So that is my dream that I wrote you about: it was you, not I, that were to run away. But I did not help you to do your packing, as I imagined.
I wonder if you went away in black silk, or black cashmere: I dreamed of you all in black that time. And when I saw the charming notice about you in the Tribune, there suddenly came back to me the same vague sense of unhappiness I had dreamed of feeling,—an absurd sense of absolute loneliness.
For seldom as I saw you, I must tell you that I looked forward to such visits as to something very delightful, that helped me to forget the great iron-whirling world and everything in it but yourself. You made a little circle of magnetic sunshine for me; and you know I liked to bask in it so much that I used to be quite selfish about it. I feel now as though, each night I sat up so late in your little parlour, I was taking from you so much rest,—which means life and strength,—acted, in short, the part of a psychical cannibal! And I am remorseful at not being able to feel more remorseful than I do; it was so nice to be there that I can’t be properly sorry, as I should.
I and my friends have been wagering upon you, hoping for you, praying for you to win your race,—so that every one may admire you still more, and your name be flashed round the world quicker than the sunshine, and your portrait—in spite of you—appear in some French journal where they know how to engrave portraits properly. I thought I might be able to coax one from you; but as you never are the same person two minutes in succession, I am partly consoled: it could only be one small phase of you,—Proteus, Circe, Undine, Djineeyeh!
—And you found the loose bar at last, and shook it out, and flew! I much doubt if they will ever get you well into the cage again,—that was so irksome to you. But perhaps the world itself will seem a cage to you hereafter:—it will have grown so much smaller in that blue-flashing circuit of yours about it. Perhaps when human society shall have become infinitely more fluid and electric than at present,—which it is sure to do with the expansion and increasing complexity of intercommunication by steam and wire,—this little half-dead planet will seem too small to mankind. One will feel upon it, in the light of a larger knowledge, constrained almost as much as Simon on the top of his pillar,—and long, like him, for birth into a larger mode of being. Even now there is no more fleeing into strange countries,—because there are no strange countries: everything is being interbound and interspersed with steel rails and lightning wires;—there are no more mysteries,—except what are called hearts, those points at which individualities rarely touch each other, only to feel as sudden a thrill of surprise as at meeting a ghost, and then to wonder in vain, for the rest of life, what lies out of soul-sight.
—Did you often wish to stop somewhere, and feel hearts beating about you, and see the faces of gods and dancing-girls? Or were you petted like the Lady of the Aroostook by officers and crew,—and British dignitaries eager to win one Circe-smile,—and superb Indian Colonels of princely houses returning home,—that you had no chance to regret anything? I have been so afraid of never seeing you again, that I have been hating splendid imaginary foreigners in dreams,—which would have been quite wickedly selfish if I had been awake!...
With every true good wish and sincere affection,
Your friend,
Lafcadio Hearn.