Chapter XII · —APPRECIATIONS AND EPITOMES

TAKEN as a whole, the criticisms upon Hearn's work are complimentary. He has his warm admirers, and some who are not so enthusiastic; but those who criticize adversely do so with a gentleness,—I may say, almost a reluctance that is perhaps the reflection of the spirit of his work. And whatever else these may offer, all agree that his writings have a unique charm.

Following are a few excerpts which should give an average of opinions:—

"One great secret of his success in interpreting the Japanese mind and temperament lay in his patience in seeking out and studying minutely the little things of a people said to be great in such. As Amenomori says of Hearn's mind, it 'called forth life and poetry out of dust.'" (327.)[20]

"As an interpreter of the Japanese heart, mind, hand and soul, Mr. Hearn has no superior. But he will not convert those who in health of body and mind love the landmarks of the best faith of the race. It is very hard to make fog and miasmatic exhalations, even when made partly luminous with rhetoric, attractive to the intellect that loves headlands and mountain-tops. The product of despair can never compete in robust minds with the product of faith." (357.)

"Sympathy and exquisiteness of touch are the characteristics of Mr. Hearn's genius. He is a chameleon, glowing with the hue of outer objects or of inward moods, or altogether iridescent. He becomes translucent and veined like a moth on a twig, or mottled as if with the protective golden browns of fallen leaves. We may not look for architectonic or even plastic powers. His is not the mind which constructs of inner necessity, which weaves plots and schemes, or thinks of its frame as it paints. He attempts no epic of history. The delver for sociologic or theologic spoil must seek deeper waters....

"In his later books the all-potent influence of Japanese restraint seems to have refined and subdued his wonderful style to more perfect harmonies....

"His chapters are long or short as are his moods. There is little organic unity in them; no scientific aim or philosophic grasp rounds them into form. Even his paragraphs have little cohesion. Speaking of the forming of his sentences, he himself has compared it to the focussing of an image, each added word being like the turn of a delicate screw." (306.)

"The secret of the charm that we feel to such a marked degree in Mr. Lafcadio Hearn's volumes is that, in contrast to other writers, he does take the Japanese very seriously indeed." (316.)

"To the details of life and thought in Japan Mr. Hearn's soul seems everywhere and at all times responsive. He catches in his eye and on his pen minute motes scarcely noticeable by the keen natives themselves." (367.)

"He has written nothing on Japan equal in length to his tales of West Indian life. But while we deplore this reserve of a writer who possesses every quality of style, except humour, we have reason to be grateful for whatever he gives us." (307.)

"The matchless prose and the sympathy of Mr. Hearn." (324.)

"Mr. Hearn has the sympathetic temperament, the minute mental vision, the subdued style peculiar to all that is good in Japanese art and literature, needed for the accomplishment of a labour which to him has been a labour of love indeed. Here we have no mawkish sentimentality, no excessive laudation, on the one hand; on the other, no Occidental harshness, no Occidental ignorance of the sweet mystery of Eastern ways of life and modes of thought. What this most charming of writers on Far Eastern subjects has seen all may see, but only those can understand who are endowed with a like faculty of perception of unobtrusive beauty, and a like power, it must be added, of patient and prolonged study of common appearances and everyday events." (295.)

"A man has just died, intelligent and generous, who had succeeded in reconciling in his heart, the clear, rational ideas of the West together with the obscure deep sense of Extreme—Asia: Lafcadio Hearn. In the hospitality of his recipient soul, high European civilization and high Japanese civilization found a meeting-place; harmonized; completed, one in the other....

"In English-speaking countries, especially in the United States, Lafcadio Hearn already enjoys a just reputation. The lovers of the exotic, esteem him as equal to Kipling or Stevenson. In France, the Revue de Paris has begun to make him known, by publishing some of his best articles, elegantly and faithfully translated. His budding fame is destined to increase, as Europe takes a greater interest in the arts and the thoughts of the Extreme-Orient. His prose, exact and harmonious, will be admired as one of the finest since Ruskin wrote: his very personal style, at the same time subtle and powerful, will be noted: he will be especially admired for his delicate and profound intelligence of that Japanese civilization which, to us, remains so mysterious. What characterizes the talent of Lafcadio Hearn, that which gives it its precious originality, is the rare mixture of scientific precision and idealistic enthusiasm: his work might justly be entitled Truth and Poesy: 'In reading these essays,' says one of our best existing Japanese scholars, Professor Chamberlain, 'one feels the truth of Richard Wagner's statement: "Alles verständniss kommt uns nur durch die Liebe." (All understanding comes to us only through Love.) If Lafcadio Hearn understands Japan best, and makes it better understood than any other writer, it is because he loves it best.'

"Lafcadio Hearn describes with intelligence, with love all aspects of Japanese life: Nature and inhabitants; landscapes, animals and flowers; material life and life moral; classic Art and popular literature; philosophies, religions and superstitions. He awakens in us an exquisite feeling of old aristocratic and feudal Japan: he explains to us the prodigious revolution that modern Japan has created in thirty years....

"Hearn has consecrated to the study of Japanese art some of his most curious psychological analyses.

"Lafcadio Hearn takes a deep interest in the religious life of the Japanese. He studies with the minutest exactness the ancient customs of Shintōism, high moral precepts of Buddhism, and also the popular superstitions that hold on, for instance, to the worship of foxes, and to the idea of pre-existence." (393.)

"To a certain large class of his adopted countrymen, his hatred of Christianity, which was pronounced long before he went to Japan, and his fondness for Oriental cults of all kinds, was recommendation. But it is still an open question whether he did harm or good to the Japanese by his advocacy of their superstitions....

"Hearn's books are little known to the multitude. But they are familiar to an influential class the world over. In him Japan has lost a powerful and flattering advocate, and the English world one of its masters in style." (332.)

"Mr. Hearn was not a philosopher or a judicial student of life. He was a gifted, born impressionist, with a style resembling that of the French Pierre Loti. His stories and descriptions are delicate or gorgeous word pictures of the subtler and more elusive qualities of Oriental life." (293.)

"His art is the power of suggestion through perfect restraint.... He stands and proclaims his mysteries at the meeting of three ways. To the religious instinct of India,—Buddhism in particular,—which history has engrafted on the æsthetic sense of Japan, Mr. Hearn brings the interpreting spirit of Occidental science; and these three traditions are fused by the peculiar sympathies of his mind into one rich and novel compound.... In these essays and tales, whose substance is so strangely mingled together out of the austere dreams of India and the subtle beauty of Japan and the relentless science of Europe, I read vaguely of many things which hitherto were quite dark." (308.)

"He brings to the study of all aspects of Japanese life, intelligence, and love; he also sets sail in his descriptions and analyses towards a general theory on life; he is a Japanizing psychologist: he is also a philosopher....

"At all events, Lafcadio Hearn has the merit of recalling powerfully to the Europeans of Europe the importance, often misunderstood, of Eastern civilization. No one better than this Japanizing enthusiast to make us feel what there is of narrowness in our habitual conception of the world, in our individualistic literature, misunderstanding too much the influence of the Past in our anthropocentric art, neglecting Nature too often, penetrated too 'singly' in our classic philosophy with Greco-Latin and Christian influences. 'Till now,' says Lafcadio Hearn very forcibly, 'having lived only in one hemisphere, we have thought but half thoughts.' We should enlarge our hearts and our minds by taking into our circle of culture, all the art and all the thought of the extreme East.

"From the philosophical view-point, Lafcadio Hearn has the merit of calling attention to the high value of Shintōism, and above all of Buddhism. His work deserves to exercise an influence on the religious ideas of the West. If religion can no longer occupy any place in the intellectual life of humanity, more and more invaded by science, she can subsist a long time yet, perhaps always, in her sentimental life." (392.)

"For that rôle [as interpreter of Japan] he was eminently unfitted both by temperament and training. Indeed he was not slow to recognize his lack of the judicial faculty, and on one occasion acknowledged that he is a 'creature of extremes.' ... But Hearn often succeeds in reaching the heart of things by his faculty of sympathy, in virtue of which alone his books deserve perusal; when he fails it is because of a lack of the unimpassioned judicial faculty, a tendency to subordinate reason to feeling, an inclination to place sympathy in the position of judge rather than guide." (359.)

"Lafcadio Hearn not only buried himself in the Japanese world, but gave his ashes to the soil so often devastated by earthquake, typhoon, tidal wave and famine, but ever fertile in blooms of fancy which lies under the River of Heaven. The air of Nippon, poor in ozone, is overpopulated by goblins. No writer has ever excelled this child of Greece and Ireland in interpreting the weird fancies of peasant and poet in the land of bamboo and cherry flowers.... Hearn's life seemed crushed under 'the horror of infinite Possibility.' Hence perhaps the weird fascination of his work and style." (348.)

EPITOMES

Avatar (281).—It was during the Cincinnati period that Hearn made this—his first translation from the French. Writing of it in 1886, he says:—

I have a project on foot—to issue a series of translations of archæological and artistic French romance—Flaubert's "Tentation de Saint-Antoine"; De Nerval's "Voyage en Orient"; Gautier's "Avatar"; Loti's most extraordinary African and Polynesian novels; and Beaudelaire's "Petits Poemes en Prose."

But three years later, he writes:—

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—prudery that even this innocent phantasy seems to shock his sense of the "proper."

La Tentation de Saint-Antoine (282) was probably translated at about the same time. Hearn failed to find a publisher who would take it, but the manuscript is still in my possession. Hearn's own complete scenario, together with a description of the manuscript, is given on another page. I quote from Hearn about this work:—

The original is certainly one of the most exotically strange pieces of writing in any language, and weird beyond description.

