In a letter dated July 7, 1882, Hearn tells of his first adventures in the book-writing line and of the horrified criticisms of some of the Eastern book-reviewers. All told, however, he becomes the more purposeful Hearn, the man Mr. Watkin had always predicted he would be if he continued at his literary work in his own way. It is interesting for another reason, too, in that it shows how already, in these New Orleans days, Hearn was preparing himself by his studies for his future life in Japan.

"My Dear Old Dad: Your letter lies before me here like a white tablet of stone bearing a dead name; and in my mind there is just such a silence as one feels standing before a tomb,—so that I can press your hand only and say nothing.

"I must go North in a few months, by way of Cincinnati, and spend a week or so in the city. My intention is to see Worthington about a new publication. He is now in Europe. Here I make thirty dollars a week for about five hours' work a day, and the position appears tolerably solid; but the climate is enervating, the man who refuses to connect himself with church or clique lives alone like a hermit in the Thebaids, and one sickens of such a life at times. Sometimes I fancy that the older I grow, the more distasteful companionship becomes; but this may be owing to the situation here. Nevertheless I am feeling very old, old almost as the Tartar of Longfellow's poem,—'three hundred and sixty years.'

"Imagine the heavy, rancid air of a Southern swamp in midsummer, when the very clouds seem like those which belonged to the atmosphere of pregeologic periods, uncreated lead and iron,—never a breath of pure air,—dust that is powdered dung,—quaking ground that shakes with the passage of a wagon,—heat as of a perpetual vapor bath,—and at night, subtle damps that fill the bones with rheumatism and poison the blood. Then, when one thinks of green hills and brisk winds, comes a strange despondency. It is something like the outlying region through which Milton's Lucifer passed, half crawling, half flying, on his way to the Garden of Eden. Your little reprints provoked very pleasant old memories. I paid the Somebody one hundred and fifty dollars for the publication.[1] Have not yet heard from him. The understanding is that I get my money back and something besides. However, I shall be satisfied with the something. I have had many nice notices, letters from authors of some note, and a few criticisms of the true Pharisaic species. I enclose one for your amusement. I have also built up a fine library, about three hundred picked volumes, and have a little money saved. Have also some ambition to try the book business,—not here, but in San Francisco or somewhere else. However, I have no definite plans,—only a purpose to do something for myself and thus obtain leisure for a systematic literary purpose. Were you situated like me,—that is, having no large business or large interests,—I think I should try to coax you to seek the El Dorado of the future, where fortunes will certainly be made by practical men,—Mexico,—where no one ever lights a fire, and where one has only to go in the sun when he is too cold, into the shade when he is too warm. But for the present I will only ask you to come down here when the weather gets healthy and your business will allow it. You will stay with me, of course, and no expense. The trip would be agreeable in the season when the air is sweet with orange blossoms.

"The population here is exceedingly queer,—something it is hard to describe, and something which it is possible to learn only after a painful experience of years. At present I may say that all my acquaintances here are limited to about half a dozen, with one or two friends whom I invite to see me occasionally. Yet almost daily I receive letters from people I do not know, asking favors which I never grant. New Orleans is the best school for the study of human selfishness I have ever been in. Buddhism teaches that the second birth is to this life 'as the echo to the voice in the cavern, as the great footprints to the steps of the elephant.' According to the teaching of the Oriental Christ, this whole population will be born again as wild beasts,—which is consoling. ... You say you cannot write. I differ with you; but it would certainly be impossible for either of us to write many things we would like to say. Still, you can easily drop a line from time to time, even a postal card, just to let me know you are well. If I do not get up to see you by September, I hope to see you down. I dreamed one night that I heard the ticking of the queer clock,—like the longstrides of a man booted and spurred. You know the clock I mean,—the long, weird-faced clock. My eyes are not well, of course,—never will be; but they are better. More about myself I cannot tell you in a letter,—except that I suppose I have changed a little. Less despondent, but less hopeful; wiser a little and more silent; less nervous, but less merry; more systematic and perhaps a good deal more selfish. Not strictly economical, but coming to it steadily; and in leisure hours studying the theories of the East, the poetry of antique India, the teachings of the wise concerning absorption and emanation, the illusions of existence, and happiness as the equivalent of annihilation. Think they were wiser than the wisest of Occidental ecclesiastics.

"And still there is in life much sweetness and much pleasure in the accomplishment of a fixed purpose. Existence may be a delusion and desire a snare, but I expect to exist long enough to satisfy my desire to see thee again before entering Nirvana. So, reaching to thee the grasp of friendship across the distance of a thousand miles, I remain in the hope of being always remembered sincerely as your friend."

On September 10, 1882, in reply to a letter from Mr. Watkin, in which the latter said he thought of going to Tampa for a rest and possibly also to look around and see what the business prospers were, Hearn filled five big sheets with all the information he could gather about Tampa, from facts about fleas to a glowing eulogy of the moon,—"seven times larger than your cold moon."

Following upon his translations of Gautier, Hearn busied himself with translations from Flaubert, and sent the manuscript of the proposed title-page and introduction to Mr. Watkin to set up, as he was superstitious about his "Dear Old Dad" bringing him luck. As usual he urged his friend to visit him, drawing in a letter of September 14, 1882, the following alluring pictures:

"In October we shall have exquisite weather—St. Martin's summer, the Creoles call it,—something like Indian summer North. Then I shall indeed hope to see you. No danger now of fever; and will have a nice healthy room for you. If you can't get away in October, wait till November,—nice and clear month generally, with orange-blossom smells. Raven wants to have a big talk. As for writing, don't write if it bothers you. I am sure you cannot have much time and must take care of your eyes. Perhaps some day we can both take things more easily, and a long rest by running streams, near mountain winds and in a climate like unto an eternal mountain springtime. Dream of voices of birds, whisper of leaves, milky quivering of stars, laughing of streams, odors of pine and of savage flowers, shadows of flying clouds, winds triumphantly free. Horrible cities! vile air! abominable noises! sickness! humdrum human machines! Let us strike our tents! move a little nearer to Nature!"

October 26, 1882, still writing about the promised visit of Mr. Watkin, he sent the following:

"My Dear Old Man: As the twig is bent, &c.—neither you nor I can now correct ourselves of habits. We are both old. [Hearn was thirty-two and Mr. Watkin fifty-nine.] I, for my part, feel ancient as the moon, and regret the departure of my youth. But I observe that all my best friends have the same habit. There's Charley Johnson,—wrote me twice in five years. There's the old newspaper coteries never write me at all. There is myself, just as bad as anybody. When somebody asked Théophile Gautier to write, he answered, 'Oh, ask a carpenter to plane planks just for fun!' It is a fact. Life's too short.... I was afraid for a while that Yellow Jack was trying to climb up this way from Pensacola; but I think all danger is now over. The weather feels chilly to us,—alligator-blooded and web-footed dwellers of the swamp (the Dismal Swamp): it will feel warm to you....

"Yes; I think a river trip down would be nicer for you, as it would include rest, good living, and a certain magical illusion of Southern beauties which bewitched me into making my dwelling-place among the frogs and bugs and the everlasting mosquitoes. 'Bugs' here mean every flying and crawling thing whereof the entomology is unknown to the people. The electric lights nightly murder centillions of them."

