"His the kind eyes that saw so much for the stranger, his the kind lips that gave him so much wise advice, helping him through the difficulties that beset him, in consequence of his ignorance of the language." At the beginning of his first term Hearn found the necessity of remembering or pronouncing the names of the boys, even with the class-roll before him, almost an insurmountable difficulty. Nishida helped him; gave him all the necessary instructions about hours and text-books, placed his desk close to his, the better to prompt him in school hours, and introduced him to the directors and to the governor of the province. "Out of the East," the volume written later at Kumamoto, was dedicated to Nishida Sentaro, "In dear remembrance of Izumo days."
"Hearn's faith in this good friend was something wonderful," his wife tells us. "When he heard of Nishida's illness, in 1897, he exclaimed: 'I would not mind losing everything that belongs to me if I could make him well.' He believed in him with such a faith only possible to a child."
Nishida Sentaro was also one of the ancient lineage and caste, and an intimate friend of the Koizumi family.
Matsue had been at one time almost exclusively occupied by the Samurai feudal lords. After throwing open her doors to the world, and admitting western civilisation, Japan found herself obliged to accept, amongst other democratic innovations, the sweeping away of the great feudal and military past, reducing families of rank to obscurity and poverty. Youths and maidens of illustrious extraction, who had only mastered the "arts of courtesy" and the "arts of war," found themselves obliged to adopt the humblest occupations to provide themselves and their families with the means of livelihood. Daughters of men once looked upon as aristocrats had to become indoor servants with people of a lower caste, or to undertake the austere drudgery of the rice-fields or the lotus-ponds. Their houses and lands were confiscated--their heirlooms, costly robes, crested lacquer ware, passed at starvation prices to those whom "misery makes rich." Amongst these aristocrats the Koizumis were numbered. Nishida Sentaro, knowing their miserable circumstances, and seeing how advisable it would be, if it were Hearn's intention to remain in Japan, to have a settled home of his own, formed the idea of bringing about a union between Setsu and the English teacher at the Matsue College.