General Grant In Japanese Eyes

In The Century is printed a translatiou of portions of a quaiiit Japauese life of General Grant. The following is an extract from it : In the spring of his seventeenth yeai he expressed a great thought to his father and addressed him, saying, "I have in my mind the thought that, ■when f our years f rom todayhavepassed, I shall not be doing this kind of labor. " The father, thinking it a strange thing, said: "Do you hateyour father'shereditary trad e? Do you hate to become a leather maker and spend your life thus? What profession, then, do yon expect to adopt in future? Do you expect to go into the fields carrying a sickle and a hoe? Do you expect to sell and buy things in the market? Or do you fis your eyeballs upon books of 10,000 volumes, and desire to speculate reasons and promote moralities, and become a man of wide knowledge?" Guarando Kuen, replying to these questions, said : "To cultivate the field and become a farmer is well, but to spend the whole life as a hireling is not well. To take a soroban (counting machine) and become a merchant and gain profit is well, but along with it to make bad practice is not my desiie. Contrary to all this, our ancestors, in the war of independence of this country, sowed great merit, I hear. I also, entering a military school, will have to show my arm in the time of great things. Oh, Father Kuen, hcnv, is it?" The father, being exceedingly glad, did as he wished.