I puzzled a good deal over your marks. I am inclined to think that one
explanation is that you have thought so much of home as to prevent your
really putting your whole strength into your studies. It is most natural
that you should count the days before coming home, and write as you do
that it will only be 33 days, only 26 days, only 19 days, etc., but at
the same time it seems to me that perhaps this means that you do not
really put all your heart and all your head effort into your work; and
that if you are able to, it would be far better to think just as little
as possible about coming home and resolutely set yourself to putting
your best thought into your work. It is an illustration of the old adage
about putting your hand to the plow and then looking back. In after
life, of course, it is always possible that at some time you may have to
go away for a year or two from home to do some piece of work. If during
that whole time you only thought day after day of how soon you would get
home I think you would find it difficult to do your best work; and maybe
this feeling may be partly responsible for the trouble with the lessons
at school.
Wednesday, Washington's Birthday, I went to Philadelphia and made
a speech at the University of Pennsylvania, took lunch with the
Philadelphia City Troop and came home the same afternoon with less
fatigue than most of my trips cost me; for I was able to dodge the awful
evening banquet and the night on the train which taken together drive
me nearly melancholy mad. Since Sunday we have not been able to ride.
I still box with Grant, who has now become the champion middleweight
wrestler of the United States. Yesterday afternoon we had Professor
Yamashita up here to wrestle with Grant. It was very interesting, but of
course jiu jitsu and our wrestling are so far apart that it is difficult
to make any comparison between them. Wrestling is simply a sport with
rules almost as conventional as those of tennis, while jiu jitsu is
really meant for practice in killing or disabling our adversary. In
consequence, Grant did not know what to do except to put Yamashita on
his back, and Yamashita was perfectly content to be on his back. Inside
of a minute Yamashita had choked Grant, and inside of two minutes more
he got an elbow hold on him that would have enabled him to break his
arm; so that there is no question but that he could have put Grant out.
So far this made it evident that the jiu jitsu man could handle the
ordinary wrestler. But Grant, in the actual wrestling and throwing
was about as good as the Japanese, and he was so much stronger that he
evidently hurt and wore out the Japanese. With a little practice in the
art I am sure that one of our big wrestlers or boxers, simply because
of his greatly superior strength, would be able to kill any of those
Japanese, who though very good men for their inches and pounds are
altogether too small to hold their own against big, powerful, quick men
who are as well trained.