Botchan (Master Darling)

Because of an hereditary recklessness, I have been playing always a losing game since my childhood. During my grammar school days, I was once laid up for about a week by jumping from the second story of the school building. Some may ask why I committed such a rash act. There was no particular reason for doing such a thing except I happened to be looking out into the yard from the second floor of the newly-built school house, when one of my classmates, joking, shouted at me; “Say, you big bluff, I’ll bet you can’t jump down from there! O, you chicken-heart, ha, ha!” So I jumped down. The janitor of the school had to carry me home on his back, and when my father saw me, he yelled derisively, “What a fellow you are to go and get your bones dislocated by jumping only from a second story!”

“I’ll see I don’t get dislocated next time,” I answered.

One of my relatives once presented me with a pen-knife. I was showing it to my friends, reflecting its pretty blades against the rays of the sun, when one of them chimed in that the blades gleamed all right, but seemed rather dull for cutting with.