A few foreigners have, however, become heroes in Japanese eyes.  President Clark and Rev. S.R.  Brown had great influence on groups of young men in the early years of Meiji, while giving them secular education combined with Christian instruction.  The conditions, however, were then extraordinarily exceptional, and it is a noticeable fact that neither man remained long in Japan at that time.  Another foreigner who was exalted to the skies by a devoted band of students was a man well suited to be a hero—­for he had the samurai spirit to the full.  Indeed, in absolute fearlessness and assumption of superiority, he out-samuraied the samurai.  He was a man of impressive and imperious personality.  Yet it is a significant fact that when he was brought back to Japan by his former pupils, after an absence of about eighteen years, during which they had continued to extol his merits and revere his memory, it was not long before they discovered that he was not the man their imagination had created.  Not many months were needed to remove him from his pedestal.  It would hardly be a fair statement of the whole case to leave the matter here.  So far as I know, President Clark and Rev. S.R.  Brown have always retained their hold on the imagination of the Japanese.  The foreigner who of all others has perhaps done the most for Japan, and whose services have been most heartily acknowledged by the nation and government, was Dr. Guido F. Verbeck, who began his missionary work in 1859; he was the teacher of large numbers of the young men who became leaders in the transformation of Japan; he alone of foreigners was made a citizen and was given a free and general pass for travel; and his funeral in 1898 was attended by the nobility of the land, and the Emperor himself made a contribution toward the expenses.  Dr. Verbeck is destined to be one of Japan’s few foreign heroes.

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