The letter is signed as usual with the drawing of a raven. As a novelty, the bird is looking at a steamer bearing over the side-wheel the name Watkin.

November 24, 1882, he wrote to Mr. Watkin, foreshadowing the book, "Stray Leaves from Strange Literatures," which was to bring him his first meed of praise from all sides. Again in this letter he somewhat despondently referred to his being a small man in a world where, according to his morbid views, big men won all the battles:

"I'm busy on a collection of Oriental legends,—Brahmanic, Buddhistic, Talmudic, Arabic, Chinese, and Polynesian,—which I hope to have ready in the spring. I think I can get Scribner or Osgood to bring it out.

"I think myself that life is worth living under the conditions you speak of; but they are very hard to obtain. I would be glad to try a new climate,—a new climate is a new life, a new youth. Here the problem of existence forever stares one in the face with eyes of iron. Independence is so hard to obtain,—the churches, the societies, the organizations, the cliques, the humbugs are all working against the man who tries to preserve independence of thought and action. Outside of these one cannot obtain a woman's society, and if obtained one is forever buried in the mediocrity to which she belongs.... My idea of perfect bliss would be ease and absolute quiet,—silence, dreams, tepidness,—great quaint rooms overlooking a street full of shadows and emptiness,—friends in the evening, a pipe, a little philosophy, wandering under the moon.... I am beginning to imagine that to be forever in the company of one woman would kill a man with ennui. And I feel that I am getting old—immemorially old,—older than the moon. I ought never to have been born in this century, I think sometimes, because I live forever in dreams of other centuries and other faiths and other ethics,—dreams rudely broken by the sound of cursing in the street below, cursing in seven different languages. I can't tell you much else about myself. I live in my books, and the smoke of my pipe, and ideas that nobody has any right expelling a good time in this world unless he be gifted with great physical strength and force of will. These give success. Little phantoms of men are blown about like down in the storms of the human struggle: they have not enough weight to keep them in place. And the Talmud says: 'There are three whose life is no life: the Sympathetic man, the Irascible, and the Melancholy.' But alas! the art by which the Sorceress of Colchis could recreate a body by cutting it up and boiling it in a pot is lost. Don't you think happiness is solely the result of perfect health under normal conditions of existence? I believe in the German philosopher who said that whether one had a billion dollars a day or only one dollar a week, it made no difference in regard to the amount of happiness a human brain was susceptible of. Still, it would be so nice to avoid the opposite by walling oneself up from the human species,—like the Cainites, whose cities were 'walled up to Heaven.'"

There now ensues in the correspondence, a silence extending over a period of nearly five years. These were busy years for Hearn. His position in the New Orleans newspaper world became a prominent one, and his translations of stories from the French, made for the papers by which he was employed, were so favorably received as to give him greater confidence in his own abilities.

Early in June of the year 1887 things began to take a turn for greater work for Hearn. His studies of the negroes and the Creoles of Louisiana had attracted the attention of the publishers, and he had received some rather tempting offers to do work for them. It was then that he left New Orleans, going to New York by way of Cincinnati. With all of his old shyness, his avoidance of mere acquaintances, and his love of the white-haired old gentleman, who alone in Cincinnati had understood him, Hearn spent his entire day in Cincinnati in chat at Watkin's printing office, which was then situated at 26 Longworth Street. It was there that Hearn saw once more the tall clock, whose peculiar ticking seemed to have fascinated him and to which references are made even in his few letters from Japan. After the day with Mr. Watkin, he went direct to New York, where he was the guest of his friend, Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, the well-known musical critic, who was then living at 438 West 57th Street. From there it was that Hearn wrote to his mentor the following confession of affection and gratitude:

"Dear Old Man: A delightful trip brought me safe and sound to New York, where my dear friend Krehbiel was waiting to take me to his cosy home. I cannot tell you how much our little meeting delighted me, or how much I regretted to depart so soon, or how differently I regarded our old friendship from my old way of looking at it. I was too young, too foolish, and too selfish to know you as you are, when we used to be together. Ten years made little exterior change in me, but a great deal of heart-change; and I saw you as you are,—noble and true and frank and generous, and felt I loved you more than I ever did before; felt also how much I owed you, and will always owe you,—and understood how much allowance you had made for all my horrid, foolish ways when I used to be with you. Well, I am sure to see you again.' I am having one of the most delightful holidays here I ever had in my life; and I expect to stay a few weeks. If it were not for the terrible winters, I should like to live in New York. Some day I suppose I shall have to spend a good deal of my time here. The houses eleven stories high, that seem trying to climb into the moon,—the tremendous streets and roads,—the cascading thunder of the awful torrent of life,—the sense of wealth-force and mind-power that oppresses the stranger here,—all these form so colossal a contrast with the inert and warmly colored Southern life that I know not how to express my impression. I can only think that I have found superb material for a future story, in which the influence of New York on a Southern mind may be described. Well, new as these things may seem to me, they are, no doubt, old and uninteresting to you,—so that I shall not bore you with my impressions. I will look forward to our next meeting, when during a longer stay in Cin. I can tell you such little experiences of my trip as may please you. I want to get into that dear little shop of yours again. I dreamed of it the other night, and heard the ticking of the old clock like a man's feet treading on pavement far away; and I saw the Sphinx, with the mother and child in her arms, move her monstrous head, and observe: 'The sky in New York is grey!'

"When I woke up it was grey, and it remained grey until to-day. Even now it is not like our summer blue. It looks higher and paler and colder. We are nearer to God in the South, just as we are nearer to Death in that terrible and splendid heat of the Gulf Coast. When I write God, of course I mean only the World-Soul, the mighty and sweetest life of Nature, the great Blue Ghost, the Holy Ghost which fills planets and hearts with beauty.

"Believe me, Dear Old Dad,
"Affectionately, your son,
"Lafcadio Hearn"

Below this is once more the familiar drawing of the raven.

From this time on the letters came at greater and greater intervals. There were only three more from America and then four from Japan. It was not that Hearn forgot his old friend or cared less for him. But he became busier, and with larger projects, newer aims, and a different life, there was less time in which to indulge himself in the active correspondence of former years. Between the New York group of letters and those from Japan is a gap. Letters on both sides had become a matter of years instead of weeks or months. Mr. Watkin, with the increasing weight of years on his shoulders and the increasing cares of a business that had begun to decline with the introduction of modern printing methods, found less time to write to his Raven.

Early in July, 1887, Hearn at last departed on that long-wished-for journey to the West Indies. A note, hastily scribbled to Mr. Watkin, told of the arrangements:

"Dear Old Man: I leave on the Barracouta for Trinidad, Sunday, at daybreak. I have been travelling about a good deal, and have been silent only because so busy and so tired when the business was over. Your dear letter and your excellent little stamp both delighted me. I will let you hear from me soon again,—that is, as soon as I can get to a P. O.

"With affection, always your little Raven,
"Lafcadio Hearn"

This promise of frequent letters was one he was not destined to keep. Once in the West Indies, he found himself so enthralled by its beauties, so busy putting on paper his impressions of what he was seeing and breathing and feeling, that it was not until he was once more in the United States that he found time to write.