Of his own translation, he writes:—

The work is audacious in parts; but I think nothing ought to be suppressed. That serpent-scene, the crucified lions, the breaking of the chair of gold, the hideous battles about Carthage,—these pages contain pictures that ought not to remain entombed in a foreign museum.

The winter of 1877, the year Hearn arrived in New Orleans, he corresponded with the Cincinnati Commercial under the name of "Ozias Midwinter" (219). Excerpts from this series of letters are given in the chapter, "The New Orleans Period."

One of Cleopatra's Nights (20) was the first book to be published. The translations were made during the latter part of the Cincinnati period, but the volume did not appear until some years later, while Hearn was in New Orleans. It was prepared at the hour when his craving for the exotic and weird was at its height. From the opening word to the last the six stories are one long Dionysian revel of an Arabian Night's Dream, and within their pages it is not difficult to feel that "one is truly dead only when one is no longer loved." What an exotic group of names it is:—Cleopatra, "she that made the whole world's bale and bliss;" Clarimonde,

"Who was famed in her lifetime As the fairest of women;"

Arria Marcella; the Princess Hermonthis; Omphale; and the one "fairer than all daughters of men, lovelier than all fantasies realized in stone"—Nyssia. It is a tapestry woven of the lights and jewels and passion of an antique world. "You will find in Gautier," Hearn writes, "a perfection of melody, a warmth of word colouring, a voluptuous delicacy;" "Gautier could create mosaics of word jewellery without equals." Hearn's "pet stories" are "Clarimonde" and "Arria Marcella." Is it strange that he should delight in these beautiful vampires?

In this work, and in the tales to follow, we already perceive that colour is to become a sort of a fetich to be worshipped. Here in the studio of another artist, he serves his first apprenticeship, and from the highly toned palette of Gautier he learns how to mix and lay on the colours that he himself is later to use so richly.

In speaking of this book, a critic says:—

"His learning and his inspiration were wholly French in these productions, as also in what was his first and in some ways his best book, "One of Cleopatra's Nights," and other tales translated from Théophile Gautier. While Hearn was faithful to his original, he also improved upon it, and many a scholar who knows both French and English has confessed under the rose that Gautier is outdone." (332.)

Of his work, Hearn writes:—

You asked me about Gautier. I have read and possess nearly all his works; and before I was really mature enough for such an undertaking I translated his six most remarkable short stories. The work contains, I regret to say, several shocking errors, and the publishers refused me the right to correct the plates. The book remains one of the sins of my literary youth, but I am sure my judgment of the value of the stories was correct.

While preparing his next book, Hearn published in the Century, "The Scenes of Cable's Romances" (220). In this article he vivifies the quarters and dwellings that Mr. Cable in his delightful stories had already made famous.

The First Muezzin, Bilâl (405), was written in the fall of 1883, during the New Orleans period. It is a beautiful, serious piece of work, and is written with the fine, sonorous quality that such a theme should inspire. That it was a labour of love is shown in Hearn's letters written at its inception to Mr. Krehbiel, who was an invaluable aid to him in compiling its musical part. "Bilâl" was probably published finally in the Times-Democrat, after being refused by Harper's, the Century, and some others.

The traveller slumbering for the first time within the walls of an Oriental city, and in the vicinity of a minaret, can scarcely fail to be impressed by the solemn beauty of the Mohammedan Call to Prayer. If he have worthily prepared himself, by the study of book and of languages, for the experiences of Eastern travel, he will probably have learned by heart the words of the sacred summons, and will recognize their syllables in the sonorous chant of the Muezzin,—while the rose-coloured light of an Egyptian or Syrian dawn expands its flush to the stars. Four times more will he hear that voice ere morning again illuminates the east:—under the white blaze of noon; at the sunset hour, when the west is fervid with incandescent gold and vermilion; in the long after-glow of orange and emerald fires; and, still later, when a million astral lamps have been lighted in the vast and violet dome of God's everlasting mosque.

In four parts Hearn tells the history of Bilâl, who

was an African black, an Abyssinian,—famed for his fortitude as a confessor, for his zeal in the faith of the Prophet, and for the marvellous melody of his voice, whose echoes have been caught up and prolonged and multiplied by all the muezzins of Islam, through the passing of more than twelve hundred years.... And the words chanted by all the muezzins of the Moslem world,—whether from the barbaric brick structures which rise above "The Tunis of the Desert," or from the fairy minarets of the exquisite mosque at Agra,—are the words first sung by the mighty voice of Bilâl.

Bilâl was the son of an Abyssinian slave-girl, and himself began life as a slave. The first preaching of Mahomet had deep effect upon the slaves of Mecca, and Bilâl was perhaps the earliest of these to become a convert. Even under the tortures of the persecutors, he could not be made to apostatize—always he would answer, "Ahad! Ahad:" "One, one only God!" Abu Bekr, the bosom friend of the great Prophet, observing Bilâl, bought him, and set him free. Then Bilâl became the devoted servant of Mahomet; and, in fulfilment of a dream, he was made the First Muezzin to sound the Adzân, the Call to Prayer.

After the death of Mahomet, Bilâl ceased to sing the Adzân:—the voice that had summoned the Prophet of God to the house of prayer ought not, he piously fancied, to be heard after the departure of his master. Yet, in his Syrian home, how often must he have prayed to chant the words as he first chanted them from the starlit housetop in the Holy City, and how often compelled to deny the petitions of those who revered him as a saint and would perhaps have sacrificed all their goods to have heard him but once lift up his voice in musical prayer!... But when Omar visited Damascus the chiefs of the people besought him that, as Commander of the Faithful, he should ask Bilâl to sing the Call in honour of the event; and the old man consented to do so for the last time....

To hear Bilâl must have seemed to many as sacred a privilege as to have heard the voice of the Prophet himself,—the proudest episode of a lifetime,—the one incident of all others to be related in long afteryears to children and to grandchildren. Some there may have been whom the occasion inspired with feelings no loftier than curiosity; but the large majority of those who thronged to listen in silent expectancy for the Allah-hu-akbar! must have experienced emotions too deep to be ever forgotten. The records of the event, at least, fully justify this belief;—for when, after moments of tremulous waiting, the grand voice of the aged African rolled out amid the hush,—with the old beloved words,—the old familiar tones, still deep and clean,—Omar and all those about him wept aloud, and tears streamed down every warrior-face, and the last long notes of the chant were lost in a tempest of sobbing.

Stray Leaves From Strange Literature[21] (I) is the second book. It was written also during the period in New Orleans, many of the stories first appearing in the Times-Democrat, and the little volume is dedicated to its editor—Mr. Page M. Baker.

These tales, as Hearn tells us in his Preface, are "reconstructions of what impressed me as most fantastically beautiful in the most exotic literature which I was able to obtain." In a letter he writes, "The language of 'Stray Leaves' is all my own, with the exception of the Italic texts and a few pages translated from the 'Kalewala.'"

The tapestry he is weaving is of the same crimson threads as that of the earlier tales, but the colours of sunset are softening to the gentler hues of the after-glow, and interwoven sometimes are strands of pure moonlight.

We read of the great Book of Thoth which contains a formula whosoever could recite might never know death, and we learn how the cunning magician Noferkephtah obtained the book, which caused the wrath of the gods to fall upon him; later, how Satni, of whom "there was not in all Egypt so wise a scribe," yearned for the book, and took it from the tomb of Noferkephtah, and of the magic wrought and the penance done.

There is the exquisite tale of the Fountain Maiden, whom Aki caught in his own fish-net, and whom he grew to love more than his own life.

The story lingers of the sea-bird which fell into the hunter's hand, and when he looked more closely he found it had become transformed into a beautiful girl, "slender ... like a young moon," and pity rose in the hunter's heart, and then love. One day, when their children had become strong and swift, and while they were all hunting together, the Bird-Wife called to the little ones to gather feathers: then she covered their arms and her own shoulders with the feathers, and far away they flew.

Passing onward, we read of Tilottama, and that by reason of her beauty "the great gods once became multiple-faced and myriad-eyed"; and that this beauty brought punishment to the wicked Sounda and Oupasounda.

There is Bakawali, for "whose history of love, human and superhuman, a parallel may not be found." For her great love of the mortal youth Taj-ulmuluk each night she sacrificed herself to the fiercest purification of fire. And then to appease the gods, she suffered herself to be turned for ten long years into marble from her waist to her feet. Her lover ministered to her and watched by her side through the terrible years until she was reincarnated for him.

Then we see the statue of Natalika, who avenged the death of her people.

And who shall answer the riddle of the Corpse Demon? And which one may not profit by the wisdom of the youth who knew nothing of science? Perhaps our hearts stir with a soft regret for the atonement of Pundari. And so we wander through a maze of colour and of magic, tarrying to listen to the voice of Kalewala, for—

As he sang the fair Sun paused in her course to hear him; the golden Moon stopped in her path to listen; the awful billows of the sea stood still; the icy rivers that devour the pines, that swallow up the firs, ceased to rage; the mighty cataracts hung motionless above their abysses; the waves of Juortana lifted high their heads to hear.

"Slender she was as the tulip upon its stalk, and in walking her feet seemed kisses pressed upon the ground. But hadst thou beheld her face unveiled, and the whiteness of her teeth between her brown lips when she smiled!" Alas, she was a good Christian maiden and he a good Mussulman, and so in this Legend of Love each loyal heart dies pronouncing the faith of the other, lest they should not meet at the Day of Judgment.

