Among the signs of Japanese craving for heroes may be mentioned the constant experience of missionaries when search is being made for a man to fill a particular place. The descriptions of the kind of man desired are such that no one can expect to meet him. The Christian boys' school in Kumamoto, and the church with it, went for a whole year without principal and pastor because they could not secure a man of national reputation. They wanted a hero-principal, who would cut a great figure in local politics and also be a hero-leader for the Christian work in the whole island of Kyushu, causing the school to shine not only in Kumamoto, but to send forth its light and its fame throughout the Empire and even to foreign lands. The unpretentious, unprepossessing-looking man who was chosen temporarily, though endowed with common sense and rather unusual ability to harmonize the various elements in the school, was not deemed satisfactory. He was too much like Socrates. At last they found a man after their own heart. He had traveled and studied long abroad; was a dashing, brilliant fellow; would surely make things hum; so at least said those who recommended him (and he did). But he was still a poor student in Scotland; his passage money must be raised by the school if he was to be secured. And raised it was. Four hundred and seventy-five dollars those one hundred and fifty poor boys and girls, who lived on two dollars a month, scantily clothed and insufficiently warmed, secured from their parents and sent across the seas to bring back him who was to be their hero-principal and pastor. The rest of the story I need not tell in detail, but I may whisper that he was more of a slashing hero than they planned for; in three months the boys' school was split in twain and in less than three years both fragments of the school had not only lost all their Christian character, but were dead and gone forever. And the grounds on which the buildings stood were turned into mulberry fields.