trust to magazine-work. So far I have just been able to scrape
along;--the climate numbs mental life, and the inspirations I hoped for
won't come. The real--surpassing imagination--whelms the ideal out of
sight and hearing. The world is young here,--not old and wise and grey
as in the North; and one must not seek the Holy Ghost in it. I suspect
that the material furnished by the tropics can only be utilized in a
Northern atmosphere. We will talk about it together; for I will
certainly call on you in Philadelphia some day.

I would not hesitate, if I were you, to begin the _magnum opus_;--the
only time to hesitate would be when it is all complete, before giving to
the printer. Then one may perhaps commune with one's self to advantage
upon the question of what might be gained or lost by waiting for more
knowledge through fresh expansions of science. But the true way to
attempt an enduring work is to begin it as a duty, without considering
one's self in the matter at all, but the subject only,--which you love
more and more the longer you caress it, and find it taking form and
colour and beauty with the patient years.

I am horribly ignorant about scientific matters; but sometimes the
encouragement of a layman makes the success of the prelate.

Now, replying to your question about "Chita." "Chita" was founded on the
fact of a child saved from the Lost Island disaster by some Louisiana
fisher-folk, and brought up by them. Years after a Creole hunter
recognized her, and reported her whereabouts to relatives. These, who
were rich, determined to bring her up as young ladies are brought up in
the South, and had her sent to a convent. But she had lived the free
healthy life of the coast, and could not bear the convent;--she ran away
from it, married a fisherman, and lives somewhere down there now,--the
mother of multitudinous children.

And about my work, I can only tell you this:--I will have two
illustrated articles on a West Indian trip in the _Harper's Monthly_
soon,--within four or five months. These will be followed by brief West
Indian sketches. Other sketches, not suited for the magazine, will go to
form a volume to be published later on. I do not correspond or write for
any newspaper, and I would always let you know in advance where anything
would be published written by me.

You know what the nervous cost of certain imaginative work means; and
this sort of work I do not think I shall be able to do here. One
has no vital energy to spare in such a climate. I cannot read
Spencer here,--gave up the "Biology" (vol. II) in despair. But I
did not miss the wonderful page about the evolution of the
eye--hair--snail-horn--etc., etc.... I want to see anything you write
that I can understand, with my limited knowledge of scientific terms and
facts. And when you write again, tell me what you said of Loti in the
letter I never received. Did you read his "Roman d'un Spahi"? I thought
you would like it. If you do not, let me know why,--because Loti has had
much literary influence upon me, and I want to know his faults as well
as his merits. With love to you,

                                                   LAFCADIO HEARN.

                           TO GEORGE M. GOULD

                           SAINT-PIERRE, MARTINIQUE, August, 1888.

DEAR GOULD,--Many thanks for the _quid_!--the surprising _quid_. I have
been waiting to send you the _quo_, which I do not like so well as one
taken in New Orleans, of which I have no copy within reach. But before I
tell you anything about the _quo_, I ought to scold you for your
startling deception. I pictured you as a much younger man than
myself--although quite conscious of meeting an intelligence much more
virile and penetrating than my own, and with an experience of life
larger: this did not, however, astonish me; for whatever qualities I
have lie only in that one direction which pleased you and won your
friendship,--moreover, I had met several _much_ younger men than myself,
my mental superiors in every respect. But, all of a sudden you come upon
me with such a revelation of your personality as makes me half afraid of
you. I perceive that your _envergure_ is much larger than I imagined:--I
mean, of course, the mental spread-of-wing; and then your advice and
suggestions, while manifesting your ability to teach me much in my own
line, resemble only those proffered by old experienced masters in
literary guidance. It is exactly the advice of Alden, among one or two
others.

Now about the _quo_. I am about five feet three inches high, and weigh
about 137 pounds in good health;--fever has had me down to 126. Nothing
phthisical,--36¾ inches round the chest, stripped. Was born in June
(27th), 1850, in Santa Maura (the antique Leucadia), of a Greek mother.
My father, Dr. Charles Bush Hearn, who spent most of his life in India,
was surgeon-major of the 76th British regiment (now merged in West
Riding Battalion). Do not know anything about my mother, whether alive
or dead;--was last heard of (remarried) in Smyrna, about 1858-9. My
father died on his return from India. There was a queer romance in the
history of my father's marriage. It is not, however, of the sort to
interest you in a letter. I am very near-sighted, have lost one eye,
which disfigures me considerably; and my near-sightedness always
prevented the gratification of a natural _penchant_ for physical
exercise. I am a good swimmer; that is all.

Your advice about story-writing is capital; I am not so sure about your
suggestion of plot. I cannot believe--in view of the extraordinary
changes (changes involving even the whole osseous structure) wrought in
the offspring of Europeans or foreigners within a single generation by
the tropical climate--that anything of the parental moral character on
the _father's_ side would survive with force sufficient to produce the
psychical phenomena you speak of. In temperate climates these do survive
astonishingly, even through generations; in the tropics, Nature moulds
every new being _at once_ into perfect accord with environment, or else
destroys it. The idea you speak of occurred to me also; it was abandoned
after a careful study of tropical conditions. It could only be used on
an _inverse_ plot,--transporting the tropical child to the North. At
least, I think so, with my present knowledge on the subject,--which
might be vastly improved, no doubt....

About story-writing, dear friend, you ought to know I would like to be
able to do nothing else. But even in these countries, where life is so
cheap, I could not make the pot--or as they call it here, the
_canari_--boil by story-writing until I gain more literary success, and
can obtain high prices. A story takes at least ten or twelve months to
write, that is, a story of the length of "Chita." Suppose it brings only
$500,--half as much as you will soon be able to obtain for a single
operation! It is pretty hard to live even in the tropics on that sum. I
must write sketches too. They do me other good also, involve research I
might otherwise neglect. I have prepared some twelve sketches in all,
which obligated investigation that will prove invaluable for a
forthcoming novelette.

I like your firm, strong, sonorous letter, better than anything of the
sort I ever received. The only thing I did not relish in it was the
suggestion that I should prepare a lecture, or make an appearance before
a private club. I would not do it for anything! I shrink from real life,
however, not at all because I am pessimistic. It is a very beautiful
world:--the ugliness of some humanity only exists as the shadowing that
outlines the view; the nobility of man and the goodness of woman can
only be felt by those who know the possibilities of degradation and
corruption. Philosophically I am simply a follower of Spencer, whose
mind gives me the greatest conception of Divinity I can yet expand to
receive. The faultiness is not with the world, but with myself. I
inherit certain susceptibilities, weaknesses, sensitivenesses, which
render it impossible to adapt myself to the ordinary _milieu_; I have to
make one of my own, wherever I go, and never mingle with that already
made. True, I lose much knowledge, but I escape pains which, in spite of
all your own knowledge, you could not wholly comprehend, for the simple
reason that you _can_ mingle with men. By the way, it is no small
disadvantage in life to be 5 ft. 3 in. high. I remember observing, at a
great gathering of American merchant princes, that the small or
insignificant looking men present might have been counted on the fingers
of one hand. Success in life still largely depends upon the power to
impose respect, the reserve of mere physical force; since the expansion
of everybody's individuality--at the expense of everybody else's
individuality--is still the law of existence.

I am not yet sure what I am going to do. One thing certain is that I am
to go to South or to Central America--for monetary reasons. I may linger
here long enough to finish a novelette. If not able to do so, I will
perhaps be in New York before December. I left it October 2, 1887, after
a stay of only three weeks, to return to the tropics. It was then
impossible to visit Philadelphia. Should I go to the Continent from
here, you will know at least six weeks in advance.