As we draw near the last figures on the tapestry, we find those two tender pictures of which Hearn himself speaks: "Your preference for Boutimar pleases me: Boutimar was my pet. There is a little Jewish legend in the collection—Esther—somewhat resembling it in pathos." These stories afford a glimpse into that gentle heart, which was later to respond to the exquisite faiths and loyalties of the Japanese.

Now the Creator sent unto Solomon a cup which contained some of the waters of youth and of life without end. And Solomon was asked: "Wilt thou drink hereof and live divinely immortal through ages everlasting, or wilt thou rather remain within the prison of humanity?" And Solomon dreamed upon these words; and he assembled in council a representative of all those over whom he held dominion. Then Solomon asked Boutimar, the wild dove, most loving of all living creatures, whether he should drink of the magic waters, and thus learn the bliss of earthly immortality. When Boutimar, the wild dove, learned that the cup held only enough water for one person, he made answer in the language of birds:—

"O prophet of God! how couldst thou desire to be living alone, when each of thy friends and of thy counsellors and of thy children and of thy servants and of all who loved thee were counted with the dead? For all of these must surely drink the bitter waters of death, though thou shouldst drink the Water of Life. Wherefore desire everlasting youth, when the face of the world itself shall be wrinkled with age, and the eyes of the stars shall be closed by the black fingers of Azrael? When the love thou hast sung of shall have passed away like a smoke of frankincense, when the dust of the heart that beat against thine own shall have long been scattered by the four winds of heaven, when the eyes that looked for thy coming shall have become a memory, when the voices grateful to thine ear shall have been eternally stilled, when thy life shall be one oasis in a universal waste of death, and thine eternal existence but a recognition of eternal absence,—wilt thou indeed care to live, though the wild dove perish when its mate cometh not?"

And Solomon, without reply, silently put out his arm and gave back the cup.... But upon the prophet-king's rich beard, besprinkled with powder of gold, there appeared another glitter as of clear dew,—the diamond dew of the heart, which is tears.

Esther, whose comeliness surpassed even that of Sarah, and her rich husband had lived together ten years, but there was no happiness in the soul of the good man, for "the sound of a child's voice had never made sunshine within his heart." So Esther and her husband sorrowed bitterly. And they brought the burden of their grief to Rabbi Simon ben Yochai, and when they had told him, a silence as of the Shechinah came upon the three, only the eyes of the Rabbi seemed to smile. And it was agreed that the twain should part; thus the Israelite could be known as a father in Israel.

A feast then was laid at the house, and before all the guests her husband spoke lovingly to Esther, and in token of his affection and his grief bade her to take from the house "whatever thou desirest, whether it be gold or jewels beyond price." And the wine was passed, and the people made merry, and finally a deep sleep fell upon them all. Then Esther gave command that her husband sleeping should be carried to her father's house. In the morning her husband awakened, and confused he cried out, "Woman, what hast thou done?"

Then, sweeter than the voice of doves among the fig-trees, came the voice of Esther: "Didst thou not bid me, husband, that I should choose and take away from thy house whatsoever I most desired? And I have chosen thee, and have brought thee hither, to my father's home ... loving thee more than all else in the world. Wilt thou drive me from thee now?" And he could not see her face for tears of love; yet he heard her voice speaking on,—speaking the golden words of Ruth, which are so old yet so young to the hearts of all that love: "Whithersoever thou shalt go, I will also go; and whithersoever thou shalt dwell, I also will dwell. And the Angel of Death only may part us; for thou art all in all to me." ...

And in the golden sunlight at the doorway suddenly stood, like a statue of Babylonian silver, the grand grey figure of Rabbi Simon ben Yochai, lifting his hands in benediction.

"Schmah Israel!—the Lord our God, who is One, bless ye with everlasting benediction! May your hearts be welded by love, as gold with gold by the cunning of goldsmiths! May the Lord, who coupleth and setteth thee single in families, watch over ye! The Lord make this valiant woman even as Rachel and as Lia, who built up the house of Israel! And ye shall behold your children and your children's children in the House of the Lord!"

Even so the Lord blessed them; and Esther became as the fruitful vine, and they saw their children's children in Israel. Forasmuch as it is written: "He will regard the prayer of the destitute."

Gombo Zhèbes[22](2) followed in the New Orleans period. It is a compilation of 352 proverbs selected from six dialects. According to the indexes, there are 6 in the Creole of French Guyana; 28 in the Creole of Hayti; 51 in the Creole of New Orleans, Louisiana; 101 in the Creole of Martinique; 110 in the Creole of Mauritius; 52 in the Creole of Trinidad. Most of the proverbs are similar to our own, but are translated into the simple homely language of the Creole, reflecting its mode of thought. The same proverb often appears in the different dialects. Although a proverb is of European origin, "the character of Creole folk-lore is very different from European folk-lore in the matter of superstition." Many proverbs are direct from the African. Those in the Creole of Hayti are generally rough and coarse. The most popular subjects are, pot or kettle, rain, serpent or snake, of which there are six of each; devil, eggs, belly, horse, mothers, tail, of these there are seven of each; chicken, children, ox have eight of each; cat has nine; goat has eleven; talking has sixteen; monkey has seventeen; fine clothes has only four, idleness has five, and marriage has six.

Hearn speaks of this book as a Dictionary of Proverbs. He made an extensive study of the subject and in later researches found it most helpful. "I have," he says, "quite a Creole library embracing the Creole dialects of both hemispheres."

Following are a selection of the proverbs chosen from the different dialects:—

No. 23. Bel tignon pas fait bel négresse. (Le beau tignon ne fait pas la belle négresse.) "It isn't the fine head-dress that makes the fine negress." (Louisiana.)

Tignon or tiyon, the true Creole word, "is the famously picturesque handkerchief which in old days all slave-women twisted about their heads."

No. 44. Ça qui boudé manze boudin. (Celui qui boude mange du boudin.) "He who sulks eats his own belly." That is to say, spites himself. The pun is untranslatable. (Mauritius.)

Boudin in French signifies a pudding, in Creole it also signifies the belly. Thus there is a double pun in the patois.

No. 256. Quand diabe alle lamesse li caciétte so laquée. (Quand le diable va à la messe, il cache sa queue.) "When the Devil goes to mass he hides his tail." (Mauritius.)

No. 352. Zozo paillenqui crié là-haut, coudevent vini. (Le paille-en-cul crie la-haut, le coup de vent vient.) "When the tropic-bird screams overhead, a storm-wind is coming." (Mauritius.)

No. 267. Quand milatt tini yon vié chouvral yo dit nègress pas manman yo. (Quand les mulâtres ont un vieux cheval ils disent que les négresses ne sont pas leur mères.) "As soon as a mulatto is able to own an old horse, he will tell you that his mother wasn't a nigger." (Martinique.)

No. 324. Toutt milett ni grand zaureilles. (Tout les mulets ont des grandes oreilles.) "All mules have big ears." Equivalent to our proverb: "Birds of a feather flock together." (Martinique.)

No. 291. Si coulev oûlé viv, li pas pronminée grand-chemin. (Si la couleuvre veut vivre, elle ne se promène pas dans le grand chemin.) "If the snake cares to live, it doesn't journey upon the high-road." (Guyana.)

No. 292. Si coulève pas té fonté, femmes sé pouend li fair ribans jipes. (Si la couleuvre n'était pas effrontée les femmes la prendraient pour en faire des rubans de jupes.) "If the snake wasn't spunky, women would use it for petticoat strings." (Trinidad.)

No. 100. Complot plis fort passé ouanga.[23] (Le complot est plus fort que l'ouanga.) "Conspiracy is stronger than witchcraft." (Hayti.)

Simultaneously with the publication of "Gombo Zhèbes," Hearn contributed a series of articles[24] to Harper's Weekly. (221-227, 230, 232.) These papers, which are commonplace newspaper work, tell of New Orleans, its Expositions, its Superstitions, Voudooism, and the Creole Patois. He feels that the Creole tongue must go, but while there is still time, he hopes that some one will rescue its dying legends and curious lyrics.

The unedited Creole literature comprises songs, satires in rhymes, proverbs, fairy-tales—almost everything commonly included under the term folk-lore. The lyrical portion of it is opulent in oddities, in melancholy beauties.

There are few of the younger generation of Creoles who do not converse in the French and English languages. Creole is the speech of motherhood, and "there is a strange naïve sorrow in their burdens as of children sobbing for lonesomeness in the night."

There is an interesting account of Jean Montanet, "Voudoo John"—The Last of the Voudoos. He was said to be a son of a prince of Senegal. From a ship's cook he rose to own large estates. While he was a cotton-roller, it was noticed that he seemed to have some peculiar occult influence over the negroes under him. Voudoo John had the mysterious obi power. Soon realizing his power, he commenced to tell fortunes, and thousands and thousands of people, white and black, flocked to him. Then he bought a house and began as well to practise Creole medicine. He could give receipts for everything and anything, and many a veiled lady stopped at his door.

Once Jean received a fee of $50 for a potion. "It was water," he said to a Creole confidant, "with some common herbs boiled in it. I hurt nobody, but if folks want to give me fifty dollars, I take the fifty dollars every time!"

It is said that Jean became worth at least $50,000. He had his horses and carriages, his fifteen wives, whom he considered, one and all, legitimate spouses. He was charitable too. But he did not know what to do with his money. Gradually, in one way or another, it was stolen from him, until at the last, with nothing left but his African shells, his elephant's tusk, and the sewing-machine upon which he used to tell fortunes even in his days of riches, he had to seek hospitality of his children.

