"
"Aw hullo!--I come down now," replied Takahashi.
I had seen both lynx and lion climb down out of a tree, but nothing
except a squirrel could ever have beaten Takahashi. The spruce was fully
one hundred and fifty feet high; and unless I made a great mistake the
Jap descended in two minutes. He grinned from ear to ear.
"I no see you--no hear," he said. "You take me for big cat?"
"Yes, George, and I might have shot you. What were you doing up there?"
Takahashi brushed the needles and bark from his clothes. "I go out with
little gun you give me. I hunt, no see squirrel. Go out no gun--see
squirrel. I chase him up tree--I climb high--awful high. No good.
Squirrel he too quick. He run right over me--get away."
Takahashi laughed with me. I believed he was laughing at what he
considered the surprising agility of the squirrel, while I was laughing
at him. Here was another manifestation of the Jap's simplicity and
capacity. If all Japanese were like Takahashi they were a wonderful
people. Men are men because they do things. The Persians were trained to
sweat freely at least once every day of their lives. It seemed to me
that if a man did not sweat every day, which was to say--labor hard--he
very surely was degenerating physically. I could learn a great deal from
George Takahashi. Right there I told him that my father had been a
famous squirrel hunter in his day.
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