Thanks for the superb paper on Loti. I cannot imagine anything much
finer in the way of literary analysis. But what does James
want?--evolution to leap a thousand years? What he classes as sensual
perceptions must be sensitized and refined supernally,--fully evolved
and built up _before_ the moral ones, of which they are the
physiological foundations, pedestals. Granting the doubt as to the
ultimate nature of Mind, it is still tolerably positive that its
development--so far as man is concerned--follows the development of the
nervous system; and that very sensuousness which at once delights and
scandalizes James, rather seems to me a splendid augury of the higher
sensitiveness to come, in some future age of writers and poets,--the
finer "_sensibility of soul_," whose creative work will caress the
nobler emotions more delicately than Loti's genius ever caressed the
senses of colour and form and odour.

You ask about my idea of Whitman? I have not patience for him,--not as
for Emerson. Enormous _suggestiveness_ in both, rather than clear
utterance. I used to like John Weiss better than Emerson. Then there is
a shagginess, an uncouthness, a Calibanishness about Whitman that
repels. He makes me think of some gigantic dumb being that sees things,
and wants to make others see them, and cannot for want of a finer means
of expression than Nature gives him. But there is manifest the rude
nobility of the man,--the primitive and patriarchal soul-feeling to men
and the world. Whitman lays a Cyclopean foundation on which, I fancy,
some wonderful architect will yet build up some marvellous thing....
Yes, there is nonsense in Swinburne, but he is merely a melodist and
colourist. He enlarges the English tongue,--shows its richness,
unsuspected flexibility, admirable sponge-power of beauty-absorption. He
is not to be despised by the student.

Let me pray you not to make mention of anything written to you thus,
even incidentally, to newspaper folk--or to any literary folk who would
not be _intimate_ friends. There are reasons, more than personal, for
this suggestion, acceptance of which would remove any check on
frankness.

                                        Best love to you, from
                                                   LAFCADIO HEARN.

Speaking of Whitman, I must add that my idea of him is not consciously
stable. It has changed within some years. What I like, however, was not
Whitman exactly,--rather the perception of something Whitman feels, and
disappoints by his attempted expression of.

After closing letter I remember you wanted to know about illustrations
in magazine. They are after photos. I am sorry to say incorrect use has
been made of several: the types published as _Sacratra_ were not
_Sacratra_, but in two cases half-breed Coolie,--one seemingly of
Southern India, showing a touch of Malay. There were other errors. It is
horrible not to be able to correct one's _own_ work,--on account of
irregularities in mail involved by quarantine. In the December number
you will see a study of a peculiar class of young girls here. If you
want, yourself, to have some particular photo of some particular thing,
send word, and I will try to get it for you.

I can only work here of mornings. Nobody dreams of eating before noon:
all rise with the sun. After 2 P.M., the heat and weight of the air make
thinking impossible. Your head gets heavy, as if there was lead in it,
and you sleep.

                           TO GEORGE M. GOULD

                                        SAINT-PIERRE, MARTINIQUE,
                                                  October, 1888.

DEAR FRIEND GOULD,--I have read your delightful letter,--also, the
delightful essays of James you so kindly sent me. I suspect James has
not his equal as a literary chemist: the analyses of his French
contemporary, Lemaître, are far less qualitative. You have made me know
him as a critic;--I had only known him as a novelist. My work has been
poor; it has been condensed and recondensed for the magazine till all
originality has been taken out of it; finally I never had a chance to
revise it in proof. I believe I have temporarily lost all creative
power: it will come back to me, perhaps, when I inhale some Northern
ozone.

I would like to call your attention to the article by Loti in
_Fortnightly Review_--"Un Rêve," a delicious little psychological
phenomenon. Have you seen "Madame Chrysanthemum"--wonderfully
illustrated!

Are you perfectly, positively sure there is really a sharp distinction
between moral and physical sensibilities? I doubt it. I suspect what we
term the finer moral susceptibilities signify merely a more complex and
perfect evolution of purely physical sensitiveness. The established
distinction simply seems to me that "moral" feelings are those into
which the sexual instinct does not visibly enter, or those in which some
form of desire, some form of egotism, does not predominate at the cost
of justice to others. There is a queer vagueness about all definitions
of the moral sense. When one's physical sensibilities are fully
developed and properly balanced, I do not think wickedness to others
possible. The cruel and the selfish are capable of doing what is called
wrong, because they are ignorant of the suffering inflicted. Thorough
consciousness of the result of acting forms morality, if morality is
self-restraint, self-sacrifice, incapacity to injure unnecessarily;--one
who understands pain does not give it. Of course, I am not a believer in
free will. I do not believe in the individual soul,--though in the
manifestations of a universal human, or divine, soul, I am inclined to
believe, or to have that doubt which almost admits of belief. What
offends in certain writings, I suppose, is the feeling that the writer's
faculties are not perfectly balanced,--that certain senses are so much
more developed than others that one can suspect him of yielding to
cruelties of egotism. Perhaps I may say that I would call moral
feelings, as distinguished from those termed physical, the sensitiveness
of perception of suffering in others,--of the consequences of acts. But
can those be thoroughly developed before those which conduce to
self-preservation? I imagine the reverse to be the case. By the
super-refinement of the earlier sensations comes the capacity for the
"higher sentiments." It is true that moral standards are very old, but
those existing are also very defective. Evolutionally, egotism must
precede altruism;--altruism itself being only a sort of double reflex
action of egotism.--All this is very badly written; but you can catch
the idea I am trying to express.

When you think of tropical Nature as cruel and splendid, like a leopard,
I fancy the Orient, which is tropical largely, dominates the idea.
Humanity has a great beauty in these tropics, a great charm,--that of
childishness, and the goodness of childishness. As for the mysterious
Nature, which is the soul of the land, it was understood by the ancient
Mexicans, whose goddess of flowers, Coatlicue, was robed in a robe of
serpents interwoven. She is rich in death as in life, this Nature, and
lavish of both. I would love her; but I fear she is an enemy of the
mind,--a hater of mental effort.

No, indeed, I did not laugh at your experiences. I have had nearly as
multiform; but mine were less successful,--I was less fitted for them. I
have not your advantages, nor capacities. I never learned German. It is
only in America such careers are possible. I wish I could have finished
like you, as a physician; for I hold, that with the modern development
of medicine as an enormous interbranching system of science and
philosophy, the physician is the only perfect man, mentally. Like those
old Arabian physicians who affected to treat the soul, the modern knows
the mind, the reason of actions, the source of impulses,--which must
make him the most generous of men to the faults of others.

I don't like your plot for a medical novel at all. It involves ugliness.
I believe in Théophile Gautier's idea of art, study only the
beautiful;--create only ideals, therefore. You are not a realist, I am
sure. Then your plot is too thin. It has not the beauty nor depth of
that simple narrative about a famous painter, or writer,--I forget
which,--whose imagination rendered it impossible for him to complete his
medical studies. Shapes impressed themselves upon his brain as on the
brain of an artist: vividly to painfulness. He was in love, engaged to
be married; under the peach flesh and behind the velvet gaze, he always
saw the outlined skull, the empty darkness of void orbits. He had to
abandon medicine for art. A very powerful short sketch might be made of
this _fact_.

I believe in a medical novel,--a wonderful medical novel. We must chat
about it. Why not use a fantastic element,--anticipate discoveries hoped
for,--anticipate them so powerfully as to make the reader believe you
are enunciating realities?

Your objection to my idea is quite correct. I have already abandoned it.
It would have to be sexual. Never could you find in the tropics that
magnificent type of womanhood, which, in the New England girl, makes one
afraid even to think about sex, while absolutely adoring the
personality. Perfect natures inspire the love that is a fear. I don't
think any love is noble without it. The tropical woman inspires a love
that is half a compassion; this is always dangerous, untrustworthy,
delusive--pregnant with future pains innumerable.

