One little story which would never die, might suffice,—or a volume of little stories. Stories, fiction: that is all the public care about. Not essays, however clever,—nor vagaries, nor travels,—but stories about something common to all life under the sun. And this is just the very hardest of all earthly things to do. I might write an essay on some topic of which I am now quite ignorant,—by studying the subject for the necessary time. But a story cannot be written by the help of study at all: it must come from outside. It must be a “sensation” in one’s own life,—and not peculiar to any life or any place or time.

I have been studying the “will” and “shall” carefully, and think that I shall be able to avoid serious mistakes hereafter. It is difficult, however, for me to get the “instantaneous sense”—so to speak—of their correct use. The line between “intention” and “future sequence” I can’t well define.

I can’t help fearing that what you mean by “justice and temperateness” in writing means that you want me to write as if I were you, or at least to measure sentence or thought by your standard. This, of course, would render frank correspondence impossible,—as it does even now to some extent. If I write well of a thing one day, and badly another—I expect my friend to discern that both impressions are true, and solve the contradiction—that is, if my letters are really wanted. For absolute “justice and temperateness,” one can find them in the pages of Herbert Spencer—but you would then discern that even la raison peut fatiguer à la longue. I should suppose the interest of letters not to be in the text, but in the writer. Am I wrong?

L. H.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Kōbe, April, 1895.

Dear Chamberlain,—In writing to you, of course, I’ve not been writing a book—but simply setting down the thoughts and feelings of the moment as they come. I write a book exactly the same way; but all this has to be smoothed, ordinated, corrected, toned over twenty times before a page is ready. It strikes me, however, that the first raw emotion or fancy, which is the base of all, has its value between men who understand each other. You, on the other hand,—differently constituted,—write a letter as you would write a book. You collect and mould the thought instinctively and perhaps unconsciously before setting it on paper.

I’m not quite such an American radical as you think in consequence; for I confess to a belief in the value of aristocracies—a very strong belief. On the other hand, the reality of the thing to the man is its relation to him personally. Don’t you think your comfort in all sorts and conditions may be due to your personal independence of those sorts and conditions? It is like Rufz’s statement that “the first relations between men are delicious”—so long as you are in nobody’s way, and have capacity to please, you have the bright side turned to you. (Again, there is this question: Are you sure the side you see and like is not the artificial side? I don’t say it is, but there are possibilities.) My own dislike of mercantile people in all countries is based upon experiences of the contrary sort. But how can men, trained from childhood to watch for and to take all possible advantage of human weakness, remain a morally superior class. That they don’t, needs no argument; and that the poorest people in all countries are the most moral and self-sacrificing needs no argument either. Both are acknowledged and indisputable facts in sociology,—in the study of civilized races, at least. When to this marrow-bred sense of morality is superadded the courtesy you yourself in a former letter declared without parallel, I see nothing extravagant in the statement that a Japanese hyakushō is more of a gentleman than an English merchant can be—if gentleness means delicate consideration for others, by means of which virtue no man can succeed in life.

I should like to know any story of heroism—sorry not to be near you to coax you for an outline of it. Every fact of goodness makes one better, and an author richer, to know it. There are good heroes and heroines in all walks of life, indeed,—though all walks of life do not necessarily lead to goodness. Indeed, there are some which teach that goodness is foolishness,—but all won’t believe it is true.

The extraordinary wastefulness of foreign life is a fact that strikes one hard after life in the interior. Men work like slaves for no other earthly reason than that conventions require them to live beyond their means; and those who are free to live as they wish live on a scale that seems extravagant in the extreme. All goes right in the end, but I have not yet escaped the sensation of imagining one life devouring a hundred for mere amusement. Here is a man who spends, to my knowledge, more than $500 a week for mere amusement. He lives, therefore, at the rate of more than 1000 Japanese lives. I’m not disputing his right: but in the eternal order of things the whirligig of time must bring in strange revenges....