Affectionately,
Lafcadio.
TO W. D. O’CONNOR
New Orleans, February, 1887.
Dear O’Connor,—Please, if feeling free enough from other and more important labours, write to me, let me have a few lines from you—telling me how you are, and how the years pass.
With me they have been somewhat uneventful—except, indeed, that your wish to see me succeed with the Harpers has been realized: I have become a contributor to the Magazine, and am going to have the honour of a short sketch of myself in it,—of course, in connection with the New Southern Literary Movement. And I will also soon have the pleasure of sending you a new production, just got, or getting out by a Boston house,—my “Chinese Ghosts;” brief studies in poetical prose, if you like. They may amuse you in a leisure moment.
I am soon going to run away to Florida, and perhaps the West Indies, for a romantic trip—a small literary bee in search of inspiring honey. There is a good market for books on Florida; and I may be able to get one out this next winter. You will like my sketch in Harper’s when it appears, as it deals with topics in which you are directly interested professionally,—Gulf-coasts and shifting dunes, sands, winds and tides, storms, and valiant saving of life. I think I am beginning to learn how to do good work.
I trust you are feeling strong and hearty. Last time you wrote me you were quite ill.
How delightful it would be if you could take a trip with me in March, to the Floridian springs, to windy Key West, or to the palmier Antilles, where we might watch together the rose-blossoming of extraordinary sunrises, the conflagration of apocalyptic sunsets. Is it impossible? My dreams now are full of fantastic light—a Biblical light: and the World-Ghost, all blue, promises inspiration. Could we not celebrate the Blue Ghost’s pentecost together?