September 21, 1887, he sent the following from Metuchen, New Jersey:

"Dear Old Dad: After three months or so in the West Indies and British Guiana, I am back again in the U. S. in first-rate health and spirits. I ought to have been able to write you, I thought, from Martinique; but the enormous and unexpected volume of work I had to do rendered it almost impossible to write anything except business letters to Harpers, and one or two necessary notes to friends looking after my affairs elsewhere. My conviction is that you and I would do well to spend our lives in the Antilles. All dreams of Paradise (even Mahomet's) are more than realized there by nature;—after returning, I find this world all colorless, all grey, and fearfully cold. I feel like an outcast from heaven. But it is no use trying to tell you anything about it in a letter. I wrote nearly three hundred pages of manuscript to the Harpers about it,—and I have not been able to say one thousandth part. I got two little orders for stamps for you at Martinique,—pencil stamps like the one you made for me. One is to be 'Plissonneau, fils;' the other, 'A. Testart.' Send bill to me, and stamps to A. Testart, St. Pierre, Martinique, French W. Indies. I hope to see you on my way South, dear old Dad.

"Believe me always,

"Lafcadio Hearn"

In view of the terrible catastrophe at St. Pierre, it would be interesting to know whether Hearn's friends perished in that fury of fire and lava and hot ashes. Hearn's expectations about returning to New Orleans were not destined to be fulfilled. So successful had he been in his work for Harpers that, a week later than the date of the previous letter, he had the satisfaction of announcing that he was going back to what at that time seemed to him the most delightful region in the world. The opening of this letter is unique, in that it is the only one in which he is in the least ceremonious:

"H. Watkin, Esq., Dear Old Dad: I am going right back to the Tropics again, this time to stay. I have quit newspapering forever. Wish I could see you and chat with you before I go, but I cannot get a chance this time. My address will be care American Consul, St. Pierre, Martinique, Lesser Antilles. I may not be there all the time, but that will be my headquarters, and there letters will always reach me. To-day I am packing, rushing around breathlessly, preparing to go,—so that my letter must be brief. I did better with my venture than I ever expected; for I got for my work done seven hundred dollars, besides having secured material for much better work. You will hear of me in the Harper's Magazine this winter,—beginning about January and February. I shall be able hereafter to rest where I please; so that I shall have no trouble, when I get to New York again, in running to Cincinnati. Of course I don't want my little plans known yet,—because no one knows what might turn up; but these are the present prospers,—quite bright for me. I will write from Martinique or Guadeloupe, and try to coax you to go down there. Good-bye for a little while, with my best love to you.

"L. Hearn"

Again this promise of letters from the West Indies was destined to be broken. While lotus-eating, Hearn wrote few letters. He was most probably busy, amid the glow and color of the Antilles, studying the philosophical, scientific, and religious works which were destined so strongly to color his writings about Japan. He went to the latter country in 1890. In order that the reader may have a clear understanding of events, the facts in Hearn's Japanese career may be told in a few words. In 1890 and 1891 he served as English teacher in the ordinary middle school and the normal school of Matsue in Izumo. Next he was connected with the government school at Kumamoto. Then came newspaperwork at Kobe, and finally in 1896 he was honored by being made lecturer on English literature at the Imperial University of Tokio, which position he held until 1903, when he retired, owing to increasing trouble with his eyes, which had caused him anxiety all his life. He was contemplating a lecture trip in the United States, but ill health prevented. He died at his Tokio home September 26, 1904, and was buried September 29, with the Buddhist rites, the funeral service being held at the temple of Jito-in of Ichigaya. He now sleeps in the lonely old cemetery of Zōshigaya in the outskirts of the capital. Shortly after Hearn reached Japan Mr. Watkin obtained his address, and wrote him a letter telling how often he had thought of him and had expected to hear from him in the two years and more that had elapsed since their last letters. This brought a speedy reply,—a reply which showed that, so far as his feeling for the old English printer was concerned, there was little difference between the immature, ambition-stung youth of nineteen and the well-known, mature author of forty, who felt in some dim way that there amid this Oriental people he was destined to live and die. The reply to Mr. Watkin is from Yokohama, and, contrary to Hearn's previous rule, is actually dated,—April 25, 1890.

"Dear Old Dad: I was very happy to feel that your dear heart thought about me; I also have often found myself dreaming of you. I arrived here, by way of Canada and Vancouver, after passing some years in the West Indies. I think I shall stay here some years. I have not been getting rich,—quite the contrary; but I am at least preparing a foundation for ultimate independence,—if I keep my health. It is very good now, but I have many grey hairs, and I shall be next June forty years old.

"I trust to make enough in a year or two to realize my dream of a home in the West Indies; if I succeed, I must try to coax you to come along, and dream life away quietly where all is sun and beauty. But no one ever lived who seemed more a creature of circumstances than I; I drift with various forces in the direction of least resistance,—resolve to love nothing, and love always too much for my own peace of mind,—places, things, and persons,—and lo! presto! everything is swept away, and becomes a dream,—like life itself.

"Perhaps there will be a great awakening; and each will cease to be an Ego, but an All, and will know the divinity of Man by seeing, as the veil falls, himself in each and all.

"Here I am in the land of dreams,—surrounded by strange Gods. I seem to have known and loved them before somewhere: I burn incense before them. I pass much of my time in the temples, trying to see into the heart of this mysterious people. In order to do so I have to blend with them and become a part of them. It is not easy. But I hope to learn the language; and if I do not, in spite of myself, settle here, you will see me again. If you do not, I shall be under big trees in some old Buddhist cemetery, with six laths above me, inscribed with prayers in an unknown tongue, and a queerly carved monument typifying those five elements into which we are supposed to melt away. I trust all is well with you, dear old Dad. Write me when it will not pain your eyes. Tell me all you can about yourself. Be sure that I always remember you; and that my love goes to you.

"Lafcadio Hearn

"I could tell you so much to make you laugh if you were here; and to hear you laugh again would make me very happy."

An interval of over four years now occurred before Hearn wrote once more to Cincinnati. Some very decided changes had taken place in his life. He had wedded a Japanese woman, he had a son, and he was reputed to have become a Buddhist. He had been successful with his literary work, his essays on things Japanese being among the most noteworthy and popular articles in the Atlantic Monthly. It was at this period, when Mr. Watkin thought his friend was most happy, that he received a long reply from Japan in response to a joint letter sent by the old gentleman and his daughter, Miss Effie Watkin. It is a singular thing that it was not until this time that Hearn ever mentioned Mr. Watkin's wife and daughter. He had in truth been few times in their presence. Mrs. Watkin, a woman of strong common sense, had found the foolish superstitions of the young lad hard to bear, and he had accordingly, when in Cincinnati, confined his particular friendship to the husband and father. The letter from Hearn rather surprised its recipient by reason of its despondency. It had much of the old gloomy cast of thought. For this there were two potent reasons. One was his worry over his son's future. The other was his worry over that Japan he had learned to love so well. He felt doubtful about the outcome of the war with China,—the letter was written in September, 1894,—and troubles for the Mikado's empire always made him a little sad. Singularly enough, the same feeling can be traced very clearly in his book, "Japan, An Attempt at Interpretation," written in the first months of the struggle with Russia.