Hearn devotes several columns to Voudooism, telling of its witchcrafts and charms and fetiches which work for evil, and also of the superstitions regarding the common occurrences of daily life.

In a paper on Mexican feather-work at the New Orleans Exposition, there is this paragraph which presages his later descriptions:—

As I write, the memory of a Mexican landscape scene in feather-work is especially vivid—a vast expanse of opulent wheat-fields, whereof the blonde immensity brightens or deepens its tint with the tremor of summer winds; distance makes violet the hills; a steel-bright river serpentines through the plain, reflecting the feminine grace of palms tossing their plumes against an azure sky. I remember also a vision of marshes—infinite stretches of reed-grown ooze, shuddering in gusts of sea-wind, and paling away into bluish vagueness as through a miasmatic haze.

In conjunction with these articles, Hearn published in Harper's Bazaar (228-229) two papers on the Curiosities to be found at the New Orleans Exposition.

Some Chinese Ghosts[25] (3) was the next book of the New Orleans period. The first publisher to whom it was submitted did not accept it, but Roberts Brothers finally brought it out. "There are only six little stories," writes Hearn, "but each of them cost months of hard work and study, and represents a much higher attempt than anything in the 'Stray Leaves.'" The book is dedicated to his friend Mr. Krehbiel, and the Dedication, which is given in the Bibliography, is as unique as the tales themselves.

In the Preface Hearn says that while preparing these legends he sought for "weird beauty." The era of fierce passions and horror is waning, and in these six perfect tales there is a new-found restraint, a firmer handling of the brush in more normal colours.

One of the earliest reviews of his work remarks:—

"In his treatment of the legend lore of the Celestial Empire, Mr. Hearn has, if possible, been even more delicate and charming than in the stories which go to make the previous volume, so much so, indeed, that one is persuaded to full belief in the beauty and witchery of the almond-eyed heroines of his pages." (322.)

The opening story is of the beautiful Ko-Ngai, daughter of Kouan-Yu, whose divine loyalty to her father never faltered even at a hideous death. He was a great bellmaker, and the Mandarin ordered that he should make a bell of such size that it would be heard for one hundred li, and further that the bell "should be strengthened with brass, and deepened with gold, and sweetened with silver." But the metals refused to mingle. Again the bell was cast, but the result was even worse, and the Son of Heaven was very angry; and this word was sent to Kouan-Yu:—

"If thou fail a third time in fulfilling our command, thy head shall be severed from thy neck."

When the lovely Ko-Ngai heard this, she sold her jewels, and paid a great price to an astrologer, and it was told to her:—

Gold and brass will never meet in wedlock, silver and iron never will embrace, until the flesh of a maiden be melted in the crucible; until the blood of a virgin be mingled with the metals in their fusion.

Ko-Ngai told no one what she had heard. The awful hour for the heroic effort of the final casting arrived.

All the workmen wrought their tasks in silence; there was no sound heard but the muttering of the fires. And the muttering deepened into a roar of typhoons approaching, and the blood-red lake of metal slowly brightened like the vermilion of a sunrise, and the vermilion was transmuted into a radiant glow of gold, and the gold whitened blindingly, like the silver face of a full moon. Then the workers ceased to feed the raving flame, and all fixed their eyes upon the eyes of Kouan-Yu; and Kouan-Yu prepared to give the signal to cast.

But ere ever he lifted his finger, a cry caused him to turn his head; and all heard the voice of Ko-Ngai sounding sharply sweet as a bird's song above the great thunder of the fires,—"For thy sake, O my Father!" And even as she cried, she leaped into the white flood of metal; and the lava of the furnace roared to receive her, and spattered monstrous flakes of flame to the roof, and burst over the verge of the earthen crater, and cast up a whirling fountain of many-coloured fires, and subsided quakingly, with lightnings and with thunders and with mutterings.

Of the lovely Ko-Ngai no trace remained save a little shoe, which was left in the hand of the faithful serving-woman who had striven to catch her as she leaped into the flame.

And ever does the bell, whose tones are deeper and mellower and mightier than the tones of any other bell, utter the name of Ko-Ngai; and ever between the mighty strokes there is a low moaning heard, a sobbing of "Hiai!" and that they say is Ko-Ngai crying for her little shoe.

The next tale tells of Ming-Y and how it was that he did not heed the counsel of the words of Lao-Tseu, and so it befell that he was loved by the beautiful Sië-Thao, whose tomb had many years ago crumbled to ruins.

The Legend of Tchi-Niu is the queen flower of the nosegay of six. Tong's father died, and as they were very poor, the only way that Tong could obtain money to pay for the funeral expenses was to sell himself as a slave. The years passed, and he worked without rest or pay, but never a complaint did he utter. At length the fever of the ricefields seized him, and he was left alone in his sickness, for there was no one to wait on him. One noon he dreamed that a beautiful woman bent over him and touched his forehead with her hand. And Tong opened his eyes, and he saw the lovely person of whom he had dreamed. "I have come to restore thy strength and to be thy wife. Arise and worship with me." And reading his thoughts she said, "I will provide."

"And together they worshipped Heaven and Earth. Thus she became his wife."

But all that Tong knew of his wife was that her name was Tchi. And the fame of the weaving of Tchi spread far, and people came to see her beautiful work. One morning Tchi gave to her husband a document. It was his freedom that she had bought.

Later the silk-loom remained untouched, for Tchi gave birth to a son. And the boy was not less wonderful than his mother.

Now it came to the Period of the Eleventh Moon. Suddenly one night, Tchi led Tong to the cradle where their son slumbered, and as she did so a great fear and awe came over Tong, and the sweet tender voice breathed to him:—

"Lo! my beloved, the moment has come in which I must forsake thee; for I was never of mortal born, and the Invisible may incarnate themselves for a time only. Yet I leave with thee the pledge of our love,—this fair son, who shall ever be to thee as faithful and as fond as thou thyself hast been. Know, my beloved, that I was sent to thee even by the Master of Heaven, in reward of thy filial piety, and that I must now return to the glory of His house: I AM THE GODDESS TCHI-NIU."

Even as she ceased to speak, the great glow faded, and Tong, reopening his eyes, knew that she had passed away for ever,—mysteriously as pass the winds of heaven, irrevocably as the light of a flame blown out. Yet all the doors were barred, all the windows unopened. Still the child slept, smiling in his sleep. Outside, the darkness was breaking; the sky was brightening swiftly; the night was past. With splendid majesty the East threw open high gates of gold for the coming of the sun; and, illuminated by the glory of his coming, the vapours of morning wrought themselves into marvellous shapes of shifting colour,—into forms weirdly beautiful as the silken dreams woven in the loom of Tchi-Niu.

Another tale is that of Mara, who tempted in vain, for the Indian pilgrim conquered.

And still, as a mist of incense, as a smoke of universal sacrifice, perpetually ascends to heaven from all the lands of earth the pleasant vapour TE, created for the refreshment of mankind by the power of a holy vow, the virtue of a pious atonement.

Like unto the Tale of the Great Bell, Pu, convinced that a soul cannot be divided,

entered the flame, and yielded up his ghost in the embrace of the Spirit of the Furnace, giving his life for the life of his work,—his soul for the soul of his Vase.

And when the workmen came upon the tenth morning to take forth the porcelain marvel, even the bones of Pu had ceased to be; but lo! the Vase lived as they looked upon it: seeming to be flesh moved by the utterance of a Word, creeping to the titillation of a Thought. And whenever tapped by the finger, it uttered a voice and a name,—the voice of its maker, the name of its creator: PU.

This same year, Hearn contributed to Harpers Bazaar the valiant legend of "Rabyah's Last Ride"(234)—Rabyah upon whom no woman had ever called in vain, and who defended his women even after he was dead. This tale was copied in the Times-Democrat.

Chita[26] (4), although published after Hearn left New Orleans, properly belongs to that period. It first appeared in much shorter form in the Times-Democrat under the title of "Torn Letters." This version met with many warm friends, and the author was urged to enlarge it. He did so, and Harpers accepted the story, publishing it first as a serial in their magazine. With this book came Hearn's first recognition, and because of its success, he was given a commission by Harpers for further studies in the tropics, which eventuated in the volume, "Two Years in the French West Indies."

"Chita" is the first glimpse of what Mr. Hearn could write from out himself; for whereas, as always, the plot must be given to him, the thread here is so frail that what we admire and remember is the fabric itself which only Hearn could have woven. In "Chita" he recreates elemental nature. In "Karma" he becomes the conscience of a human being. Then, for the first time he realizes the spiritual forces which are stronger than life or death, and without which no beauty exists.

A criticism of "Chita" at the time of its publication says:—

"By right of this single but profoundly remarkable book, Mr. Hearn may lay good claim to the title of the American Victor Hugo ... so living a book has scarcely been given to our generation." (342.)

Concerning the story, Hearn himself writes as follows:—

"Chita" was founded on the fact of a child saved from the Lost Island disaster by some Louisiana fishing-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.