I don't know why you hold the work of Spencer, etc., more colourless
than those of the other philosophers and scientists whom you have
studied--all except beastly Hegel: there is an awful poetry to me in the
revelation of which these men are the mouthpieces, as much vaster than
the old thoughts as the foam of suns in the _via lactea_ is vaster than
the spume of a wave on the sea-beach. Wallace I know only as a traveller
and naturalist; is it the same Wallace? I am very fond of him too: he is
very human, fraternal: he is not like God the Father as Spencer is. I
suppose what we need is God the Holy Ghost. He is not yet come.

Flower, who wrote that interesting little book "Fashion in Deformity"
and many other excellent things, could find some good texts here. I am
convinced now that most of our fashions are deformities; that grace is
savage, or must be savage in order to be perfect; that man was never
made to wear shoes; that in order to comprehend antiquity, the secret of
Greek art, one must know the tropics a little (so much has fashion
invaded the rest of the world), and that the question of more or less
liberty in the sex relation is like the tariff question--one of
localities and conditions, scarcely to be brought under a general rule.

                           TO GEORGE M. GOULD

                                        SAINT-PIERRE, MARTINIQUE,
                                                   February, 1889.

DEAR GOULD,--A letter to you has been lying on my desk for months
unfinished,--I can only just gum the envelope and let it go as it is. I
am obliged at intervals--thank Goodness, only at very long ones--to let
all correspondence, even the most important, wait a little or risk the
results of interrupting a work which exacts all one's thinking time
during waking hours. This has been partly my case,--having just
completed a novelette; but I have also had a good deal of trouble about
other matters that left me no chance to do anything until now. I am free
again,--I hope for a good long time.

Meanwhile I received your pamphlets, and read every one with more
pleasure than you could readily believe a non-scientific man could feel
in them. Of course, those which interested me most were:

1. That on the Homing Instinct (a much better word than the French
_orientation_). 2. That on the electric light. My first experience with
the light was painful; then I learned to like it (the white, not the
yellow) very much and found gaslight intensely disagreeable afterward.
By the way, do you correspond with Romanes, who solicits correspondence
on the subject of animals? You know him, of course, the author of
"Animal Intelligence" and "Mental Evolution in Animals." A man like that
ought to be delighted with such a splendid and powerful suggestion as
that of your pamphlet. I hope you are not too patriotic to think you
cannot do better with a scientific suggestion abroad than at home. There
are certain things that seem to me too worthy to remain buried in the
archives of a medical society,--which ought to reach a larger scientific
circle through a more eclectic medium, such as that of the superb
foreign reviews, devoted to what used to be called natural history, but
for which the term has long ago become too small. Still I am sure you
must have heard from your paper on the homing instinct if the
publication in which it appeared reached the quarters it ought to have
reached.

I don't know what to tell you about myself. Since October last I have
been buried in my room--facing, happily, a semi-circle of Mornes curving
away into a sea like lapis lazuli--and have neither heard nor seen
anything else. We had an epidemic of yellow fever which carried away
many Europeans and strangers; but it is over, and the weather is
delightful, if you can call weather delightful which keeps you drenched
in perspiration from morning to night, and forces you to lie down and
sleep in the afternoon if you dare attempt to write or read. The
difficulty of work in such a climate only those who have had the
experience can understand. I think my case is an experiment; almost a
phenomenon,--and I am very curious to know the result by the verdict
upon my work. I cannot judge it myself here. What at sundown seems good
in the morning appears damnably bad; and I was obliged to give every
page a test of three or four days' waiting. My novelette made itself
out of an incident related to me about a case of heroism during a great
negro revolt.

There is no question but that I shall be in New York this summer, for a
while. It is imperative. I have to oversee work before it can be
published;--that which already appeared was in terribly bad shape on
account of my not having seen the proofs. Then I may be getting out a
little book.

Did you see the incident in regard to the admission of a remarkable
young lady doctor into the profession by the faculty of Paris,--the
remarks of Charcot and others? I thought of your medical novel. There
were some remarks very suggestive made. The thesis of the candidate was
the position and duty of woman as a physician. You know what those
French are, and what peculiar ways they have of looking at the question
of women as physicians;--the Paris papers made all kinds of
_observations scabreuses_; but the dignity of the girl carried her
splendidly through the ordeal--an ordeal to which Americans would never
put a female student.

I have a curious compilation,--"Etudes pathologiques et historiques sur
l'origine et la propagation de la Fièvre Jaune" (1886),--perhaps you
know it already,--by Dr. Cornilliac of Martinique. If you do not know it
I will send it you from New York. It contains a great deal of valuable
matter regarding the climate of the West Indies, and formative
influences of that climate on races and temperament. Martinique has had
several physicians of colonial celebrity,--how great I cannot estimate,
being ignorant of their comparative value; but some of them have a
decided charm as writers and historians. Such was Rufz de Lavison,
author of a delightful history of the colony, and a work upon the
_trigonocephalus_, which would not bear equal praise, I fancy. If you
want any information about medical matters in Martinique, I will hunt it
up for you.

I hope to see you and have a great chat with you. But the heat is great,
and there is an accumulation of letters to answer, and you will forgive
me for saying for the moment good-bye.

                                        Your sincere friend,
                                                   LAFCADIO HEARN.

                           TO GEORGE M. GOULD

                                         SAINT-PIERRE, MARTINIQUE,
                                                   April, 1889.

DEAR GOULD,--I read your pamphlets with intense pleasure: that on the
effect of reflex neurosis, of course, impressed me only as a curious
research; but your paper on dreams, full of truth and suggestive beauty,
had much more than a scientific interest for me. There is a world of
poetical ideas and romantic psychology evoked by its perusal. I wonder
only that you did not dwell more upon the softness, sweetness,
impalpable goodness of this dream-world in which everything--even what
we usually think wrong--seems to be right. Doubtless all man's dreams of
paradise, of a golden past age, or a perfect future, were born of the
thin light vanishing sensations of dream. The work of Gautier cited by
you--"Avatar"--was my first translation from the French. I never could
find a publisher for it, however, and threw the MS. away at last in
disgust. It is certainly a wonderful story; but the self-styled
Anglo-Saxon has so much damnable prudery that even this innocent
phantasy seems to shock his sense of the "proper."

You will be pleased to hear my novelette has been a success with the
publishers. It cost me terrible work in this continual heat, small as it
is; and I feel so mentally blank that I must get back to the States for
a while to seek some vitality, brighten whatever blood I have got left
after two years of tropical air.

If you could find me in Philadelphia a very quiet room where I could
write without noise for a few months, I would try my luck there. New
York is stupefying; I know too many people there; and I want to be very
quiet,--only to see a friend or two now and then, when I am in good trim
for a chat. I shall return to the West Indies in the winter.

Address me if you have time to write c/o H. M. Alden, Edr. _Harper's
Magazine_;--for I shall have left Martinique, doubtless, by the time
this reaches you.

                                        Faithfully,
                                                   LAFCADIO HEARN.

                           TO JOSEPH TUNISON

                                                   NEW YORK, 1889.

DEAR JOE,--By the time this reaches you I shall have disappeared.

