Every thought, idea, purpose,
principle within him was for the world to read and to those
who could not know how rigidly he matched his inner and outer
life he was almost unbelievable. He was exacting in
friendship because his standard was high and because he gave
what he asked; and if he told you of a fault he told you first
of a virtue that made the fault seem small indeed. But he
told you and expected you to tell him.
Naturally, the indirection of the Japanese was
incomprehensible to him. He was not good at picking up
strange tongues, and the Japanese equivalent for the Saxon
monosyllable for what the Japanese was to him he never
learned. For only one other word did he have more use and I
believe it was the only one he knew, "hyaku--hurry!" Over
there I was in constant fear for him because of his knight-
errantry and his candor. Once he came near being involved in
a duel because of his quixotic championship of a woman whom he
barely knew, and disliked, and whose absent husband he did not
know at all. And more than once I looked for a Japanese to
draw his two-handed ancestral sword when Dick bluntly demanded
a reconciliation of his yea of yesterday with his nay of to-
day. Nine months passed and we never heard the whistle of
bullet or shell.
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