This slight structure of plot gave Hearn the opportunity to paint a marvellous picture. Hundreds of quotations could be given. He is delighted with the rich glory of the tropics, and by his power of word imagery he so reproduces it that with him we too can see and feel it. In this glowing Nature the poisoned beauty of the Orient is forgotten. Take this description:—

The charm of a single summer day on these island shores is something impossible to express, never to be forgotten. Rarely, in the paler zones, do earth and heaven take such luminosity: those will best understand me who have seen the splendour of a West Indian sky. And yet there is a tenderness of tint, a caress of colour, in these Gulf-days which is not of the Antilles,—a spirituality, as of eternal tropical spring. It must have been to even such a sky that Xenophanes lifted up his eyes of old when he vowed the Infinite Blue was God;—it was indeed under such a sky that De Soto named the vastest and grandest of Southern havens Espiritu Santo,—the Bay of the Holy Ghost. There is a something unutterable in this bright Gulf-air that compels awe,—something vital, something holy, something pantheistic and reverentially the mind asks itself if what the eye beholds is not the πνεῦμα indeed, the Infinite Breath, the Divine Ghost, the Great Blue Soul of the Unknown. All, all is blue in the calm,—save the low land under your feet, which you almost forget, since it seems only as a tiny green flake afloat in the liquid eternity of day. Then slowly, caressingly, irresistibly, the witchery of the Infinite grows upon you: out of Time and Space you begin to dream with open eyes,—to drift into delicious oblivion of facts,—to forget the past, the present, the substantial,—to comprehend nothing but the existence of that infinite Blue Ghost as something into which you would wish to melt utterly away for ever.

So it is told that into this perfect peace one August day in 1856, a scarlet sun sank in a green sky, and a moonless night came.

Then the Wind grew weird. It ceased being a breath; it became a Voice moaning across the world hooting,—uttering nightmare sounds,—Whoo!—whoo!—whoo!—and with each stupendous owl-cry the mooing of the waters seemed to deepen, more and more abysmally, through all the hours of darkness.

Morning dawned with great rain: the steamer Star was due that day. No one dared to think of it. "Great God!" some one shrieked,—"She is coming!"

On she came, swaying, rocking, plunging,—with a great whiteness wrapping her about like a cloud, and moving with her moving,—a tempest-whirl of spray;—ghost-white and like a ghost she came, for her smoke-stacks exhaled no visible smoke—the wind devoured it.

And still the storm grew fiercer. On shore the guests at the hotel danced with a feverish reckless gaiety.

Again the Star reeled, and shuddered, and turned, and began to drag away from the great building and its lights,—away from the voluptuous thunder of the grand piano,—even at that moment outpouring the great joy of Weber's melody orchestrated by Berlioz: l'Invitatiòn à la Valse,—with its marvellous musical swing.

—"Waltzing!" cried the captain. "God help them!—God help us all now!... The Wind waltzes to-night, with the Sea for his partner." ...

O the stupendous Valse-Tourbillon! O the mighty Dancer! One-two—three! From north-east to east, from east to south-east, from south-east to south: then from the south he came, whirling the Sea in his arms....

And so the hurricane passed, and the day reveals utter wreck and desolation. "There is plunder for all—birds and men."

At a fishing village on the coast on this same night of the storm Carmen, the good wife of Feliu, dreamed—above the terrors of the tempest which shattered her sleep—once again the dream that kept returning of her little Concha, her first-born who slept far away in the old churchyard at Barcelona. And this night she dreamed that her waxen Virgin came and placed in her arms the little brown child with the Indian face, and the face became that of her dead Conchita.

And Carmen wished to thank the Virgin for that priceless bliss, and lifted up her eyes; but the sickness of ghostly fear returned upon her when she looked; for now the Mother seemed as a woman long dead, and the smile was the smile of fleshlessness, and the places of the eyes were voids and darknesses.... And the sea sent up so vast a roar that the dwelling rocked.

Feliu and his men find the tide heavy with human dead and the sea filled with wreckage. Through this floatage Feliu detects a stir of life ... he swims to rescue a little baby fast in the clutch of her dead mother.

To Carmen it is the meaning of her dream. The child has been sent by the Virgin. The tale leads on through the growing life of Chita. Finally one day Dr. La Brierre, whose wife and child had been lost in the famous storm, is summoned to Viosca's Point to the deathbed of his father's old friend, who is dying of the fever. It is Feliu who brings him. But before they can reach the Point the man has already died. The Doctor remains at Feliu's fishing smack. He feels the sickness of the fever coming over him. Then he sees Chita.... Hers is the face of his dead Adèle. Through the fury of the fever, which has now seized him, the past is mingled with the present. He re-lives the agony of that death-storm, re-lives all the horror of that scene, when all that he held dear was swept away—until his own soul passes out into the night.

The description of Dr. La Brierre in the throes of the fever is terrible. It is so realistic that one shudders.

Two Years in the French West Indies[27] (6) was the pièce de résistance of the sojourn in the tropics. Some of the papers appeared first in Harper's Magazine. They are marvellous colour-pictures of the country, its people, its life, its customs, with many of the picturesque legends and the quaintnesses that creep into the heart.

"There is not a writer who could have so steeped himself in this languorous Creole life and then tell so well about it. Trollope and Froude give you the hard, gritty facts, and Lafcadio Hearn the sentiment and poetry of this beautiful island." (387.)

More and more is Hearn realizing the necessity of finding new colour. "I hope to be able to take a trip to New Mexico in the summer just to obtain literary material, sun-paint, tropical colour, etc." It is always the intense that his fancy craves, and indeed must have in order to work. "There are tropical lilies which are venomous, but they are more beautiful than the frail and icy white lilies of the North." "Whenever I receive a new and strong impression, even in a dream, I write it down, and afterwards develop it at leisure.... There are impressions of blue light and gold and green, correlated to old Spanish legend, which can be found only south of this line." "I will write you a little while I am gone,—if I can find a little strange bit of tropical colour to spread on the paper,—like the fine jewel-dust of scintillant moth-wings." "Next week I go away to hunt up some tropical or semi-tropical impressions."

He is bewitched by St. Pierre—"I love this quaint, whimsical, wonderfully coloured little town." On opening the present volume we at once feel how thoroughly sympathetic this whole Nature is to him, how ravished his senses are with all that she portrays.

From Pier 49, East River, New York, we travel with Hearn through days of colour and beauty to the glorious Caribbean Sea, where we sail on to Roseau and St. Pierre. Here the colour is becoming so intense that the eyes are blinded.

The luminosities of tropic foliage could only be imitated in fire. He who desires to paint a West Indian forest,—a West Indian landscape,—must take his view from some great height, through which the colours come to his eye softened and subdued by distance,—toned with blues or purples by the astonishing atmosphere.

... It is sunset as I write these lines, and there are witchcrafts of colour. Looking down the narrow, steep street opening to the bay, I see the motionless silhouette of the steamer on a perfectly green sea,—under a lilac sky,—against a prodigious orange light.

Over her memoried paths we wander with Josephine, and then we pause before the lovely statue which seems a living presence.

She is standing just in the centre of the Savane, robed in the fashion of the First Empire, with gracious arms and shoulders bare: one hand leans upon a medallion bearing the eagle profile of Napoleon.... Seven tall palms stand in a circle around her, lifting their comely heads into the blue glory of the tropic day. Within their enchanted circle you feel that you tread holy ground,—the sacred soil of artist and poet;—here the recollections of memoir-writers vanish away; the gossip of history is hushed for you; you no longer care to know how rumour has it that she spoke or smiled or wept: only the bewitchment of her lives under the thin, soft, swaying shadows of those feminine palms.... Over violet space of summer sea, through the vast splendour of azure light, she is looking back to the place of her birth, back to beautiful drowsy Trois-Islets,—and always with the same half-dreaming, half-plaintive smile,—unutterably touching....

"Under a sky always deepening in beauty" we steam on to the level, burning, coral coast of Barbadoes. Then on past to Demerara.

We pass through all the quaint beautiful old towns and islands. We see their wonders of sky and sea and flowers. We see their people and all that great race of the mixed blood.

With dear old Jean-Marie we wait for the return of Les Porteuses, and we hear his call:—

"Coument ou yé, chè? coument ou kallé?" ... (How art thou, dear?—how goes it with thee?)

And they mostly make answer, "Toutt douce, chè,—et ou?" (All sweetly, dear,—and thou?) But some, over-weary, cry to him, "Ah! déchârgé moin vite, chè! moin lasse, lasse!" (Unload me quickly, dear; for I am very, very weary.) Then he takes off their burdens, and fetches bread for them, and says foolish little things to make them laugh. And they are pleased and laugh, just like children, as they sit right down on the road there to munch their dry bread.

Again we follow on: this time to La Grande Anse, where we see the powerful surf-swimmers. With the population we turn out to witness the procession of young girls to be confirmed; we see the dances and games; we hear the chants, and the strange music on strange instruments.

At St. Pierre once more we listen to the history of Père Labat, who in twelve years made his order the richest and most powerful in the West Indies.

"Eh, Père Labat!—what changes there have been since thy day!... And all that ephemeral man has had power to change has been changed,—ideas, morals, beliefs, the whole social fabric. But the eternal summer remains,—and the Hesperian magnificence of azure sky and violet sea,—and the jewel-colours of the perpetual hills; the same tepid winds that rippled thy cane-fields two hundred years ago still blow over Sainte-Marie; the same purple shadows lengthen and dwindle and turn with the wheeling of the sun. God's witchery still fills this land; and the heart of the stranger is even yet snared by the beauty of it; and the dreams of him that forsakes it will surely be haunted—even as were thine own, Père Labat—by memories of its Eden-summer: the sudden leap of the light over a thousand peaks in the glory of a tropic dawn,—the perfumed peace of enormous azure noons,—and shapes of palm, wind-rocked in the burning of colossal sunsets,—and the silent flickering of the great fire-flies, through the lukewarm darkness, when mothers call their children home.... 'Mi fanal Pè Labatt!—mi Pè Labatt ka vini pouend ou!'"

Then we see the lights of the shrines that will protect us from the Zombi and the Moun-Mo, and all the terrible beings who are filled with witchcraft; and we listen to the tale of that Zombi who likes to take the shape of a lissome young negress.