The moment I get into all this beastly machinery called "New York," I
get caught in some belt and whirled around madly in all directions until
I have no sense left. This city drives me crazy, or, if you prefer,
crazier; and I have no peace of mind or rest of body till I get out of
it. Nobody can find anybody, nothing seems to be anywhere, everything
seems to be mathematics and geometry and enigmatics and riddles and
confusion worse confounded: architecture and mechanics run mad. One has
to live by intuition and move by steam. I think an earthquake might
produce some improvement. The so-called improvements in civilization
have apparently resulted in making it impossible to see, hear, or find
anything out. You are improving yourselves out of the natural world. I
want to get back among the monkeys and the parrots, under a violet sky
among green peaks and an eternally lilac and lukewarm sea,--where
clothing is superfluous and reading too much of an exertion,--where
everybody sleeps 14 hours out of the 24. This is frightful, nightmarish,
devilish! Civilization is a hideous thing. Blessed is savagery! Surely a
palm 200 feet high is a finer thing in the natural order than seventy
times seven New Yorks. I came in by one door as you went out at the
other. Now there are cubic miles of cut granite and iron fury between
us. I shall at once find a hackman to take me away. I am sorry not to
see you--but since you live in hell what can I do? I will try to find
you again this summer.

                                               Best affection,
                                                             L. H.

                          TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

                                               PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--A week ago in New York I was asking a friend where
you were, but could then obtain no satisfactory information without
taking steps I had no time to attempt. I was really glad to get out of
the frightful whirl and roar of modern improvements as soon as possible,
but regretted not seeing you, even while assured of being able to do so
before long.

It is true I have been silent with my friends: I did not write seven
letters in seventeen months,--not even business letters. It was very
difficult to write anything in the continuous enervating heat; and I had
to struggle with difficulties of the most unlooked for sort,
incessantly,--until I found correspondence become almost impossible. But
I thought of you very often; and wondered if you were still in that
terrible metropolis. I saw in Max O'Rell's book some lines about a
charming young lady and thought it must have been you.... I returned on
the 8th from Martinique.

Dr. Matas sent me your pretty eulogy of "Chita"--which I often re-read
afterward, and which gave me encouragement when I began to doubt whether
I could do anything else.... I don't think I shall write another story
in the same manner,--feel I have changed very much in my way of looking
at things and of writing. "Chita" will soon be sent to you in book form
as a souvenir of Grande Isle: it is not as short a story as it looked in
the serried type of _Harper's_--will make a volume of 225 pp. I will
have something else to send you, however, that will interest you more as
to novelty,--a volume of tropical sketches.

I wonder whether you could ever throw upon paper the thoughts you
uttered to me that evening I visited you nearly two years ago,--when you
said _why_ you liked Grande Isle. In your few phrases you said much that
I had been trying to express and could not,--at least it so seemed to
me.... I have seen a great many strange beaches since; but nothing like
the morning charm of Grande Isle ever revealed itself. I wonder if I
were to see it now, whether I should feel the same pleasure....

Thanks for those verses!--there is a large, strong, strange beauty in
them. There seems, you know, to be just now a straining-up of eyes to
look for some singer able to prophesy,--to chant even one hymn of that
cosmic faith that is stealing upon the world.

                                   Affectionately your friend,
                                                   LAFCADIO HEARN.

                          TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

                                               PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--Oh! what a stiff epistle, with a little sharp
pointing of reproach twisting about in the tail of every letter! Really
you must never, never feel vexed at anything I write:--I wrote you just
as I wrote to Mr. Stedman about the same matter. I feel the man
sometimes is much less than the work: my work, however weak, is so much
better than myself, that the less said about me the better,--then there
are so many things you do not know. As for _you_ not liking
personalities, that is a very different thing! Your own personality has
charm enough to render the truth very palatable. But I am sure, now,
from your letter anything you say will be nice,--though I think it would
have been better not to have said it. Does a portrait of an ugly man
make one desirous to read his book? I could not get out of the Harper
plan for an article on Southern writers, without hurting myself
otherwise; but the candid truth is that I felt like yelling when I saw
the thing--howling and screeching! Indeed I think that my belief in the
invisible personality of a man has been largely forced by my thorough
disgust with the visible personality. Schopenhauer says a beautiful
thing about the former,--that the "I" is the dark point in
consciousness,--just as the point of the retina where the sight-nerve
enters is blind, and as the brain itself is without sensation, and the
eye sees all but itself. I am not anxious to see my soul; but the fact
of inability to see it encourages me to believe it is better than the
thing called L. H.

I don't know that I wrote anything clever enough to be worth your using,
but it is a pleasure you should think so. I can only suggest that the
adoption of my poor notions would tend to make me selfish about such as
I might think really good ones--I would keep them out of my letters,
until they could get into print!?!

_Sub rosa_, now!... My Martinique novelette comes out--the first
part--in January. I think you will like it better than "Chita:" it is
more mature and more exotic by far. It will run through two numbers.
They have made some illustrations which I have not seen, and am
therefore afraid of. Unless an illustration either reflects precisely or
surpasses the writer's imagination, it hurts rather than helps. By the
way, have you ever met H.F. Farny? Farny is an Alsatian, a fine man, and
a superb sketcher--though lazy as a serpent. But if you ever want
imaginative drawing of a certain class, he is one to do it.

Please don't ask me when I'm going to New York. I really can't find out.
I wish I could. I ought to be there on the 15th. But I am peculiarly
situated, tied up by a business-muddle,--tangled by necessities of
waiting for information,--tormented, befuddled, anxious beyond
expression about an undecided plan,--shivering with cold, and longing
for the tropics. All my life I have suffered with cold--all kinds of
cold--psychical and physical;--I hate cold!!!!--I _never_ can resign
myself to live in it!--I can't even think in it, and I would not be
afraid of that Warm Place where sinners are supposed to go! Perhaps the
G.A. will sentence me to everlasting sojourn in an iceberg when I have
ceased to sin.

Very faithfully, and to some extent apologetically.

For you I do remain always as nice as I can be.

                                                   LAFCADIO HEARN.

                          TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

                                               PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--I can't say definitely when I shall be in New York,
to have the delightful pleasure of a chat with you--something I have
been looking forward to for fully a year; but I will write to tell you a
few days in advance. I am drifting about with the forces of
circumstance--following directions of least resistance. Just now I have
a large mass (at least it looks very big to me) of MS. to amend and
emend and arrange into a tropical book: you will like some things in it.
When this job is finished, in a couple of weeks, it is probable I will
set to work on a short sketch or story, for which I have the material
partly arranged; and then I will go to New York. It is so quiet in this
beautiful great city, and my present environment is so pleasant, that I
am sure of doing better work here than I could in that frightful cyclone
of electricity and machinery called New York....

I am afraid you were right about the tropics, and the fascination of
climate. It is still upon me, and I shall find it very difficult to
conquer the temptation to return to the French colonies: the main fact
which helps me is the conviction that I cannot work there,--one's memory
and will blurs and fails in the incessant heat and sleepy air; and for
three months before leaving I could not write a line.... My friends
advise me to try the Orient next time; and I think I shall.

I have a novelette in the _Magazine_ pigeon-holes,--you will like it;
but I don't know when it is going to come out.

It is not a little pleasure to know that my admiration of your verses
can be an encouragement;--you have quite forgiven my ancient effort to
_amend_ a stanza by spoiling it!... I think your present position will
leave you time--after a while--for all you love to do, and can do so
uniquely. Magazine editing is so largely a question of method and
system--so far as I can learn--that I fancy you will eventually find it
possible to claim a few hours every day for yourself;--and such
systematic work as you must take hold of, will not, like journalistic
routine, deaden aspiration. I hope you will have a greater success with
the new monthly than you yourself expect, and I am sure you will if you
have fair chances at all.--But I must wait for the opportunity to see
you--because what one writes (at least what I myself write) on such
matters sounds so fictitious and flat,--though you know it comes from
your sincere friend,

                                                   LAFCADIO HEARN.

