Note 10 — Chapter XIX · JAPAN. (continued 2)

The following souvenir of Count Mutsu, Foreign Minister of Japan, who died in 1897, told by Mr J. F. Lowder and quoted in 'Things Japanese' by Mr Basil Hall Chamberlain, affords a graphic illustration of this point. "In the very early Sixties, when he was in his nineteenth or twentieth year, he was in Nagasaki desirous of acquiring a knowledge of English. A lady of my acquaintance taking an interest in him used to devote an hour or two every morning to teaching him to read and write, but it was not long before he came to me despairing of his slow progress, and asking whether I could not give him a berth on board ship where nothing but English was spoken. Believing him to be physically too weak to stand such an ordeal, I endeavoured to dissuade him, but without success; and so with some misgivings I shipped him as a cabin-boy, which was the only position I could obtain for him, on board a small British schooner that used in those days to voyage between Nagasaki and Shanghai. How long he remained on board I cannot say, but my recollection is that it was a very considerable time."