By this time it is Carnival Week with its dances and games and maskers. But a little later we are shuddering at the horrible pestilence Vérette that has seized the city. A gleam of the old love of horror is caught in the following quotation:—

She was the prettiest, assuredly, among the pretty shop-girls of the Grande Rue,—a rare type of sang-mêlée. So oddly pleasing, the young face, that once seen, you could never again dissociate the recollection of it from the memory of the street. But one who saw it last night before they poured quick-lime upon it could discern no features,—only a dark brown mass, like a fungus, too frightful to think about.

At the beautiful Savane du Fort our eyes and hearts are gladdened by the quaint sight of the Blanchisseuses with their snowy linen spread out for miles along the river's bank. Their laughter echoes in our ears, and we try to catch the words of their little songs.

One warm and starry, and to us unforgettable, September morning we make the ascent of Mt. Pelée by the way of Morne St. Martin, and on our way we come to know the country that lies all around. Let me quote our sensation as we reach the summit:—

At the beginning, while gazing south, east, west, to the rim of the world, all laughed, shouted, interchanged the quick delight of new impressions: every face was radiant.... Now all look serious; none speaks.... Dominating all, I think, is the consciousness of the awful antiquity of what one is looking upon,—such a sensation, perhaps, as of old found utterance in that tremendous question of the Book of Job: "Wast thou brought forth before the hills?"

And the blue multitudes of the peaks, the perpetual congregation of the mornes, seem to chorus in the vast resplendence,—telling of Nature's eternal youth, and the passionless permanence of that about us and beyond us and beneath,—until something like the fulness of a grief begins to weigh at the heart.... For all this astonishment of beauty, all this majesty of light and form and colour, will surely endure,—marvellous as now,—after we shall have lain down to sleep where no dreams come, and may never arise from the dust of our rest to look upon it.

Another day we are laughing at the little ti canotié who in the queerest tiny boats surround a steamer as soon as she drops anchor. These are the boys who dive for coins. A sad tale is told of Maximilien and Stréphane. Again our hearts are moved by the pathos and the tragedy of La Fille de Couleur; and in this chapter we find that characteristic description:—

I refer to the celebrated attire of the pet slaves and belles affranchies of the old colonial days. A full costume,—including violet or crimson "petticoat" of silk or satin; chemise with half-sleeves, and much embroidery and lace; "trembling-pins" of gold (zépingue tremblant) to attach the folds of the brilliant Madras turban; the great necklace of three or four strings of gold beads bigger than peas (collier-choux); the ear-rings, immense but light as egg-shells (zanneaux-à-clous or zanneaux-chenilles); the bracelets (portes-bonheur); the studs (boutons-à-clous); the brooches, not only for the turban, but for the chemise, below the folds of the showy silken foulard or shoulder-scarf,—would sometimes represent over five thousand francs' expenditure. This gorgeous attire is becoming less visible every year: it is now rarely worn except on very solemn occasions,—weddings, baptisms, first communions, confirmations. The da (nurse) or "porteuse-de-baptême" who bears the baby to church, holds it at the baptismal font, and afterwards carries it from house to house in order that all the friends of the family may kiss it, is thus attired: but now-a-days, unless she be a professional (for there are professional das, hired only for such occasions), she usually borrows the jewellery. If tall, young, graceful, with a rich gold tone of skin, the effect of her costume is dazzling as that of a Byzantine Virgin. I saw one young da who, thus garbed, scarcely seemed of the earth and earthly;—there was an Oriental something in her appearance difficult to describe,—something that made you think of the Queen at Sheba going to visit Solomon. She had brought a merchant's baby, just christened, to receive the caresses of the family at whose house I was visiting; and when it came to my turn to kiss it, I confess I could not notice the child: I saw only the beautiful dark face, coiffed with orange and purple, bending over it, in an illumination of antique gold. What a da!... She represented really the type of that belle affranchie of other days, against whose fascination special sumptuary laws were made: romantically she imaged for me the supernatural godmothers and Cinderellas of the Creole fairy-tales.

Still we have much to learn about the little creatures in the shapes of ants and scorpions and lizards. They form no small part of the population of Martinique. And still more about the fruits and the vegetables do we learn from good Cyrillia, Ma Bonne. One longs to have a housekeeper as loving and child-like and solicitous. We leave her gazing with love unutterable at the new photograph of her daughter, and wondering the while why they do not make a portrait talk so that she can talk to her beautiful daughter.

And day by day the artlessness of this exotic humanity touches you more;—day by day this savage, somnolent, splendid Nature—delighting in furious colour—bewitches you more. Already the anticipated necessity of having to leave it all some day—the far-seen pain of bidding it farewell weighs upon you, even in dreams.

But before we go, we must learn how Nature must treat those who are not born under her suns.

Then at last reluctantly we board the Guadeloupe, and with Mademoiselle Violet-Eyes, who is leaving her country, perhaps for a very long time, to become a governess in New York, we realize that nowhere on this earth may there be brighter skies.

Farewell, fair city,—sun-kissed city,—many-fountained city!—dear yellow-glimmering streets,—white pavements learned by heart,—and faces ever looked for,—and voices ever loved! Farewell, white towers with your golden-throated bells!—farewell, green steeps, bathed in the light of summer everlasting!—craters with your coronets of forests!—bright mountain paths upwinding 'neath pomp of fern and angelin and feathery bamboo!—and gracious palms that drowse above the dead! Farewell, soft-shadowing majesty of valleys unfolding to the sun,—green golden cane-fields ripening to the sea!...

Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Pelée—so they vanish behind us. Shall not we too become Les Revenants?

Youma[28] (5) was written in Martinique, and also belongs to the New Orleans period. "I think you will like it better than 'Chita.' It is more mature and exotic by far,"—so Hearn wrote of the story in one of his letters. Later on, when living in Japan, he wrote:—

It gave me no small pleasure to find that you like "Youma": you will not like it less knowing that the story is substantially true. You can see the ruins of the old house in the Quartier du Fort if you ever visit Saint-Pierre, and perhaps meet my old friend Arnoux, a survivor of the time. The girl really died under the heroic conditions described—refusing the help of the blacks and the ladder. Of course I may have idealized her, but not her act. The incident of the serpent occurred also; but the heroine was a different person,—a plantation girl, celebrated by the historian Rufz de Lavison. I wrote the story under wretched circumstances in Martinique, near the scenes described, and under the cross with the black Christ.

An English notice says:—

"It is an admirable little tale, full of local characteristics with curious fragments of Creole French from Martinique, and abundance of wide human sympathy. It deserves reprinting for English readers more than three-fourths of the fiction which is wont to cross the Atlantic under similar circumstances." (294.)

"Youma" is the tale of the exquisite devotion and loyalty of a da. (A da is the foster-mother and nurse of a Creole child.) At the death of Aimée, Youma's playmate and rich foster-sister, little Mayotte, her child, becomes Youma's charge. An intimate description is given us of the Creole life of Mayotte and Youma. The love of this da is very beautiful. Once with an extraordinary heroism Youma saves Mayotte from a serpent which has slipped into their room. With a still greater heroism she refuses to run away with Gabriel, who has opened the world to her,—Gabriel who has brought her love, and whom she can marry in no other way. No, above the pleadings of her lover, comes the voice of her dying mistress, begging, with such trust,—

"Youma, O Youma! you will love my child?—Youma, you will never leave her, whatever happens, while she is little? promise, dear Youma!"

And she had—promised....

Then comes the final test of Youma's strength of devotion. There is an outbreak among the blacks, who have become inflamed by the dreams of coming freedom. The Desrivières with many other families are forced to flee for refuge in safer quarters. Under one roof all these people gather. Youma is urged to leave and save herself. But she will not forsake Mayotte or her master. The infuriated blacks surround the house, and horror follows. Presently the house is set on fire. Youma, with Mayotte in her arms, appears at an upper window. Gabriel, "daring the hell about him for her sake," puts up a ladder. Youma hands him Mayotte. "Can you save her?" she asks.

"Gabriel could only shake his head;—the street sent up so frightful a cry....

"Non!—non!—non!—pa lè yche-béké—janmain yche-béké!"

"Then you cannot save me!" cried Youma, clasping the child to her bosom,—"janmain! janmain, mon ami."

"Youma, in the name of God...."

"In the name of God, you ask me to be a coward!... Are you vile, Gabriel?—are you base?... Save myself and leave the child to burn?... Go!"

"Leave the béké's yche!—leave it!—leave it, girl!" shouted a hundred voices.

"Moin!" cried Youma, retreating beyond the reach of Gabriel's hand,—"moin! ... Never shall I leave it, never! I shall go to God with it."

"Burn with it, then!" howled the negroes ... "down with that ladder! down with it, down with it!"

The ladder catches fire and burns. The walls quiver, and there are shrieks from the back of the house. Unmoved, with a perfect calm, Youma remains at the window. "There is now neither hate nor fear on her fine face." Softly she whispers to Mayotte, and caresses her with an infinite tenderness. Never to Gabriel had she seemed so beautiful.

Another minute—and he saw her no more. The figure and the light vanished together, as beams and floor and roof all quaked down at once into darkness.... Only the skeleton of stone remained,—black-smoking to the stars.

A stillness follows. The murderers are appalled by their crime.

Then, from below, the flames wrestled out again,—crimsoning the smoke whirls, the naked masonry, the wreck of timbers. They wriggled upward, lengthening, lapping together,—lifted themselves erect,—grew taller, fiercer,—twined into one huge fluid spire of tongues that flapped and shivered high into the night....

