Botchan | Page 6

had to do milk
delivery. Shortly afterwards he sent for a second-hand dealer and sold
for a song all the bric-a-bric which had been handed down from ages
ago in our family. Our house and lot were sold, through the efforts of a
middleman to a wealthy person. This transaction seemed to have netted
a goodly sum to him, but I know nothing as to the detail.
For one month previous to this, I had been rooming in a boarding house
in Kanda-ku, pending a decision as to my future course. Kiyo was
greatly grieved to see the house in which she had lived so many years
change ownership, but she was helpless in the matter.
"If you were a little older, you might have inherited this house," she
once remarked in earnest.
If I could have inherited the house through being a little older, I ought
to have been able to inherit the house right then. She knew nothing, and
believed the lack of age only prevented my coming into the possession
of the house.
Thus I parted from my brother, but the disposal of Kiyo was a difficult
proposition. My brother was, of course, unable to take her along, nor
was there any danger of her following him so far away as Kyushu,

while I was in a small room of a boarding house, and might have to
clear out anytime at that. There was no way out, so I asked her if she
intended to work somewhere else. Finally she answered me definitely
that she would go to her nephew's and wait until I started my own
house and get married. This nephew was a clerk in the Court of Justice,
and being fairly well off, had invited Kiyo before more than once to
come and live with him, but Kiyo preferred to stay with us, even as a
servant, since she had become well used to our family. But now I think
she thought it better to go over to her nephew than to start a new life as
servant in a strange house. Be that as it may, she advised me to have
my own household soon, or get married, so she would come and help
me in housekeeping. I believe she liked me more than she did her own
kin.
My brother came to me, two days previous to his departure for Kyushu,
and giving me 600 yen, said that I might begin a business with it, or go
ahead with my study, or spend it in any way I liked, but that that would
be the last he could spare. It was a commendable act for my brother.
What! about only 600 yen! I could get along without it, I thought, but
as this unusually simple manner appealed to me, I accepted the offer
with thanks. Then he produced 50 yen, requesting me to give it to Kiyo
next time I saw her, which I readily complied with. Two days after, I
saw him off at the Shimbashi Station, and have not set my eyes on him
ever since.
Lying in my bed, I meditated on the best way to spend that 600 yen. A
business is fraught with too much trouble, and besides it was not my
calling. Moreover with only 600 yen no one could open a business
worth the name. Were I even able to do it, I was far from being
educated, and after all, would lose it. Better let investments alone, but
study more with the money. Dividing the 600 yen into three, and by
spending 200 yen a year, I could study for three years. If I kept at one
study with bull-dog tenacity for three years, I should be able to learn
something. Then the selection of a school was the next problem. By
nature, there is no branch of study whatever which appeals to my taste.
Nix on languages or literature! The new poetry was all Greek to me; I
could not make out one single line of twenty. Since I detested every

kind of study, any kind of study should have been the same to me.
Thinking thus, I happened to pass front of a school of physics, and
seeing a sign posted for the admittance of more students, I thought this
might be a kind of "affinity," and having asked for the prospectus, at
once filed my application for entrance. When I think of it now, it was a
blunder due to my hereditary recklessness.
For three years I studied about as diligently as ordinary fellows, but not
being of a particularly brilliant quality, my standing in the class was
easier to find by looking up from the bottom. Strange, isn't it, that when
three years were over, I graduated? I had to laugh at