Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/186

Rising Sun. You will learn—and learn. But you will learn honorably. For you are a samurai, O Takamori-san!"

And so the young samurai took ship for Europe. He was accompanied by Kaguchi, an old family servant, short, squat, flat-nosed, dark of skin and long of arm. A low-caste he was who had sunk his personality in that of the family whom his ancestors had been serving for generations, who had never considered his personal honor but only that of his master's clan which to him stood for the whole of Nippon.

If Takagawa Takamori had been small among the short, sturdy daimios of Kiushu, he seemed wizened and diminutive among the long-limbed, well-fleshed men of Prussia and Mecklenburg, and Saxony who crowded the chemical laboratory of Professor Kreutzer. Gentlemen according to the stiff, angular, ramrod German code, they recognized that the little parchment-skinned, spectacled Asian was a gentleman according to his own code, and so, while they pitied him after the manner of big blond men, lusty of tongue, hard of thirst and greedy of meat, they sympathized with him. They even liked him; and they tried to help him when they saw his narrow-lidded, myopic eyes squint over tomes and long-necked glass retorts in a desperate attempt to assimilate in six short semesters the chemical knowledge which Europe had garnered in the course of twice a hundred years.

Professor Kreutzer, who had Semitic blood in his veins and was thus in the habit of leaping at a subject from a flying start and handling it with consciously dramatic swiftness, was frequently exasperated at Takagawa's slowness of approach and comprehension. On the other hand, his German training and traditions