The men of the first and second Reserve were none the less anxious and quick to gather round their standard. Some of them were so poor that their wives and children seemed likely to starve without them, others came from the sick beds of old, dying parents;—all must have had cares and anxieties to detain them. But now the emergency had arisen, and the time had come for them to “offer themselves courageously for the State.”[6] What a privilege, they all thought, for a man to be permitted to give his life for the nation’s cause! When we saw them swarm together day after day, our hearts bounded with redoubled joy and strength. Here is a sad story of this time. Nakamura, a private of the first Reserve, had an invalid wife and a baby of three. They were extremely poor, and the family would starve without the husband. Of course, however, the family trouble had no place in their minds before a national crisis. On the eve of her husband’s departure, the poor emaciated woman gathered all her scanty strength, went to the town near by and bought two _go_[7] of rice and one _sen_[8] worth of fuel. This handful of grain and bundle of firewood, are they really as insignificant as they seem to be? Nay, the two _go_ of rice and the _sen_ worth of wood were for the loving wife’s farewell banquet[9] in honor of her husband’s great opportunity. And yet at the time of separation, the wife was sick and the child starving, and the husband going to give his life to his country! In the morning, before daybreak, Nakamura bade good-by to wife and baby, and without a farewell from his neighbors hastened bravely to his post. Such was only one out of hundreds of thousands of similar heartrending instances. The kind and sympathetic people left at home at once began to relieve these unfortunate families, so that the men at the front could devote their whole attention and energy to their duties as soldiers. When the men of the first and second Reserve arrived in their garrison, some of them were rejected on account of insufficient health or physique. How sad and crestfallen they looked when thus rejected! “Please, can’t you take me in some way? They gave me such a great send-off when I left the village, they _banzaied_[10] me over and over again when my train started. I came here determined not to go home again. How can I stand the disgrace of going back to my neighbors as a useless failure? Do please take me with you,” they would entreat. The officers in charge had great difficulty in soothing and comforting these “failures” and persuading them to go home. “Good luck to you! Your family will be well taken care of. All right, eh?” “All right, all right! I will bring you a dozen or two of the Russkies’s heads when I come back!” “My dear Saku, don’t die of an illness; if you die, die on the battle-field. Don’t worry about your brother!” “I am ready not to tread on the soil of Japan again with this pair of legs.[11] Be happy with me, when you hear that I died in battle.”