The yellowing light swelled,—expanded from promontory to promontory,—palpitated over the harbour,—climbed the broken slopes of the dead volcano leagues through the gloom. The wooded mornes towered about the city in weird illumination,—seeming loftier than by day,—blanching and shadowing alternately with the soaring and sinking of the fire;—and at each huge pulsing of the glow, the white cross of their central summit stood revealed, with the strange passion of its black Christ.

... And at the same hour, from the other side of the world,—a ship was running before the sun, bearing the Republican gift of liberty and promise of universal suffrage to the slaves of Martinique.

There are two little bits of description which are so characteristic that I quote them:—

Then she became aware of a face ... lighted by a light that came from nowhere,—that was only a memory of some long-dead morning. And through the dimness round about it a soft blue radiance grew,—the ghost of a day.

Sunset yellowed the sky,—filled the horizon with flare of gold;—the sea changed its blue to lilac;—the mornes brightened their vivid green to a tone so luminous that they seemed turning phosphorescent. Rapidly the glow crimsoned,—shadows purpled; and night spread swiftly from the east,—black-violet and full of stars.

Karma[29] (242) was written during the Philadelphia period, but was not published in Lippincott's Magazine until after Hearn had sailed for Japan. The story is concentrated, with its every word a shaft of light, and it seems a wrong to attempt to epitomize it. Except in its entirety no adequate conception can be formed of this marvellous revelation of the anguish that a human soul may suffer; nor of the artistic power with which Hearn has developed and perfected his study. Many quotations could be gleaned from his subsequent books which reflect the inspiration of "Karma."

Despite her unusual intellect, the heroine had a childlike simplicity and frankness which invited her lover's confidence, but he had never told her his admiration, for a dormant power beneath her girlishness made a compliment seem a rudeness. He was often alone with her, which is helpful to lovers, but her charm always confused him, and his embarrassment only deepened. One day she archly asked him to tell her about it.

Is there one who does not know that moment when the woman beloved becomes the ideal, and the lover feels his utter unworthiness? Yet, if she is one of those rare souls, the illusion, however divine, is less perfect than is her worth. Do you know what she truly is—how she signifies "the whole history of love striving against hate, aspiration against pain, truth against ignorance, sympathy against pitilessness? She,—the soul of her! is the ripened passion-flower of the triumph. All the heroisms, the martyrdoms, the immolations of self,—all strong soarings of will through fire and blood to God since humanity began,—conspired to kindle the flame of her higher life."

And then you question yourself with a thousand questions, and then there are as many more of your duty to her, to the future, and to the Supreme Father.

She was not surprised when he told her his wish, but she was not confident that he really loved her, nor whether she should permit herself to like him. Finally she bade him go home and "as soon as you feel able to do it properly,—write out for me a short history of your life;—just write down everything you feel that you would not like me to know. Write it,—and send it.... And then I shall tell you whether I will marry you."

How easy the task seemed, and his whole being was joyous; but the lightness lasted for only a moment, and gradually all that her command meant crept over him.... "Everything you feel you would not like me to know." Surely she had no realization of what she had asked. Did she imagine that men were good like women—how cruel to hurt her.

Then for a period he was uplifted with the desire to meet her truthfulness, but his courage failed again after he had written down the record of his childhood and youth. It was no slight task to make this confession of his sins. And how pale and trivial they had seemed before. Was it possible that he had never before rightly looked at them? Yet why should he so falter? Surely she meant to pardon him. He must put everything down truthfully, and then recolour the whole for her gaze. But his face grew hot at the thought of certain passages.

Hour after hour he sat at his desk until it was past midnight, but no skill could soften the stony facts. Finally he lay down to rest: his fevered brain tried to find excuses for his faults. He could forgive himself everything ... except—ah, how unutterably wicked he had been there. No, he could not tell her that: instead he must lose her for ever. And in losing her he would lose all the higher self which she had awakened. To lose her—when he of all men had found his ideal.

"Everything you feel you would not like me to know." Perhaps when she had put this ban upon him, she suspected that there were incidents in his life which he dared not tell her. Could he not deceive her? No, he might write a lie, but he could never meet her fine sweet eyes with a lie. What was he to do? And why had he always been so humble before that slight girl? "Assuredly those fine grey eyes were never lowered before living gaze: she seemed as one who might look God in the face."

Slowly his senses became more confused, and a darkness came, and a light in the darkness that shone on her; and he saw her bathed in a soft radiance, that seemed of some substance like ivory. And he knew that she was robing for her bridal with him.

He was at her side: all around them was a gentle whispering of many friends, who were dead. Would they smile thus—if they knew?

Then there arose something within him, and he knew that he must tell her all. He commenced to speak, and she became transfigured, and smiled at him with the tenderness of an angel; and the more he told the greater was her forgiveness. And he heard the voices of the others lauding him for his self-sacrifice and his sincerity. Yet as they praised a fear clutched him for one last avowal that he must make. And with the growing of this doubt all seemed maliciously to change, and even she no longer smiled. He then would have told her alone, but even as he tried to hush his voice, it seemed to pierce the quietude "with frightful audibility, like the sibilation of a possessing spirit." Then with a reckless despair he shouted it aloud, and everything vanished, and the darkness of night was about him.

For many restless days and nights he harried himself with bitter self-analysis; and day by day he tore up a certain page; yet without that page his manuscript was worthless. As the days grew into weeks a new fear seized him that his silence had betrayed him, and that already she had decided against him. In the face of this danger he became terrified, and one morning he feverishly copied the memorable page, and, addressing the whole, dropped it in the first letter-box, before he might change his mind.

Then an awful revelation of his act overcame him. Should he telegraph her to return the manuscript unopened. No, it was already too late. What was done—was done for ever. He now vaguely realized what he feared in her—"a penetrating dynamic moral power that he felt without comprehending." He tried to steel himself for the worst, but he knew with a premonition that behind his imagined worst there were depths beyond depths of worse.

The single word "Come" which he received two days later confirmed his fears. When he reached the door of her apartment, she had already risen to take from a locked drawer an envelope which he knew was his. She proffered him no greeting, but asked in a cold voice if he wished her to burn the document. At his whispered yes, he met her eyes, and they seemed to strip him of the last remnant of his pride. "He stood before her as before God,—morally naked as a soul in painted dreams of the Judgment Day."

The fire caught the paper, and he stood near, in fear of her next word, while she watched the flame.

At last she asked if the woman was dead. He well knew to what she referred, and replied that almost five years had passed since her death. To the penetrating questions which followed he answered that the child—a boy—was well, and that his friend was still there—in the same place. She turned to him abruptly and coldly, angered that he could have believed that she would pardon such a crime.

He must have had some hope, or he would not have sent the letter. Had he measured her by his own moral standard? Certainly he had placed her below the level of honest people. Would he dare to ask their judgment of his sin?

Speechless, he writhed under the scorn of her words, and a knowledge of shame to which his former agony was as nothing burned within him. That in him which her inborn goodness had taught her, was now laid bare to himself.

Again she spoke after a silence—perhaps he would think she was cruel; but she was not, nor was she unjust, for transcendent sin that denies "all the social wisdom gained by human experience" cannot be pardoned, it can only be atoned. And that sin was his; and God would exact his expiation. And that expiation she now demanded in God's name, and as her right. He must go to the friend whom he had wronged, and tell him the whole truth. He must ask for the child, and fulfil his whole duty; also he must place even his life at the man's will. And she would rather see him dead than believe that he could be a coward as well as a criminal. This she requested not as a favour, but as her right.

At her words he grew pale as if to death, and for a moment she feared that he might refuse, and that she must despise him. No! his colour rushed back, and her heart leaped, as with a calm resolve he answered, "I will do it."

"Then go!" she replied, betraying no gladness.

A year went by. She knew that he had kept his promise. He wrote to her often, and passionately, but the letters were never answered. Did she doubt him still?—or was she afraid of her own heart? He could not know the truth, so he waited with hopes and fears, and the seasons passed. Then one day she was startled to receive a letter which told her that he was passing through her suburb, and he begged only to be permitted to see her. To his surprise the answer brought the happy words, "You may."

From the shy, beautiful eyes of the child, whom he brought, there seemed to plead a woman's sorrow, until her own soul answered in forgiveness. And the boy and the father marvelled at the tenderness that had come upon her, and the father sobbed until her voice thrilled: that suffering was strength and knowledge, that always he must suffer for the evil he had wrought, but she would help him to bear the pain, and to endure his atonement. She would shield his frailty—she would love his boy.

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (21) was translated in New York, while Hearn was finishing the proofs of "Two Years in the French West Indies." Of it he writes:—

As for the "Sylvestre Bonnard" I believe I told you that that was translated in about ten days and published in two weeks from the time of beginning it.... But the work suffers in consequence of haste.

After his departure for the Orient, two articles on West Indian Society appeared in the Cosmopolitan (243-244). They give a sympathetic study of the sad and pathetic tragedy of the race of the mixed blood. These articles bear a similarity to the chapter upon and the references to this subject, in "Two Years in the French West Indies."

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan[30] (7) is the first of the series of Japanese books. It was published after Hearn had been in Japan for four years; since 1891 six of the articles had appeared in the Atlantic Monthly (246-251). Also in 1890, an article, "A Winter Journey to Japan," was published in Harper's Monthly (245). This was his initial paper on Japan.

In many ways the present book on Japan is his happiest, for the charm over everything is fresh and radiant. It is here that we learn the old graceful customs, the touching child-like ways, and the sacred appealing rites and beliefs that so endear to us the Japanese. Later we are to have studies more philosophical, more erudite, but none more penetrating in virtue of the very simplicity of subject.