                          TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

                                               PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--It is true that I am only a small Voice;--but the
Voice has been uninterruptedly in the City of Doctors and Quakers, with
the exception of a much regretted interim passed in looking at that
monstrosity,--aptly described by C. D. Warner as "having been cut out
with a scroll-saw,"--Atlantic City.... (May I never, never behold
anything resembling it again!) I fear you must have written the address
wrong--so I send you the right one. It will always do: no matter where I
be. The Voice will call at 475 Fourth Avenue as soon as it can. It is
not its fault that it has not so done already. Everything to be written
must be finished, if possible, by the 15th prox.,--so that I can get
some place where the air is blue before cold weather. I will not be able
to run away from the country before Christmas anyhow.

I trust you are very, very well,--and as--everything--nice as anybody
could wish, and with best regards, remain always,

                       Your very true and positive friend,
                                                   LAFCADIO HEARN.

P.S. Now I want to see those letters which came back from the Dead
Letter Office. Is it really so?

                          TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

                                               PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--I know I am a horrid _ignis fatuus_; but the proofs
of "Chita" are only half-read, and I have no time to get away till it is
all done. Then I am working on a sketch,--then there will be more
proof-reading to do on the other book. But I will certainly get away in
a few weeks more, and will have ever so many things to tell you.

I have never seen the _Cosmopolitan_ in its new dress, and I do not know
what has been going on anywhere....

Philadelphia is a city very peculiar--isolated by custom antique, but
having a good solid social morality, and much peace. It has its own dry
drab newspapers, which are not like any other newspapers in the world,
and contain nothing not immediately concerning Philadelphia.
Consequently no echo from New York enters here--nor any from anywhere
else: there are no New York papers sold to speak of. The Quaker City
does not want them--thinks them in bad taste, accepts only the magazines
and weeklies. But it's the best old city in the whole world all the
same.

                                             Faithfully,
                                                         L. HEARN.

                          TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

                                               PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

MY DEAR MISS BISLAND,--I don't know whether you saw a little gem of
Loti's in the _Fortnightly_; I cut it out and send it,--also an attempt
at translation which proves the wisdom of the English magazine editor in
printing it in French,--and a comment of mine. I don't think you are
likely to wish to print such a thing as the translation; but if you
should, don't use it without sending me a proof, because it is full of
errors.

While in Saint-Pierre, Martinique, I found it--originally contributed,
in French, to the _Fortnightly_ for August, 1888--copied into a French
paper. The impression made by reading it startled me for reasons
independent of the exquisite weirdness of the thought. There was the
great orange sunset of the tropics before me, over a lilac
sea,--bronzing the green of the mango, and tamarind-trees, and the
broad, satiny leaves of _bananier_ and _balisier_. The interior
described in the vision was not of modern Saint-Pierre; but I knew an
old interior in Fort de France, whose present quaint condition repeated
precisely the background of the dream. A hundred years ago there were
but two places on the sunset-side of Martinique which could have
presented the spectacle of the little low streets described,--Fort de
France and Saint-Pierre. The high mountains cut off the sunset glow at
an early hour on the eastern side of the island. It seemed to me a
strange coincidence that in _Les Colonies_, a local paper, I had just
read also, that some old cemetery of Fort de France was about to be
turned into a playground for children.

                                                   LAFCADIO HEARN.

                          TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

                                               PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

DEAR MISS BISLAND,--Verily shirîn, shirîntar, and shirîntarin art
thou,--and Saadi in the Garden of the Taj likewise,--and also the letter
which I have just received.

Emotionally the book is surely Arnold's strongest: it has that intensity
of sweetness which touches the sphere of pain. One need not seek in the
Bostan or Gulistan for the essence of that volume: the Oriental thought
has been transfigured in its reflection from a nineteenth century mind.
There has been in one of Edwin Arnold's books some suggestion of a
future religion of human goodness and human brotherhood, through
recognition of soul-unity,--but in none, I think, so strangely as in
this. And then, what horror to read the very coarse interview published
recently in a daily paper: the brutal repetition of a man's words
uttered under constraint, about the most sacred of sentiments!...

No; I won't go to New York till you come back. I trust you will not
overwork yourself: when we see (I mean "hear") each other, we can talk
over all known devices for lightening literary duties. I am acquainted
with some; and I would not have you fall sick for anything--unless you
were to do me something "awfully mean:" then I'm afraid I would not be
so sorry as I ought to be.

I will try to give you something for the Christmas number anyhow,--but
not very long. By the way, I have an idea which may be wrong, but seems
to me worth uttering. The prose fiction which lives through the
centuries in the short story: like the old Greek romances--narratives
like "Manon Lescaut;" "Paul et Virginie;" the "Candide" of Voltaire; the
"Vicar of Wakefield;" "Undine," etc., outlive all the ampler labour of
their authors. It seems to me that with this century the great novel
will pass out of fashion: three-quarters of what is written is
unnecessary,--is involved simply by obedience to effete formulas and
standards. As a consequence we do not read as we used to. We read only
the essential, skipping all else. The book that compels perusal of every
line and word is the book of power. Create a story of which no reader
can skip a single paragraph, and one has the secret of force,--if not of
durability. My own hope is to do something in accordance with this idea:
no descriptions, no preliminaries, no explanations--nothing but the
feeling itself at highest intensity. I may fail utterly; but I think I
have divined a truth which will yet be recognized and pursued by
stronger minds than mine. The less material, the more force;--the
subtler the power the greater, as water than land, as wind than water,
as mind than wind. I would like to say something about light, heat,
electricity, rates of ether-vibration;--but the notion will work itself
out in your own beautiful mind without any clumsy attempts of mine to
illustrate.

--About the translation,--do as you please,--but don't please put it in
a great big daily, next to the account of a prize-fight or a
murder,--and please, if you do anything with it, see, _above all things
earthly_, that I get proofs. But I would just as soon you would keep it.
I made it for you, and am glad you had not seen the original previously.
I thought the _Cosmo._ was a sort of literary weekly. It is a beautiful
little magazine,--full of surprises; and I trust it is going to win a
great success.

Good-bye;--your Voice wishes you a very happy pleasure-trip, in which
you will feel all sorts of new feelings, and dream all manner of new
dreams.

                                                   LAFCADIO HEARN.

                          TO ELIZABETH BISLAND

                                               PHILADELPHIA, 1889.

This morning I dropped you a little note; but this afternoon, reading
your book-chat in the _Cosmo._ I find I must write you something more
impersonal.

--You know, perhaps, that Spencer's thought about education--the
paramount necessity of educating the Will through the Emotion--has
received, consciously or unconsciously, more attention in Italy than
elsewhere. The Emotions are not, as a rule, educated at all outside of
the home-circle. The great public schools of all countries have a system
which either ignores the emotions, or leaves them unprotected;--while
all sectarian teaching warps and withers them in the direction, at
least, of their natural growth. You know all this, I suppose, better
than I. But perhaps you do not know the "Cuore" of Edmondo de Amicis
(Thos. Y. Crowell & Co.), which has passed through 39 Italian editions.
And if you do not know it, I pray you to read it without skipping a
single phrase. It is as full of heart-sweetness as attar-of-roses is
full of flower-ghosts; and it seems a revelation of what emotional
education might accomplish.

I read Brownell's book at your suggestion. It contains, I think, the
best teaching about _how_ to study French character; but I could not
accept many of its inferences,--especially in regard to art and
morality,--without reluctance. There is a sense of something wanting in
the book--something lucid and spiritual (is it Conviction?) that makes
it heavy. How luminous and psychically electric is Lowell's book
compared with it. And how much nobler a soul must be the dreamer of
Chosön!

--I shall never write "Miss Bisland" again, except upon an envelope. It
is a formality,--and you are you: you are not a formality,--but a
somewhat. And I am only

                                                            "_I._"

                           TO GEORGE M. GOULD

                                                             1889.

