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SEEKEKS AFTER GOD. 311
a hollow place cut in them for the ink when made
liquid by rubbing sticks of solid ink with water.
The black fluid was used with pencils, or pens,
which were brushes made of fine hair. The copybooks
were of thick paper cut into leaves a foot
square, which were so repeatedly covered with ink
as to be without a spot of white. After every writ-
ing lesson the bpoks were hung out upon lines to
dry, and the next day new writing exercises were
practiced upon the old thick layers of ink which
had been used the day before. The wet ink easily
showed plainly on the dry and caked deposits of
previous exercises.
One may wonder at the great change which had
come over Mr. Honda Jiro, that he should turn from
becoming a would-be assassin into a quiet teacher;
but the truth is that years of reflection, in addition
to the constraint and instruction derived from the
good and discreet Professor Koba and the kindness
of the daimios of Echizen, had wrought a trans-
formation. In the first place, Mr. Rai had hinted to
Honda, when first out of the Yedo prison, that the
real object of Professor Koba was to restore the
Mikado to ancient power, but that his plan was to
do it in a different way than by killing the foreigners.
In the second place, the prince himself had
assured him that the best way, in the long run, to
overcome the foreigners and to keep Japan safe, was
to adopt their learning, weapons, and moral principles
; while Mr. Rai had been most wise and kind
and helpful in assisting Honda to understand that
the pen and the book were mightier than the sword.