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.
"Rather dull? See if they don't cut!" I retorted.
"Cut your finger, then," he challenged. And with "Finger nothing! Here
goes!" I cut my thumb slant-wise. Fortunately the knife was small and
the bone of the thumb hard enough, so the thumb is still there, but the
scar will be there until my death.
About twenty steps to the east edge of our garden, there was a
moderate-sized vegetable yard, rising toward the south, and in the
centre of which stood a chestnut tree which was dearer to me than life.
In the season when the chestnuts were ripe, I used to slip out of the
house from the back door early in the morning to pick up the chestnuts
which had fallen during the night, and eat them at the school. On the
west side of the vegetable yard was the adjoining garden of a pawn shop
called Yamashiro-ya. This shopkeeper's son was a boy about 13 or 14
years old named Kantaro. Kantaro was, it happens, a mollycoddle.
Nevertheless he had the temerity to come over the fence to our yard and
steal my chestnuts.
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