DEAR GOULD,--Verily there is no strength nor power but from God,--the
High, the Great! I have thy letter, O thou of enormous working capacity,
and I admire and wonder, but am in no wise sorry for thee, seeing thou
doest that which thou art able to do, and findest pleasure therein and
excellence and dignity and power,--and that if thou wert doing it not
thou wouldst surely be doing something else;--for God (whose name be
exalted!) hath numbered thee among those who find felicity in exceeding
activity. Thou art indeed forty-one years old, by reckoning of time; but
as thou art of the Giants this reckoning hath no signification for thee.
Verily thou art but twenty-five years old, and thou shalt never know
age until a hundred winters shall have passed over thee. And all things
which thou dost desire shall be accorded unto thee by Him who, like
thyself, reposeth never, and whose blessed name be forever exalted! Also
unto thee shall the patients come, as an army for multitude, so that thy
bell shall make but one ringing through all thy days continuously, and
that thy neighbours shall be oppressed by reason of the concourse in the
street about thy dwelling.

But as for me, concerning whom thou makest inquiry, trouble not thyself
about thy servant, whose trust and power are in God--the High, the
Great! That which shall be shall be, and that which hath been shall not
be again:--for the moment, indeed, I am concerned only to know why the
flame of my lamp goeth _upward_, and all flame likewise,--unless it be
for the purpose of praising God (whose name be exalted by all living
creatures!). For thou saidst unto me, being a Kafeer, that Flame is a
vibration only; but thou hast not been able to tell me the mystery of
the pointing of fire and the upreaching of it to the feet of God, the
Compassionate, the Merciful.

Here it raineth always, and this Soul of me is slowly evaporating,
despite the perusal of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who spake of souls.
Meseems that each time I behold the eyes of her concerning whom I spake
to thee, something of that soul is drawn out unto her, and devoured
perhaps for sustenance of that Jinneyah--which is her own soul. So that
mine hath become thin as the inner shadow wrought by a strong double
light upon the ground; and I shall become even as a vegetable
presently--having knowledge of nothing save the witchery of God in the
eyes of women. The memory of Schopenhauer hath passed,--and with its
passing I find my only salvation in a return to the study of the Oceanic
Majesty and Power and Greatness and Holiness and Omniscience of the mind
of Herbert Spencer.

Be thou ever blessed and loved by the sons of men, even as by

                                                            HEARN.

                           TO GEORGE M. GOULD

                                                             1889.

GOULD,--You must have skipped, bad boy!--for the girl is _not_ "all face
and foot"! You missed the finely detailed account of her body in
William's diary,--and the just observation of a trait characteristic of
the race in its purity; the great length of the lower limb,--fine
greyhounds, fine thoroughbred horses, and fine men and women have all
this characteristic, like the conventional figures of antique gem-work.
The gipsy-girl is possible: I have seen charming ones. You must read
Borrow's "Gipsies" (the unabbreviated edition in two volumes),--also his
"Bible in Spain," and "Lavengro,"--a Gipsy novel. Simpson's "Gipsies" is
also worth looking at.... But if you won't believe in the bird of
passage, take Carmen and believe in her--there, at least, you will not
doubt: all will prove in accordance with possible sin and sorrow. Why do
you want the Bird's body to be better known--since nobody ever knew it
any better than you know it; (or would know if you had read all)--could
not have except by making to operate, like the Vicar of Azey-le-Rideau,
all its "hinges and mesial partitions," even to disjuncture. What a
singular fact in the history of torture, that the inquisitor was trained
to believe the beautiful body he was breaking and rending and burning
was _never beautiful_--that its grace and symmetry were illusions, the
witchcraft of the dear old compassionate Devil striving to save his
victim by the mirage of fleshly attractiveness! Only through this belief
could certain monstrosities have been possible. It was always Saint
Anthony's temptation!

I have a book for you--an astounding book,--a godlike book. But I want
you to promise to read every single word of it. Every word is dynamic.
It is the finest book on the East ever written; and though very small
contains more than all my library of Oriental books. And an American (?)
wrote it! It is called "The Soul of the Far East." It will astound you
like Schopenhauer, the same profundity and lucidity. Love to you,

                                                            HEARN.

                           TO GEORGE M. GOULD

                                                             1889.

DEAR GOULD,--I blacked--that is, I had my boots blacked yesterday,--just
for the same reason that we do things after people are dead (which we
would not have done for them while they lived and asked), with a
ghostly idea of pleasing them. If you had been here I might not have
had them blacked, but as you were gone, I did it for the Shadow of
you. And I gave the boy 20 cents,--because of the feeling that he
might never have such a chance again. That boy runs after me now
everywhere,--but--he is mistaken! I am no longer the same! I have
satisfied my conscience, and enjoy Nirvana.

This morning when I got up I thought the streets looked queer. It seemed
as if they were lighted by the afternoon in some way or other, instead
of the morning. I went to the P. O. with "The Soul of the Far East." How
silent the streets for a Friday morning! The population seemed all to
have ebbed away somewhere as if to look at something. The post-office
was silent as a pyramid inside. I went to the book-store, and found it
closed,--and for the first time realized that it was Sunday. Then I
understood why the streets looked like afternoon; and the sunshine had a
tinge as of evening in a cemetery. Confound Sunday!

Talking with Jakey last night about Nature, I heard him express the
opinion that his capacity of scientific realization of the _causes_ of
things was enough to account for the absence in him of any feeling of
awe or reverence in the presence of mountain scenery. It occurred to me
therewith that the characteristic of indifference to poetry might be
almost common to mathematicians. The man who wrote "The Soul of the Far
East" and "Chosön" is nevertheless an accomplished mathematician. But
you will notice that his divine poetry touches only that which no
scientific knowledge can explain,--that which no mathematics can
solve,--that which must remain mysterious throughout all conceivable
span of time,--the fluttering of the Human Soul in its chrysalis, which
it at once hates and loves, and hates because it loves, and strives to
burst through, and still fears unspeakably to break,--though dimly
conscious of the infinite Ghostly Peace beyond.

                                                            HEARN.

                           TO GEORGE M. GOULD

                                                             1889.

DEAR GOULD,--I feel like a white granular mass of amorphous crystals--my
formula appears to be isomeric with Spasmotoxin. My aurochloride
precipitates into beautiful prismatic needles. My Platinochloride
develops octohedron crystals,--with a fine blue fluorescence. My
physiological action is not indifferent. One millionth of a grain
injected under the skin of a frog produced instantaneous death
accompanied by an orange blossom odour. The heart stopped in systole. A
base--L_3 H_9 NG_4--offers analogous reaction to phosmotinigstic
acid. Yours with best regards,

                                      PHOSMOLYODIC LAFCADIO HEARN.

GOULD,--"Concerning zombis, tell me all about them."

HEARN,--"In order to relate you that which you desire, it will be
necessary first to explain the difference in the idea of the
supernatural as existing in the savage and in the civilized mind. Now,
I remember a very strange thing...."

GOULD,--"I'll be back in a minute." (_Strides across the street._)

Violent agitation in the peripheral centres of Hearn, together with
considerable acute anguish, owing to disintegration of cerebral tissue
consequent upon the sudden arrest of nerve-force in discharge. (See
Grant Allen on cause of pain, "Physiological Æsthetics.")

Gould, suddenly reappearing:--"Go on with that old story, now."

(Resurrection of cerebral agitation in the ganglionic centres and
intercorrelate cerebral fibres of Hearn. After desperate and painful
research, the broken threads of memories and impulses are found again,
and peripherally conjointed, and the wounded narrative proceeds, limping
grievously.)

HEARN,--"As I was observing, I recollect one very curious instance of
emotional and fantastic--"

GOULD,--"Yes, I'll be out in a moment--" (_Disappears through a door._)

--Brutal confusion established in the visual, auditory, gustatory, and
olfactory ganglia of Hearn;--general quivering and strain of all the
mnemonic current lines, and then a sense of inquisitorial torture going
on in various brain-chambers, where the vital forces, suddenly arrested,
flow back in a deluge and set all ideas afloat in drowning agony. Slow
recovery as from concussion of the cerebellum.

