I will bring my African books with me, and other things.
Yours sincerely,
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
New Orleans, October, 1884.
Dear Krehbiel,—I sit down to write you the first time I have had leisure to do justice to the subject for a month.
Now I must tell you what I am doing. I have been away a good deal, in the Creole archipelagoes of the Gulf, and will soon be off again, to make more studies for my little book of sketches. I sent you the No. 2, as a sample. These I take as much pains with as with magazine work, and the plan is philosophical and pantheistic. Did you see “Torn Letters,”—(No. 1) about the Biscayena. The facts are not wholly true; I was very nearly in love—not quite sure whether I am not a little in love still,—but I never told her so. It is so strange to find one’s self face to face with a beauty that existed in the Tertiary epoch,—300,000 years ago,—the beauty of the most ancient branch of humanity,—the oldest of the world’s races! But the coasts here are just as I described them, without exaggeration,—and I am so enamoured of those islands and tepid seas that I would like to live there forever, and realize Tennyson’s wish:—
“I will wed some savage woman; she shall rear my dusky race: Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, they shall dive and they shall run,— Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun, Whistle back the parrot’s call,—leap the rainbows of the brooks,— Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books.”
The islanders found I had one claim to physical superiority anyhow,—I could outswim the best of them with the greatest ease. And I have disciplined myself physically so well of late years, that I am no longer the puny little fellow you used to know.