Botchan (Master Darling)

Excerpt: 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!?