arose and smiled again.
“Ah, we slow worms of earth,” he said, “are quick about some things!
You have learned to save time by flying-machines; we, too, have certain
methods of flight. Brother Leo learns all his lessons that way. I
hardly see him start before he arrives. You must not think I am so
myself. No, no. I am an old man who has lived a long life learning
nothing, but I have seen Leo grow like a flower in a tropic night. I
thank you, my friend, for this great favor. I think God will reward
you.”
Brother Lorenzo took me to my bedroom; he was a talkative old man, very
anxious for my comfort. He told me that there was an office in the
chapel at two o’clock, and one at five to begin the day, but he hoped
that I should sleep through them.
“They are all very well for us,” he explained, “but for a stranger,
what cold, what disturbance, and what a difficulty to arrange the
right thoughts in the head during chapel! Even for me it is a great
temptation. I find my mind running on coffee in the morning, a thing
we have only on great feast-days. I may say that I have fought this
thought for seven years, but though a small devil, perhaps, it is a
very strong one. Now, if you should hear our bell in the night, as a
favor pray that I may not think about coffee. Such an imperfection! I
say to myself, the sin of Esau! But he, you know, had some excuse; he
had been hunting. Now, I ask you--one has not much chance of that on
this little island; one has only one’s sins to hunt, and, alas! they
don’t run away as fast as one could wish! I am afraid they are tame,
these ones. May your Excellency sleep like the blessed saints, only a
trifle longer!”
[Illustration:
Drawn by W. T. Benda Half-tone plate engraved by R. C. Collins
“HE WAS LOOKING OUT OVER THE BLUE STRETCH OF LAGOON INTO THE DISTANCE,
WHERE VENICE LAY LIKE A MOVING CLOUD AT THE HORIZON’S EDGE”]
I did sleep a trifle longer; indeed, I was quite unable to assist
Brother Lorenzo to resist his coffee devil during chapel-time. I did
not wake till my tiny cell was flooded with sunshine and full of
the sound of St. Francis’s birds. Through my window I could see the
fishing-boats pass by. First came one with a pair of lemon-yellow
sails, like floating primroses; then a boat as scarlet as a dancing
flame, and half a dozen others painted some with jokes and some with
incidents in the lives of patron saints, all gliding out over the blue
lagoon to meet the golden day.