a year; next he attended the School of Mining and Railways, from which he was graduated and sent to Japan.
While in Tokyo, he decided to study medicine in the Sendai School of Medicine. He had been studying for two years when the Russo-Japanese War broke out. It was at that time that he attended a motion-picture performance and saw a captured Chinese spy, who was about to undergo the penalty of decapitation; and he felt so depressed over the matter that he wished to do something for the masses at once. Although the author says very briefly that this convinced him the more that there should be established a school of modern literature in China, the full meaning of his pregnant words was that he wanted to give voice to the masses, who, for some four thousand years, had been sadly neglected in what was considered good and recognized literature. He gave up his studies and tried to broach a scheme in Tokyo, which failed, as did his attempt to go to Germany to study.
At the age of twenty-nine, he returned to China, where he taught biology and chemistry in Hangchow for two years; after that, he became principal of the Shaohsing Middle School. At the invitation of the Minister of Education, he became a member of the Department of Education and later was transferred to Peking, where,