One other word of introductory comment is necessary. His seeming depreciation of his own essays was only the reflection of his general gloomy viewpoint at the time the letter was written. Hearn was dwelling at the time at Kumamoto.

"Dear Old Dad: It delighted me to get that kindest double letter from yourself and sweet-hearted little daughter,—or rather delighted us. My wife speaks no English, but I translated it for her. She will send a letter in Japanese, which Miss Effie will not be able to read, but which she will keep as a curiosity perhaps. Our love to you both.

"How often I have thought of you, and wondered about you, and wished I could pass with you more of the old-fashioned evenings, reading ancient volumes of the Atlantic Monthly,—so much better a magazine in those days than in these, when I am regularly advertised as one of its contributors.

"I often wonder now at your infinite patience with the extraordinary, superhuman foolishness and wickedness of the worst pet you ever had in your life. When I think of all the naughty, mean, absurd, detestable things I did to vex you and to scandalize you, I can't for the life of me understand why you did n't want to kill me,—as a sacrifice to the Gods. What an idiot I was!—and how could you be so good?—and why do men change so? I think of my old self as of something which ought not to have been allowed to exist on the face of the earth,—and yet, in my present self, I sometimes feel ghostly reminders that the old self was very real indeed. Well, I wish I were near you to love you and make up for all old troubles.

"I have a son. He is my torment and my pride. He is not like me or his mother. He has chestnut hair and blue eyes, and is enormously strong,—the old Gothic blood came out uppermost. I am, of course, very anxious about him. He can't become a Japanese,—his soul is all English, and his looks. I must educate him abroad. Head all above the ears,—promises to be intelligent. I shall never have another child. I feel too heavily the tremendous responsibility of the thing. But the boy is there,—intensely alive; and I must devote the rest of my existence to him. One thing I hope for is that he will never be capable of doing such foolish things as his daddy used to do. His name is Kaji-we or Ka-jio. He does not cry, and has a tremendous capacity for growing. And he gives me the greatest variety of anxiety about his future.

"When you hear that I have been able to save between thirty-five hundred and four thousand dollars, you will not think I have made no progress. But I have put all, or all that I could reasonably do, in my wife's name. The future looks very black. The reaction against foreign influence is strong; and I feel more and more every day that I shall have to leave Japan eventually, at least for some years. When I first met you I was—nineteen. I am now forty-four! Well, I suppose I must have lots more trouble before I go to Nirvana.

"Effie says you do not see my writings. My book will be out by the time you get this letter,—that is, my first book on Japan.[1] Effie can read bits of it to you. And I figure in the Atlantic every few months. Cheap fame;—the amazing fortune I once expected does n't turn up at all. I have been obliged to learn the fact that I am not a genius, and that I must be content with the crumbs from the table of Dives.

"But this is all Egotism. I am guilty of it only because you asked for a small quantity. About yourself and all who love you my letter rather ought to be. Speak always well of me to John Chamberlain [a journalist]. I liked him well. Do you remember the long walks over the Ohio, in the evening, among the fireflies and grasshoppers, to hear lectures upon spiritual things? If I were near you now, I could saturate you with Oriental spiritualism,—Buddhism,—everything you would like, but after a totally novel fashion. When one has lived alone five years in a Buddhist atmosphere, one naturally becomes penetrated by the thoughts that hover in it; my whole thinking, I must acknowledge, has been changed, in spite of my long studies of Spencer and of Schopenhauer. I do not mean that I am a Buddhist, but I mean that the inherited ancestral feelings about the universe—the Occidental ideas every Englishman has—have been totally transformed.

"There is yet no fixity, however: the changes continue,—and I really do not know how I shall feel about the universe later on. What a pity that Western education and Western ideas only corrupt and spoil the Japanese,—and that the Japanese peasant is now superior to the Japanese noble!

"You have heard of the war. The Japanese are a fighting race; and I think they will win all the battles. But to conquer a Chinese army is not the same thing as to conquer the Chinese government. The war makes us all uneasy. Japan's weakness is financial. A country where it costs a dollar a month to live, and where the population is only forty million, is not really strong enough for such an enormous job. Our hope is that science and rapidity of movement may compensate for smallness of resources.

"I am almost sure I shall have to seek America again. If that happens, I shall see you or die. All now is doubt and confusion. But in this little house all is love to you. We have your picture;... we all know you, as if you were an old acquaintance.

"I wish we could be together somewhere for a pleasant evening chat, hearing in the intervals the office clock, like the sound of a long-legged walker. I wish we could talk over all the hopes and dreams of ideal societies, and the reasons of the failure to realize them. I wish I could tell you about the ideas of Western civilization which are produced by a long sojourn in the Orient. How pleasant to take country walks again! that is, if there be any country left around Cincinnati. How pleasant to read to you strange stories and theories from the Far East! Still, I have become so accustomed to Japanese life that a return to Western ways would not be altogether easy at first. What a pity I did not reach Japan ten years sooner!

"Tell me, if you write again, all pleasant news about old friends. Love to you always, and believe me ever,

"Your extremely bad and ungrateful

"Grey-headed boy,

"Lafcadio Hearn"

Shortly after this long letter came the one written by Hearn's Japanese wife, accompanied by this note:

"Dear Miss Effie: Here is my wife's answer to your most kind letter. She thanks you very much for writing,—says that she knows your papa well, by looking at his photograph, and by hearing me talk of him; she apologizes for not being able to write or speak English; she hopes to see you some day, and to be shown by you some of the wonders of the Western world, about which she knows nothing; she tells you about our little son; and finally says that if she ever comes to America she will bring you some curious memento from Japan. It is all written in the old style of high Japanese courtesy, in which your letter is called 'jewel-pen letter.' Best regards and kindest love for your papa. We are going to leave Kumamoto. Will write again soon.

"Lafcadio Hearn"

In 1895 an accident befell Mr. Watkin, and, upon his request, Mrs. Watkin wrote a letter to the distant friend. Mrs. Watkin was rather timid about it and was dubious about receiving a reply. However, despite this feeling, she enclosed some little verses of hers upon a spiritual theme. In a short time she received the following reply:

"Kobe;—shimoyamatedori, Shichome

"7 Feb. 28, 1895

"Dear Mrs. Watkin: Your kind, sweet letter reached me by last American mail, and gave me all the pleasure you could have desired. But why have you even dreamed of apologizing for writing to me, who love you all, and for whom everything is comprehensible even if not wholly comprehended? All love and good wishes to you. I received the little poem, and liked it. Those mysteries in which you appear to be interested are scarcely mysteries in the Far East: the immaterial world counts here for more than the visible. Perhaps some day I may suddenly drop in upon you all, and talk ghostliness to you,—a new ghostliness, which you may like. Some hints of it appear in a little book of mine, to be issued about the time this letter reaches you,—'Out of the East.'

"I really think I may see you and my dear old Dad again. I may be obliged erelong to return, at least temporarily, to America, to make some money, though my home must be in Japan till my boy grows up a little. He seems to be very strong and bright, and queerly enough he is fair. I have two souls now, which is troublesome; for his every word and cry stirs strange ripples in my own life, and the freedom of being responsible only for oneself is over forever for me. Whether this be for the worse or the better in the eternal order of things, the Gods must decide.