It is difficult to believe that the writer, bewitched with the warmth and colour of the tropics, giving his pen an unlicensed flow of word colour and enthusiasm, in a few years could have matured into this quiet, gentle thinker equally absorbed by the East. One finds scarcely a trace of the Hearn of the tropics: therein lies his unique genius; just so admirably as he reflected the West Indian life, does he now reflect that of the Japanese.

It is the old Japan that Hearn loves, and the passing of which he mourns even at the first. In his Preface, he says, "My own conviction, and that of many impartial and more experienced observers of Japanese life, is that Japan has nothing whatever to gain by conversion to Christianity, either morally or otherwise, but very much to lose." Also in one of his letters he writes, "I felt, as never before, how utterly dead old Japan is, and how ugly New Japan is becoming." It is old Japan that we find in the present volume. It is much as if we looked into a diary of his first days in the Orient, giving his impressions and conclusions, as well as portraying the pictures themselves.

One of the reviews of the book contains the following:—

"If Japan is all that he says; if the Japanese are so compounded of all the virtues, and so innocent of the ugly failings that mar our Western civilization, then the poet's dream of a Golden Age has actually been realized in the remote East. Much as we should like to believe that such a land and such a people actually exist, we cannot altogether conquer our doubts, or avoid the suspicion that the author's feeling sometimes gets the better of his judgment." (379.)

And another says:—

"In volume one he is still the outside observer, remote enough to be amused with the little pretty, bird-like glances of the Orient towards the Occident, pleased at the happy chance which makes a blind shampooer's cry musical as she taps her way down the street, instead of giving her a voice raucous as that which hurts and haunts the unwilling ears of wayfarers down Newgate Street and on Ludgate-Hill; or complimentary to the cunning fancy which paints a branch of flowering cherry in a cleft bamboo on a square of faintly-coloured paper and calls the cherry blossom 'beauty' and the bamboo 'long life.' He notices the shapely feet of the people: 'bare brown feet of peasants, or beautiful feet of children wearing tiny, tiny geta, or feet of young girls in snowy tabi. The tabi, the white digitated stocking, gives to a small light foot a mythological aspect—the white cleft grace of the foot of a fauness.'

"A little further on the leaven of witchcraft is working, and he cannot write so airily. It is not as a mere spectator that he talks of his visit to the Buddhist cemetery, where the rotting wooden laths stand huddled about the graves, and one tomb bears an English name and a cross chiselled upon it. Here he made acquaintance with the god, who is the lover of little children, Jizō-Sama, about whose feet are little piles of stones heaped there by the hands of mothers of dead children. He is not quite as much in earnest as volume two will find him, or he could not call the gentle god 'that charming divinity'; but the sight-seer is dying in him nevertheless. It was with a friend's hand that he struck the great bell at Enoshima." (286.)

But even here with a new world unfolding to his delighted eyes, it was colour that Hearn really wanted.

I am not easy about my book, of which I now await the proofs. It lacks colour—it isn't like the West Indian book. But the world here is not forceful: it is all washed in faint blues and greys and greens. There are really gamboge, or saffron-coloured valleys,—and lilac fields; but these exist only in the early summer and the rape-plant season, and ordinarily Japan is chromatically spectral.

The opening chapter is his first day in the Orient, "the first charm of Japan is intangible and volatile as a perfume." Everything seems to him elfish and diminutive. "Cha," his Kurumaya, takes him past the shops where it appears to him "that everything Japanese is delicate, exquisite, admirable—even a pair of common wooden chop-sticks in a paper bag with a little drawing upon it." The money itself is a thing of beauty. But one must not dare to look, for there is enchantment in these wares, and having looked, one must buy. In truth one wishes to buy everything, even to the whole land, "with its magical trees and luminous atmosphere, with all its cities and towns and temples, and forty millions of the most lovable people."

Before the steps leading to a temple he stops.

I turn a moment to look back through the glorious light. Sea and sky mingle in the same beautiful pale clear blue. Below me the billowing of bluish roofs reaches to the verge of the unruffled bay on the right, and to the feet of the green wooded hills flanking the city on two sides. Beyond that semi-circle of green hills rises a lofty range of serrated mountains, indigo silhouettes. And enormously high above the line of them towers an apparition indescribably lovely,—one solitary snowy cone, so filmly exquisite, so spiritually white, that but for its immemorially familiar outline, one would surely deem it a shape of cloud. Invisible its base remains, being the same delicious tint as the sky: only above the eternal snow-line its dreamy cone appears, seeming to hang, the ghost of a peak, between the luminous land and the luminous heaven,—the sacred and matchless mountain, Fujiyama.

Passing to the temple garden he wonders why the trees are so lovely in Japan.

Is it that the trees have been so long domesticated and caressed by man in this land of the gods, that they have acquired souls, and strive to show their gratitude, like women loved, by making themselves more beautiful for man's sake? Assuredly they have mastered men's hearts by their loveliness, like beautiful slaves. That is to say, Japanese hearts. Apparently there have been some foreign tourists of the brutal class in this place, since it has been deemed necessary to set up inscriptions in English announcing that "it is forbidden to injure the trees."

Of Hearn's first visit to a Buddhist temple, I quote what one of his critics has to say:—

"The silence of centuries seems to descend upon your soul, you feel the thrill of something above and beyond the commonplace of this every-day world, even here, amidst the turmoil, the rush, the struggle of this monster city of the West, if you take up his 'Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan,' and turn to his description of his first visit to a Buddhist temple. Marvellous is his power of imparting the mystery of that strange land, of hidden meanings and allegories, of mists and legends. The bygone spirit of the race, the very essence of the heart of the people, that has lain sleeping in the temple gloom, in the shadows of the temple shrines, awakes and whispers in your ears. You feel the soft, cushioned matting beneath your feet, you smell the faint odour of the incense, you hear the shuffling of pilgrim feet, the priest sliding back screen after screen, pouring in light upon the gilded bronzes and inscriptions; and you look for the image of the Deity, of the presiding Spirit, between the altar groups of convoluted candelabra. And you see:

Only a mirror, a round, pale disc of polished metal, and my own face therein, and behind this mockery of me a phantom of the far sea.

Only a mirror! Symbolizing what? Illusion? Or that the Universe exists for us solely as the reflection of our own souls? Or the old Chinese teaching that we must seek the Buddha only in our own hearts? Perhaps some day I shall be able to find out. (350.)

Many more temples are visited in the following chapter. What impresses him the most is the joyousness of the people's faith: everything is bright and cheerful, and the air is filled with the sound of children's voices as they play in the courts. He sees the many representations of Jizō, the loving divinity who cares for the souls of little children, who comforts them, and saves them from the demons. The face of Jizō is like that of a beautiful boy, and the countenance is made "heavenly by such a smile as only Buddhist art could have imagined, the smile of infinite lovingness and supremest gentleness." There is also Kwannon, "the goddess of mercy, the gentle divinity who refused the rest of Nirvâna to save the souls of men." Her face is golden, smiling with eternal youth and infinite tenderness. And he sees Emma Dai-ō, the unpitying, tremendous one. He learns many things of many gods and goddesses. There is the temple of Kishibojin—the mother of Demons. For some former sin she was born a demon and devoured her own children. But through the teaching of Buddha she became a divine being, loving and protecting the little ones, and Japanese mothers pray to her, and wives pray for beautiful boys. At her shrine what impresses the visitor are hundreds of tiny dresses, mostly of poor material, stretched between tall poles of bamboos. These are the thank-offerings of poor simple country mothers whose prayers to her have been answered.

In another chapter Hearn writes of the Festival of the Dead, for between the 13th and the 15th day of July the dead may come back again. Every small and great shrine is made beautiful with new mats of purest rice straw, and is decorated with lotus flowers, shikimi (anise) and misohagi (lespedeza). Food offerings, served on a tiny lacquered table—a zen—are placed before the altars. Every hour, tea daintily served in little cups is offered to the viewless visitors. At night beautiful special lanterns are hung at the entrances of homes. Those who have dead friends visit the cemeteries and make offerings there with prayers, and the sprinkling of water, and the burning of incense. On the evening of the 15th the ghosts of those, who in expiation of faults committed in a previous life are doomed to hunger, are fed. And also are fed the ghosts of those who have no friends.

For three days everything is done to feast the dead, and on the last night there comes the touching ceremony of farewell, for the dead must then return.

Everything has been prepared for them. In each home small boats made of barley straw closely woven have been freighted with supplies of choice food, with tiny lanterns, and written messages of faith and love. Seldom more than two feet in length are these boats; but the dead require little room. And the frail craft are launched on canal, lake, sea, or river,—each with a miniature lantern glowing at the prow, and incense burning at the stern. And if the night be fair, they voyage long. Down all the creeks and rivers and canals the phantom fleets go glimmering to the sea; and all the sea sparkles to the horizon with the lights of the dead, and the sea wind is fragrant with incense.

But alas! it is now forbidden in the great seaports to launch the shōryōbune, "the boats of the blessed ghosts."

In Kami-Ichi, in the land of Hōki, there is a glimpse into ancient Japan, for there the Bon-odori, the Dance of the Festival of the Dead, is still maintained. No longer is it danced in the cities. In the temple court, in the shadow of the tomb, with the moonlight as a guide, long processions of young girls dance a slow ghostly dance while the vast audience of spectators keeps a perfect stillness. A deep male chant is heard, and the women respond. Many songs follow, until the night is waning. Then this seeming witchcraft ends, and with merry laughter and soft chatting all disperse.