ENTER GOULD,--"Now proceed with that story of yours."

HEARN,--pacifying the fury of the ganglionic centres with the most
extreme possible difficulty, timidly observes,--

"But you don't care to hear it?"

GOULD,--moving with inconceivable rapidity, dynamically overcharged,--

"Of course, I do: I'm just dying to hear it."

Hearn, running after him, skipping preliminaries in the anguish of "hope
deferred which maketh the heart sick,"--

"Well, it was in the Rue du Bois Morier,--one of the steepest and
strangest streets in the world, full of fantastic gables, and the
shadows of--"

GOULD,--"Yes, I'll be out in a minute." (_Vanishes through a shop
entrance._)

(Inexpressible chaos and bewilderment of impulses afferent and
efferent,--electrical collisions in the ganglia,--unspeakable combustion
of tissue in the intercorrelating fibres,--paralysis of conflicting
emotions,--unutterable anguish: coma followed by acute mania in the
person of Hearn.)

GOULD,--emerging, "Well, go on with that old yarn...."

But Hearn is being already conveyed by two large Philadelphia Policemen
to the Penn. Lunatic Asylum for Uncurables.

Astonishment of Gould.

                           TO GEORGE M. GOULD

                                                             1889.

GOULD,--Just after I wrote you last night, something began to whiffle
quite soundlessly round my head: I saw only a shadow, and I turned down
the gas,--remembering that he who extinguisheth his light so that
insects may not perish therein, shall, according to the book of Laotse,
obtain longer life and remission of sins. Then it struck me with its
wings so heavily that I knew it was a bat,--for no bird could fly so
silently; and I turned up the gas again,--full. There it was!--very
large,--circling round and round the ceiling so swiftly that I felt
dizzy trying to turn to keep it in sight,--and as noiselessly as its own
shadow above it. I could not tell which was the shadow and which the
life,--until both came together at last upon a ledge, and made a little
peak-shouldered devilish thing with strangely twisted ears.

All at once I remembered an experience in Martinique one summer evening.
We were at Grand Anse,--friend Arnoux and I,--supping in a little room
opening over a low garden full of banana-trees, to the black beach of
the sea; and the great Voice thundered so we could scarcely hear
ourselves speak; and the candle in the verrine fluttered like something
afraid. Then right over my head a bat began to circle, with never a
sound. Arnoux exclaimed: "_Mais, mon cher, regarde cette sacrée
bête--ah--c'est drôle!_" By the look of his face I knew _drôle_ meant
"weird." He struck it down with his napkin and it disappeared; but a
moment later came back again, and flew round as before. Again he hit it
and drove it away; but it always came flitting back. Then we all
laughed;--and Pierre, the host, tickling my ear with his beard, cried
out,--"_C'est ta maîtresse à Saint-Pierre--elle est morte,--elle vient
te chercher._" And I looked so serious that Arnoux burst into a laugh as
loud as the surf outside.

Now when I saw that bat, I thought it was "weird,"--_drôle_ as the
other. I even found myself wondering, Who it could be? I thought it
might be Clemence, about whose death I received news in my last letter.
I did not think for a moment it was Gould. Only some very poor simple
soul would avail itself of so humble a vehicle for apparition.... Then
it looked so much like something damned as it moved about, that I felt
ashamed of thinking it could be Clemence,--the best kind of old souls,
Clemence!--My _blanchisseuse_. It was not easy to catch the bat without
hurting it. I argued that if it was anybody I knew it could not be
afraid of me. It sat on the mirror. It went under the table. It
flattened under the trunk and feigned death. Then I caught it in my hat;
and it revealed its plain nature by burying its teeth in my finger; and
it would not let go,--and it squeaked and chippered like a ghost. I was
almost mad enough to hurt it; but I tried to caress its head, which felt
soft and nice. But it showed all its teeth and looked too ugly, and
there was a musky smell of hell about it--so that I knew, if it were
anybody, the place with a capital "P" where it came from. I put it in a
box. To-night I am going to let it go.

                                        With love to you,
                                                   LAFCADIO HEARN.

                           TO GEORGE M. GOULD

                                                             1889.

MY MOST DEAR GOULD,--I am really quite lonesome for you, and am
reflecting how much more lonesome I shall be in some outrageous
equatorial country where I shall not see you any more;--also it seems to
me perfectly and inexplainably atrocious to know that some day or other
there will be no Gould at 119 S. 17th St. That I should cease to make a
shadow some day seems quite natural, because Hearn is only a bubble
anyhow ("the earth hath bubbles"),--but you, hating mysteries and seeing
and feeling and knowing everything,--you have no right ever to die at
all. And I can't help doubting whether you will. You have almost made me
believe what you do not believe yourself,--that there are souls. I
haven't any, I know; but I think you have,--something electrical and
luminous inside you that will walk about and see things always. Are you
really--what I see of you--only an envelope of something subtler and
perpetual? Because if you are, I might want you to pass down some day
southward,--over the blue zone and the volcanic peaks like a little
wind,--and flutter through the palm-plumes under the all-purifying
sun,--and reach down through old roots to the bones of me, and try to
raise me up.

"Ruth" maketh progress; but I had to murder the "Mother of God." Anyhow
the simile would have had a Catholic idolatrousness about it, so that I
don't regret it.--I send a clipping I found in the trunk, to make you
laugh: the "Femmes Arabes" of Dr. Perron furnished me the facts.--Mrs.
Gould moveth or reposeth in serenity,--Jakey fulfilleth with becoming
dignity the duties devolved upon him. I have consumed one plug of
"Quaker City;" but as the smoke spires up, the spiritual-sensualism of
"Ruth" becometh manifest.

There has been some rain almost worthy of the tropics,--and much
darkness. And I can understand better why the ancients of Yucatan,
accustomed to the charm of real physical light (about which you
Northerners know nothing), put no fire into their hell, but darkness
only, as woe enough for tropical souls to bear!

I hope you are having a glorious, joyous journeying, and remain,

                                           Lovingly yours,
                                                            HEARN.

                                TO ----

                                                             1889.

I am very sorry your trip was a chilly and rainy one. As for me, I have
been shivering here, and have got to get South somewhere soon,--if only
till I can get back to the tropics. I am sorry to confess it; but the
tropical Circe bewitches me again--I must go back to her.

I had such a queer dream last night. A great, warm garden with high
clipped hedges,--much higher than a man,--and a sort of pleasant
country-house, with steps leading into the garden,--and everywhere, even
on the steps, hampers and baskets. Krehbiel was there,--he told me he
was going to Europe never to come back. And you were there, too, all in
black silk--sheathed in it; you were also going away somewhere; and I
was packing for you, getting things ready. Everybody was saying nice
things: one did not seem to hear,--really one never hears voices in
dreams,--but one feels the words, tones and all, as if they passed
unspoken--just the soul or will of them only--out of one brain into
another. I can't remember what anybody said precisely: what I recollect
best is the sensation that everybody was going, and that I was to stay
all alone in the place, or anywhere I pleased; and it was getting dark.
Then I woke up, and said: "Well, I really must see her." I suppose
dreams mean nothing: but interpreted by the contrary, as is a custom, it
would mean the reverse--that I am going away somewhere,--which I don't
yet know.

                               Always and in all things yours,
                                                   LAFCADIO HEARN.