"I should like to see your new home. The other one was very cosy; but perhaps this is even better. What I also want to see is No. 16 Longworth Street, and to hear the ticking of the old clock that used to sound like the steps of a long-legged man walking on pavement. Effie wrote me a dear, pretty letter. Thank her for me. It is just about seven years now since I saw Dad. I suppose he looks now more like Homer than ever. .1 have become somewhat grey, and have crow's-feet around my eyes. Also I have become fat, and disinclined for violent exercise. In other words, I'm getting down the shady side of the hill,—and the horizon before me is already darkening, and the winds blowing out of it, cold. And I am not in the least concerned about the enigmas,—except that I wonder what my boy will do if I don't live to be nearly as old as Dad. Ever with all affectionate regards to him and yourself and Effie,

"Lafcadio Hearn"

In 1896 Mr. Watkin, partially recovered from his injuries, wrote Hearn a letter, and received a last one from him,—a reply in which the writer finally placed the seal upon the finest friendship in his history. Unlike some of his other attempts at prophecy, Hearn's predictions in this last letter failed to come true. He never saw his old friend again, and the old gentleman, at the age of eighty-two, now occupies a room in the Old Men's Home in Cincinnati, counting among his chief treasures the letters which have been here presented.

"Kobe
"Nakayamatedori
"7-chome
"Bangai 16
"May 23,'96

"Dear Old Dad: How nice to get so dear a letter from you! I know the cost to you of writing it, and my dear old father must not imagine that I do not understand why he cannot write often. With his little grey boy it is much the same now: he finds it hard to write letters, and he has very few correspondents. Why, indeed, should he have many? True men are few; and the autograph-hunters, and the scheming class of small publishers, and the people, who want gratis information about commercial matters in Japan are not considered by him as correspondents. They never get any answers. I have two or three dear friends in this world: is not that enough?—you being oldest and dearest. To feel that one has them is much.

"But I must ask many pardons. I fear Miss Effie will not forgive me for not acknowledging ere now the receipt of a photograph, which surprised as much as it pleased me. To think of the little girl having so developed into the fine serious woman! How old it makes me feel! for I remember Miss Effie when she was so little. Please ask her to forgive me. I was away when the photograph came (in Kyoto), and when I returned, lazily put off writing from day to day. There was, however, some excuse for my laziness. I have been very sick with inflammation of the lungs, and am getting well very slowly. But all danger is practically over.

"I see from the kind letter of protest bearing your initials that the idealism which makes love has never gone out of your heart when you think of me. It is all much more real than any materialism; see, you always predicted that I should be able to do something, while extremely practical, materialistic people predicted that I should end in jail or at the termination of a rope. And your prediction seems to have been wiser,—for at last, at last I am attracting a little attention in England.... Also I see (what I did not know before) that some people have been writing horrid things about me. I expected it, sooner or later, as I have been an open enemy of the missionaries; and, besides, the least success in this world must be atoned for. The price is heavy. Those who ignore you when you are nobody find it necessary to hate you when you disappoint their expectations. But if I keep my health I need not care very much. The incident only brought out some of the honey in dear old Dad's heart.

"You ask about my boy. I can best respond by sending his last photo,—nearly three years old now. If I can educate him in France or Italy, it would be better for him, I think. He is very sensitive; and I am afraid of American or English school training for him. I only pray the Gods will spare me till he is eighteen or twenty. I am watching to see what he will develop; if he have any natural gift, I shall try to cultivate only that gift. Ornamental education is a wicked, farcical waste of time. It left me incapacitated to do anything; and I still feel the sorrow of the sin of having dissipated ten years in Latin and Greek, and stuff,... when a knowledge of some one practical thing, and of a modern language or two, would have been of so much service. As it is, I am only self-taught; for everything I learned in school I have since had to unlearn. You helped me with some of the unlearning, dear old Dad!

"I really expect to see you. You are only seventy-two, and hale, and I trust you have long years before you, and that we shall meet. About the business depression, I hear that it is passing and that 'flush times' are in store for the West. This, I trust, will be. Oh, no! I shall not have to look for you 'in the old men's home,'—no, I shall see you in your own home,—and talk queer talk to you.

"For the time being (indeed, for two years) I have lived altogether by literary work, without breaking my little reserves, and it is likely that better things are in store for me. I am anxious for success,—for the boy's sake above all. To have the future of others to make—to feel the responsibilities—certainly changes the face of life. I am always frightened, of course; but I work and hope. That is the best, is it not? Remember me to all kind friends. Ask Effie to forgive my rude silence, and all yours to believe my love and constant remembrance.

"Lafcadio Hearn

"I am a Japanese citizen now (Y. Koizumi),—adopted into the family of my wife. This settles all legal question as to property as well as marriage under Japanese law; and if I die, the Consul can't touch anything belonging to my people."

The rest is silence.

Letters to a Lady

Herewith are presented letters that were the outgrowth of a friendship that probably meant a great deal to Lafcadio Hearn at the time. In speaking of them, one inevitably thinks of Prosper Mérimée's "Lettres à une inconnue." The later missives, too, must for years to come remain "letters to an unknown,"—unknown to all save a few persons. It was only recently that the natural course of events made it at all possible to include them in this collection. Even now the ban of silence is placed on many things we would like to know.

The letters were written during the memorable year 1876, marked by exciting political conventions and an even more exciting national election, and finally by the great Centennial Exposition. At this time Hearn was in his twenty-sixth year. He had been in the United States for nearly six years, and was at the time employed as a reporter on Mr. Murat Halstead's Cincinnati Commercial. Although he did not like this country and was at this time dreaming of returning some day to Europe, he had been trying for years to make a thoroughly competent newspaper reporter of himself. However, we gather from remarks in his letters that he was still regarded as only a minor member of the staff.

Among men his chief friend remained Mr. Watkin. If he had any friends among young women, he has left no record of them. He seems to have been more or less solitary always. He is constantly telling of his constraint in social gatherings, of his inability to appear otherwise than cold to those around him. Life was indeed to him always a curious carnival, in which one must be careful to keep on the mask, to guard the tongue lest one say something redounding to one's injury or discredit.

With such characteristics, we are therefore at a loss to learn how his intimacy with the unknown began. It may have had its origin when some assignment in the line of newspaper duty took him to her home. One fancies the unknown must have had a keen eye for character and ability to discern anything unusual, anything love-worthy, in the ill-dressed, somewhat ill-featured, shy, timid, little youth Hearn was at that time. It had not heretofore been his good fortune to attract. However that may be, the established fact of the friendship remains.

The identity of the unknown is a secret. We are told that she was a woman of culture and refinement; that she was possessed of some wealth; and, finally, that she was many years older than Hearn.

Mérimée has been referred to. The reference is forced upon us by Hearn himself. He mentions those famous "Lettres," and says he feels toward his "Dear Lady" as Mérimée did toward his "inconnue." The comparison is not exact. Indeed, it is rather a case of contrast. Like Mérimée, Hearn's motto seems to have been, with very rare exceptions, "Remember to distrust;" but, unlike Mérimée, Hearn was not a man of wealth and prominence and influence in his native land; unlike Mérimée, Hearn had not had all the advantages wealth and culture can give; unlike Mérimée, he had known, and was still destined to know, hard and bitter years.

