I wish you a very, very happy new year and many of them.

Faithfully,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Matsue, January, 1891.

Dear Professor Chamberlain,—Your kindness in sending me a postal card while suffering so much yourself from sickness, is something that touches me very much. I hope to thank you better later on.

I myself am very sick. I boasted too soon about my immunity from cold. I have been severely touched where I thought myself strongest—in my lungs—and have passed some weeks in bed. My first serious discouragement came with this check to my enthusiasm; I fear a few more winters of this kind will put me underground. But this has been a very exceptional winter, they say. The first snowstorm piled five feet of snow about my house, which faces the lake, looking to Kizuki. All the mountains are white, and the country is smothered with snow, and the wind is very severe. I never saw a heavier snowfall in the United States or Canada. The thermometer does not go so low as you might suppose, not more than about 12 above zero; but the houses are cold as cattle barns, and the hibachi and the kotatsu are mere shadows of heat,—ghosts, illusions. But I have the blues now; perhaps to-morrow everything will be cheerful again. The authorities are astonishingly kind to me. If they were not, I do not know what I should do.

I trust you are now strong again. I send you a few mamori from the famous shrine of Sakusa (county I-yu) where Yaegaki-san are worshipped, the “Deities who couple and set the single in families.” It is said that these, so soon as a boy or girl is born, decide the future love and marriage of the child,—betrothing all to all from the moment of birth. Three Shintō deities are the presiding gods: Susa-no-o-no-Mikoto, his wife Inada-Hime-no-Mikoto, and their son Sakusa-no-Mikoto, from whom, I suppose, the place takes its name. The mother of Inada-Hime and Taka o gami-no-Mikoto, and Ama-terasu-Omi-Kami, are also there enshrined.

Here, amid stone foxes and stone lions, a priest sells love-charms. Some of these consist of the leaves of Camellia Japonica.