P. S. Oh!--you spoke about Philadelphia.... Is it possible you have
never seen it? Is it possible you have never seen Fairmount Park?
Believe me, then, that it is the most beautiful place of the whole
civilized world on any sunny, tepid summer day. Your Central Park is a
cabbage-garden by comparison: F. Pk. is fifteen miles long, by about
eight or ten broad. But the size is nothing. It is the beauty of the
woods and their vistas, the long drives by the river, the glimpse of
statuary and fountains from delightful terraces, the knolls commanding
the whole circle of the horizon, the vast garden and lawn spaces, the
shadowed alleys where 100,000 people make scarcely any more sound than a
swarm of bees,--and over it all such a soft, sweet dreamy light. (When
you go to see it, be sure to choose a sunny, _warm_ day.) Thousands of
thousands of carriages file by, each with a pair of lovers in it.
Everybody in the park seems to be making love to somebody. Love is so
much the atmosphere of the place,--a part of the light and calm and
perfume--that you feel as if drenched with it, permeated by it,
mesmerized. And if you are all alone, you will look about you once in a
while, wondering that somebody else is not beside you.... But I forgot
that I am not writing to a stupid man, like myself.

                                                             L. H.

                                TO ----

                                         NEW YORK, November, 1889.

Oh! you splendid girl!--will it really give you some short pleasure to
see this old humbug's writing again?... I was very sorry not to have
been able to see you: I should have wished to be able to give you a few
bits of advice about precautions to take during the tropical part of
your trip. But I have faith in your superb constitution and youth,--and
trust this will reach eyes undimmed by fever, and brightened more than
ever by the glow of all the strange suns that will have shone upon you.

So that is my dream that I wrote you about: it was you, not I, that were
to run away. But I did not help you to do your packing, as I imagined.

I wonder if you went away in black silk, or black cashmere: I dreamed of
you all in black that time. And when I saw the charming notice about you
in the _Tribune_, there suddenly came back to me the same vague sense of
unhappiness I had dreamed of feeling,--an absurd sense of absolute
loneliness.

For seldom as I saw you, I must tell you that I looked forward to such
visits as to something very delightful, that helped me to forget the
great iron-whirling world and everything in it but yourself. You made a
little circle of magnetic sunshine for me; and you know I liked to bask
in it so much that I used to be quite selfish about it. I feel now as
though, each night I sat up so late in your little parlour, I was taking
from you so much rest,--which means life and strength,--acted, in short,
the part of a psychical cannibal! And I am remorseful at not being able
to feel more remorseful than I do; it was so nice to be there that I
can't be properly sorry, as I should.

I and my friends have been wagering upon you, hoping for you, praying
for you to win your race,--so that every one may admire you still more,
and your name be flashed round the world quicker than the sunshine, and
your portrait--in spite of you--appear in some French journal where they
know how to engrave portraits properly. I thought I might be able to
coax one from you; but as you never are the same person two minutes in
succession, I am partly consoled: it could only be one small phase of
you,--Proteus, Circe, Undine, Djineeyeh!

--And you found the loose bar at last, and shook it out, and flew! I
much doubt if they will ever get you well into the cage again,--that was
so irksome to you. But perhaps the world itself will seem a cage to you
hereafter:--it will have grown so much smaller in that blue-flashing
circuit of yours about it. Perhaps when human society shall have become
infinitely more fluid and electric than at present,--which it is sure to
do with the expansion and increasing complexity of intercommunication by
steam and wire,--this little half-dead planet will seem too small to
mankind. One will feel upon it, in the light of a larger knowledge,
constrained almost as much as Simon on the top of his pillar,--and long,
like him, for birth into a larger mode of being. Even now there is no
more fleeing into strange countries,--because there are no strange
countries: everything is being interbound and interspersed with steel
rails and lightning wires;--there are no more mysteries,--except what
are called hearts, those points at which individualities rarely touch
each other, only to feel as sudden a thrill of surprise as at meeting a
ghost, and then to wonder in vain, for the rest of life, what lies out
of soul-sight.

--Did you often wish to stop somewhere, and feel hearts beating about
you, and see the faces of gods and dancing-girls? Or were you petted
like the _Lady of the Aroostook_ by officers and crew,--and British
dignitaries eager to win one Circe-smile,--and superb Indian Colonels of
princely houses returning home,--that you had no chance to regret
anything? I have been so afraid of never seeing you again, that I have
been hating splendid imaginary foreigners in dreams,--which would have
been quite wickedly selfish if I had been awake!...

With every true good wish and sincere affection,

                                        Your friend,
                                                   LAFCADIO HEARN.

                                TO ----

                                                  March 7-8, 1890.

I must write you a line or two, before I finish packing,--though it is
the hour of ghosts, when writing is a grave imprudence. Something makes
me write you nevertheless.

I could not go to see Mr. M----: there was too much ice and snow. But
you can forgive _that_.

I shall be very sorry not to see you again,--and this time, you are not
sorry to know I am going away as you were when I went South. Perhaps you
are quite right....

--But that is nothing. What I want to say is, that after looking at your
portrait, I must tell you how sweet and infinitely good you ... can be,
and how much I like you, and how I like you,--or at least _some_ of
those many who are one in you.

I might say love you,--as we love those who are dead--(the dead who
still shape lives);--but which, or how many, of you I cannot say. One
looks at me from your picture; but I have seen others, equally pleasing
and less mysterious.

... Not when you were in evening dress, because you were then too
beautiful; and what is thus beautiful is not that which is most charming
in you. It only dazzles one, and constrains.... I like you best in the
simple dark dress, when I can forget everything except all the souls of
you. Turn by turn one or other floats up from the depth within and
rushes to your face and transfigures it;--and that one which made you
smile with pleasure like a child at something pretty we were both
admiring is simply divine.... I do not think you really know how sacred
you are; and yet you ought to know: it is because you do not know what
is in you, _who_ are in you, that you say such strangely material
things. And you yourself, by being, utterly contradict them all.

It seems to me that all those mysterious lives within you--all the Me's
that were--keep asking the Me that is, for something always
refused;--that you keep saying to them: "But you are dead and cannot
see--you can only feel; and _I_ can see,--and I will not open to you,
because the world is all changed. You would not know it, and you would
be angry with me were I to grant your wish. Go to your places, and sleep
and wait and leave me in peace with myself." But they continue to wake
up betimes, and quiver into momentary visibility to make you divine in
spite of yourself,--and as suddenly flit away again. I wish one would
come--and stay: the one I saw that night when we were looking at ...
what was it?

Really, I can't remember what it was: the smile effaced the memory of
it,--just as a sun-ray blots the image from a dry-plate suddenly
exposed. There was such a child-beauty in that smile.... Will you ever
be _like that always_ for any one being?

--I hope you will get my book before you go: it will be sent you Tuesday
at latest, I think. I don't know whether you will like the paper; but
you will only look for the "gnat of a soul" that belongs to me between
the leaves.

--Forgive all my horrid ways, my dear, sweet, ghostly sister.

                                                  Good-bye,
                                                      LAFCADIO HEARN.

                               END OF VOLUME I

Transcriber's Note

The following list contains questionable spellings (and the pages upon
which they appeared) all of which have been retained:

befel (116); Buddist (142); begining (146); bazar (149, 342)

There are also some constructions that seem questionable. Punctuation
errors have been corrected.

 p. 138 | unimportant detail and [banal ana]   | banaliana?
        |                                      |
 p. 152 | he was so enthusiastic[ally] that    | sic
        |                                      |
 p. 183 | spectre is the ?--"Where shall I go? | '?' stands for
        |                                      |   'question'.
        |                                      |
 p. 329 | Very truly your friend[./,]          | Corrected.
        |                                      |
 p. 387 | the simple hook-mark "?"[.] I can    | A full stop is needed.
        |  imagine                             |
        |                                      |
 p. 410 | wildest dreams[,/.] The artistic     | Corrected.