With Mérimée, the French stylist par excellence, impersonality was a passion. His was an impersonality that was broken down only in the famous "Lettres." Hearn, on the other hand, could not help injecting much of himself into his books. Nor does the contrast end there.

"For her first thoughts," as Walter Pater well says of the "Lettres" and the author's attitude toward the woman in the case, "Mérimée is always pleading, but always complaining that he gets only her second thoughts,—the thoughts, that is, of a reserved, self-limiting nature."

In the present collection of letters, the rôles are reversed. We gather from the letters that it was Hearn who never let himself go, who always kept himself under cautious restraint, and that it was the woman who resented these second thoughts, these promptings of careful meditations rather than of fresh, warm impulses.

In Mérimée the ardent lover alternated with the severe critic. He quarrelled with the unknown and then had reconciliations, until at last the old love passed away into a form of calm friendship. In the meantime he packed his letters with keen criticisms of books, society, politics, archæology, noted people,—everything that interested a citizen of the world.

In Hearn we have the lonely little egotist, writing mainly about himself. In his appreciation of a woman's friendship and his pride in her cordial admiration, he expands and reveals some part of his own thoughts, beliefs, studies. For the rest, the connection, on his side at least, seems to have been one of platonic friendship. The lady was more or less existing, Hearn being constantly occupied in explaining away what she was quick to fancy were slights.

She would seem to have been even more sensitive than he. To speak plainly, too, there is a note of evasion in his letters; despite his appreciation of her, he seems to have seized upon his newspaper work as an excuse for preventing their friendship becoming something more intimate. He kept things—at least in his letters—upon a very formal plane. He was to the recipient, one fancies, provokingly distant in his "Dear Lady" form of address. There was an ominous sign in the constant reference to letters returned or unopened. Indeed, there finally came the breach that in the nature of things was inevitable, and then all his letters were returned to him.

The young man did not destroy them. Shortly afterwards he departed for the South. It is not a little strange that in all the years in New Orleans that followed—lean years and fat, years of bitter poverty and of comparative prosperity—Hearn preserved this batch of letters intact. When nearing the age of forty and close to that period when he was to sail for Japan, the more or less matured man passed judgment upon the letters of his youth, found them good, and placed them in the keeping of his friend. He told Mr. Watkin to do with the faded missives what he deemed best. In some fashion he would seem to have felt that he was yet destined to accomplish something in the world of literature, and to have proudly thought that some day even these boyish screeds would be eagerly read.

As for these letters, as with most of Hearn's missives, they were for the most part undated,—written hurriedly on any kind of paper, often on mere scraps.

He places himself before us as the "Oriental by birth and half by blood;" as a lad destined for Catholicism, and, instead of that, savagely attacking the religion of his mother. We have hints of the hard measure the world had dealt him and how he felt like a barbarian beyond the pale of polite society. He confesses himself ill at ease among the cultivated classes, and we dimly feel that there were in those years, before he came to Cincinnati, days so bitter that they left a permanent mark. Without religious faith, going to the boyish extreme of lightly attacking Christianity, he imagined himself ready to become a sort of æsthetic pagan, worshipping Venus and the other gods of the antique world. As antagonistic to accepted pulpit teaching, he read Darwin, and pompously and not a little solemnly announced, "I accept Darwin fully."

Perhaps no inconsiderable portion of this paganism was caused by his youthful worship of Swinburne. All young men in the late sixties and early seventies, with an ear for verbal music and magic, were swearing allegiance to the bard of the famous "Poems and Ballads." Indeed, one feels that Hearn would have been a poet himself, had he but been gifted with the faculty of rhyme. Much of the other equipment of the poet was his in abundant measure,—the love of beauty, the love of lovely words, the joy in the manifold things of nature and art.

Speaking of Swinburne brings us to his reading, and we catch a glimpse of that little shelf of treasured books,—Balzacand Gautier and Rabelais in the French; Poe, to be sure; and—strange choice—the poems of Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

In these "Letters to a Lady" there is comparatively little discussion of literary subjects, save the mention of the fact that he is reading, always reading. Of literary criticism there is but little. In one letter, indeed, we do get a reference to the character of the Sultana of Aldrich's "Cloth of Gold," but this is a moral rather than a literary discussion. The sign that he was ranging far afield among other men's works, and also the hint of the writer that was to be, is given in little sentences dropped half unconsciously here and there,—sentences that to the student of Hearn's letters seem to be characteristic of his ways of thought, as when he says, "Somehow the ghosts of the letters I write by night laugh in my face by day;" or when he speaks of his horror of crowds and compares it to the terror of the desert camel being urged toward the white walls and shining minarets of the city beyond the desert; or when, curiously enough, he speaks of himself as seeming like a lizard in the July sun, a very similar turn of thought having been employed by Flaubert in one of his letters, which Hearn had probably never read, even though he did once plan a translation from that author.

It is only necessary in conclusion to call attention to one more letter in this section. As a matter of plain prose it would seem that the lady had complained of the coldness and the dubious tone of some of Hearn's letters and had returned them to him. In response he wrote to her a fable of a Sultan and a neighboring Sultana. He told how the Sultana complained of the Sultan's messengers, and how the Sultan committed them to death by fire. The lady was supposed, from this pretty fable, to draw the conclusion that Hearn's letters had been destroyed by their author. From the collection herewith appended, it can be seen that the fabulist availed himself of poetic license.

I

Dear Friend: Your last kind letter makes me in some sort ashamed of my diffidence and coldness. Yet you must be aware how peculiarly I feel myself situated,—constrained, watched everywhere by a hundred eyes that know me, hemmed in with conventionalities of which I only know the value sufficiently to have my nerves on a perpetual strain through fear of breaking them. I am not by nature cold,—quite the reverse, indeed, as many a bitter experience taught me; and I beg you to attribute my manner rather to overcaution than to indifference to the feelings of others. Why, do not we all wear masks in this great carnival mummery of life, in which we all dance and smile disguisedly, until the midnight of our allotted pleasure time comes; and the King-Skeleton commands, "Masks off—show your skulls"? I am afraid you do not understand [me]; or rather, I feel sure you do not wholly,—for you have had little opportunity. You have only seen me on my best behavior; perhaps you might think less of me under other circumstances, but never think me a chilly phantom, though you may occasionally see me only as the Shadow of that which I really am. Have I been rude? Try to forgive my rudeness. It was involuntary.... I think I understood your letters; and I did not form any opinion therefrom, I feel sure, which you would not have liked. I wish I could be less strained and conventional in company. Will try my best to do better. Sincerely,

L. Hearn

II

Dear Friend and Lady (if I may so call you): Do not suppose that when I delay answering one of your kind letters, the tardiness is attributable to neglect: or forgetfulness or inappreciation of your favor. I thoroughly feel—and feel keenly—every kind word or thought you have expressed or felt forme; I have never rendered you, it is true, a single compliment worthy of those I have received,—but only because I was sure that you understood my feelings better than if I had expressed them; I never write altogether as I think, partly because I am not naturally demonstrative, and while capable of more than ordinary sensitive feeling, I have a kind of reluctance to take off what I might term my little mask. Don't hesitate to scold me, as you threaten, should you think I deserve it....

I have been busy all day among noisy crowds of enthusiastic Catholics; and I shudder at the thought of entering a crowd at all times, just as the desert camel shudders when his driver urges him toward the white walls and the shining minarets of a city sparkling beyond the verge of the silent yellow waste. Consequently I was not able to write till late; and even now I am not in a good writing humor. One's skull becomes peopled with Dreams and Fantastic Things just before daybreak; and if you notice aught foolish or absurd in these lines, please attribute them to that weird influence which comes on us all—

"in the dead vast and middle of the night."

I must make one more visit to the Central Police Station ere cockcrow,—poetically speaking.

Sincerely,

Laf. Hearn

III

Cincinnati, Thursday, 27, 1876

Dear Lady: I return by mail the very interesting letters which you kindly left for my perusal; also, the list of Mr.'s collection, whereof I have taken a copy. The other collectors are so slow in preparing their lists that I fear I shall not be able to publish a full account of their contributions to the World's Exposition for several days yet.... I am very thankful for your assistance in obtaining information regarding these things.

As an English subject, and one who feels a kind of home interest in European news, you may feel assured that the letters from beyond the "great water" interested me extremely.

The author gives a pleasant, realistic, and entertaining picture of the brilliant social affair whereof her letter treats; and her account would have done credit to most foreign newspaper correspondents, speaking from a journalistic point of view....

Believe me very respectfully yours,

L. Hearn

IV

There is a fragment in which is taken up the matter of invitations he has refused. It is chiefly interesting because of his expressed desire to return to Europe:

"I daily receive and pay no attention whatever to other invitations, because I know my presence is only desired for journalistic favors; but with you I regret to be unable to accept them quite as much as you could. In speaking of impulses, I refer merely to sudden actions without preparation,—such as your first note of yesterday; or your action on fancying that I had been talking too much; or your becoming vexed at me for what I could not help. You ought to know that I would do anything in my power to please you or to accommodate you....

"Let me also take this opportunity of thanking you for those books again. I have been very much fascinated by one of them and have not only read but re-read it. It is seemingly by some strange fatuity that your little invitations have latterly fallen on busy days. Last week it was all work; and this week I have had a very easy time of it. You looked at me yesterday as if I had done you some injury, and you hated to see me. If you go to Europe, my best wishes go with you. I hope to return there, and leave this country forever some day in the remote future.

"Do not be offended at my letter.

"L. H."

V

In a letter dated "Thursday p. m., 1876" we find him apologizing for some breach of etiquette. He then, as usual, complains of the newspaper man's lot:

"This afternoon I received your kind note. One of the misfortunes of a journalistic existence is the inability of a newspaper man to fulfil an appointment, meet an engagement, or definitely accept an invitation not immediately connected with his round of regular duty, as he may at any moment be ordered to the most outlandish places in the pursuit of news. I think, however, that I may safely accept your kind invitation to dine with you on Sunday at one o'clock p. m., and also to ride out to Avondale. Nothing could give me greater pleasure; the more so as Sunday is an inordinately dull day in the newspaper sphere. I will certainly be on hand unless something very extraordinary should intervene to prevent; and in such event I shall endeavor to inform you beforehand, so as not to cause you any trouble.

"I remain, dear Lady,

"Very respectfully,

"L. Hearn"

VI

Cincinnati, Friday, 1876 DEAR LADY: I very much regret that I should have inadvertently worded my last note in so clumsy a manner as to make it appear that in accepting your kind invitation I was prospectively interested in nothing but "items" and thankful only for the opportunity of obtaining news. In mentioning that I was especially glad to accept your invitation on Sunday, "as it is an especially dull day for news," I simply meant that I would find more leisure time on Sunday than upon any other day in the week; and would thus feel more pleasure in making a call without being worried by office business. I hope you will therefore consider my rudeness the result of hurried writing and clumsy phraseology rather than of deliberate ignorance.

If it be agreeable to you, I will call upon you at 1 p. m. on Sunday as per invitation. I cannot definitely say, however, what I could do in the way of writing an account of other collections than what have already been spoken of, inasmuch as I am, you know, only a reporter in the office, and subject to orders from the City Editor.

As I have not written any letters except of a business character for several years, please to excuse any apparent lack of courtesy in my note. I am apt to say something malapropos without intending. I remain,

Very respectfully yours,

Lafcadio Hearn

VII

Dear Lady: Excuse my tardiness in replying to your kind and, may I say, too complimentary letter; for I scarcely deserve the courteous interest you have expressed in regard to myself. Also let me assure you that you are very much mistaken in fancying that I am so used to all kinds of people as to feel no pleasure in such introductions as that of Sunday evening. The fact is that I was very much pleased; but am so poor a hand at compliments that I feared even to express to Miss —— the pleasure I felt in her songs and playing, to wish you many happy returns of your birthday, or to hint how well I enjoyed the conversation of your lady sister. I have not visited out since I was sixteen,—nine years ago; have led a very hard and extraordinary life previous to my connection with the press,—became a species of clumsy barbarian,—and in short for various reasons considered myself ostracized, tabooed, outlawed. These facts should be sufficient to explain to you that I am not used to all sorts of people,—not to the cultivated class of people at all, and feel all the greater pleasure in such a visit as that referred to....

I have not had time yet to conclude the entertaining volume of travel you kindly sent me, but have read sufficient to interest me extremely. I find a vast number of novel and hitherto unpublished facts,—the results of more than ordinarily keen observation in the work. If I were reviewing the book, I might feel inclined to take issue with the author in respect: to his views concerning the work of the missionaries in Tahiti,—who have been, you know, most severely criticised by radically minded observers; but the writer's pictures are clearly defined, realistic, and powerfully drawn. I must not waste your time, however, with further gossip just now.

Believe me, dear Lady,

Very respectfully yours,

L. Hearn

VIII

Dear Lady: I am not so insusceptible to such pretty flattery as yours, even though I think it undeserved, as to feel otherwise than pleased. Of course I am vain enough to be gratified at anything good said of me by you or your friends. In regard to enjoying music and flowers, I would only say that I love everything beautiful, and can only look at the social, ethical, or natural world with the eyes of a pagan rather than a Christian, revering the heathen philosophy of æsthetic sense; and surely so must all who truly love the antique loveliness of the Antique World, which deified all fair things and worshipped only those beauties of form and sense whereof it brought forth the highest types. But to speak truly, I am afraid of parties; one's nerves are ever on a painful strain in the effort to be agreeable, in the fear of doing something gauche, and in the awful perplexity of searching for compliments which must fall on the ear as vapid and commonplace,—vanity and vexation of spirit. Indeed, I much enjoyed the little party the other night, because it was a home circle; and I did not feel as though people were scrutinizing my face, my manners, my dress, or criticising my words with severe mental criticism, or making the awful discovery that I "had hands" and did not know what to do with them.

I did not tell you when my vacation should commence, because I did not know myself; indeed, I do not yet know. Our vacations generally commence about June, when each one in turn takes a couple or three weeks' travel and rest; but as I am the youngest and freshest (in the sense of inexperience) of the staff, I suppose I will have to wait my turn until the others have decided. Some like to escape the hot weather. I love hot weather,—the hotter the better. I feel always like a lizard in the July sun; and when the juice of the poison plants is thickest and the venomous reptiles most active, then I, too, feel life most enjoyable, as "Elsie Venner" did. Therefore I may have to wait for my vacation till the golden autumn cometh; but I will endeavor to get away so soon as I can, and will let you know just so soon as I know myself.

Very respectfully yours, dear Lady,

Lafcadio Hearn

IX

Cincinnati, May 9, 1876

DEAR LADY: I am at once gratified and surprised to find that my little article should have given you so much pleasure. Had I not been very busy with a mass of matter-of-fact work last evening, I should have done better justice to Mr.——'s splendid collection. That was a very unfortunate mistake of mine in regard to his name, but I shall try to correct it.

In regard to mentioning Mr.——'s name,

I desire to say to you, in strict confidence, that I purposely omitted it for prudential reasons. Newspapers are very jealous of their employés in the matter of giving compliments; and I feared that further mention just at this time might render it all the more difficult for me to do you a reportorial kindness on some future occasion. This may seem odd; but one outside the newspaper circle can have no idea how particular newspaper proprietors are.

With regard to my article, dear Lady, I would say, in reply to your kind query, that you are welcome to use it as you please. I only-regret the lack of time to have improved it before it appeared in the Commercial. My love for things Oriental need not surprise you, as I happen to be an Oriental by birth and half by blood.

I cannot definitely answer you in regard to the prospective country visit, so courteously proposed, until I see you again or hear from you. I fear I shall have to postpone the pleasure until the regular reporters' vacation time,—that is, if it should necessitate absence from duty for any considerable length of time. However, you can explain further when I again have the pleasure of seeing you; and if I can possibly get away, I will be only too glad of so pleasant a holiday.

Very respectfully and gratefully,

L. Hearn

X

Dear Lady: If I disappointed you last evening, be sure that I myself was much more disappointed, especially as I had to pass within a stone's throw of your house without going in. I believe that if you only knew how frightfully busy we all are, you would have postponed the invitation until next week, when I shall have some leisure and hope to see you. I had expected up to the last moment to be able to call, if only for an hour; but a sudden appointment put it out of my power. The convention is keeping us all as busy as men can be.

I see you returned my letter. I know it was not a satisfactory one. Somehow the ghosts of the letters I write by night laugh in my face by day. I either talk too freely or write too hurriedly. I will not certainly give your books away, for I prize them highly and am delighted with them. I had thought they were only lent. They now nestle on my book-shelf along with a copy of Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques," illustrated by Doré, Gautier's most Pre-Raphael and wickedest work, Swinburne, Edgar Poe, Rabelais, Aldrich, and some other odd books which form my library. I generally read a little before going to bed.

I hope to visit your farm indeed, but the journalist is a creature who sells himself for a salary. He is a slave to his master, and must await the course of events.

No; you must not pity me or feel sorry for me. What would you do if I were to write you some of my up-and-down experiences and absurdities? And you cannot be of service to me except I were suddenly to lose everything and not know where to turn. Now I am doing very well, and would be doing better but for an escapade....

Of course I will write you in P—; I should like nothing better, feeling towards you like Prosper Mérimée to his "inconnue." I wish I could make my letters equally interesting.

I do not think that I am unfortunate in life, and yet I have done everything to make me so. If you only knew some of my follies, you would cease perhaps to like me. Some day I will confide some of my oddities to you. But don't think me unfortunate because I am a skeptic.

Skepticism is hereditary on my father's side. My mother, a Greek woman, was rather reverential; she believed in the Oriental Catholicism,—the Byzantine fashion of Christianity which produced such hideous madonnas and idiotic-looking saints in stained glass. I think being skeptical enables one to enjoy life better,—to live like the ancients without thought of the Shadow of Death. I was once a Catholic,—at least, my guardians tried to make me so, but only succeeded in making me dream of all priests as monsters and hypocrites, of nuns as goblins in black robes, of religion as epidemic insanity, useful only in inculcating ethics in coarse minds by main force. Afterwards it often delighted me to force a controversy upon some priest, deny his basis of belief, and find him startled to discover that he could not attempt to establish it logically.

You say, "What else is there" but faith to make life pleasant? Why, the majority of things that faith despises. I fancy if one will only try to analyze the amount of comfort derived from Christianity by himself, he will find the candid answer. Whence come all our arts, our loves, our luxuries, our best literature, our sense of manhood to do and dare, our reverence or respect: for Woman, our sense of beauty, our sense of humanity? Never from Christianity. From the antique faiths, the dead civilizations, the lost Greece and Rome, the warrior-creed of Scandinavia, the Viking's manhood and reverence for woman,—his creator and goddess. Yet all faiths surely have their ends in shaping and perfecting this electrical machine of the human mind, and preparing the field of humanity for a wider harvest of future generations, long after the worms, fed from our own lives, have ceased to writhe about us, as the serpents writhe among the grinning masks of stone on the columns of Persepolis.

How you must be bored by so long a letter!

[The letter is signed by a drawing of the raven, familiar in the letters to Mr. Watkin.]

XI

Dear Lady: There once lived an Eastern Sultan who reigned over a city fairer than far Samarcand. He dwelt in a gorgeous palace of the most bizarre and fantastically beautiful Saracenic design,—columns of chalcedony and gold-veined quartz, of onyx and sardonyx, of porphyry and jasper, upheld fretted arches of a fashion lovelier than the arches of the Mosque of Cordova There were colonnades upon colonnades, domes rising above courts where silver fountains sang the songs of the Water-Spirit; here were minarets whose gilded crescents kissed the azure heaven; there were eunuchs, officers, executioners, viziers, odalisques, women graceful of form as undulating flame.

In a neighboring kingdom dwelt a sultry-eyed Sultana,—a daughter of sunrise, shaped of fire and snow, impulsive, generous, and far more potent than the Sultan. Either desired to become the friend of the other, but either feared to cross the line of purple hills which separated the kingdom. But they held communication by messengers. The Sultana's messengers always spoke the truth, yet scarcely spoke plainly, having great faith in diplomatic suggestion rather than in blunt and forcible utterance. The Sultan's messengers, on the other hand, only spoke half of the truth, being fearful lest their words should be overheard by the keen ears of men who desired that no courtesies should be exchanged between their mistress and her neighboring brother. At last the Sultana became wroth with a great wrath at the messengers, forasmuch as they conversed only in enigmas, the Sultana being apparently quite unable to imagine why they should so speak. Therefore the Sultana bound the messengers, stripped them naked, and, placing them in bags, despatched them by a camel caravan to the Sultan, expressing much anger at the conduct of the messengers. The Sultan, being alarmed at the detention of his messengers, knowing their proverbial loquacity, and fearing they had turned traitors, thanked Allah for their return, and swore by the Beard of his Father that ere sunrise they should die the death of cravens, inasmuch as they had not fulfilled their duty satisfactorily. He decided that they should be burnt with fire, and their ashes cast into the waters of the great river—