Ah! I had almost forgotten. I have Kipling’s “Day’s Work” already. It is great—very great. Don’t mistake him, even if he seems too colloquial at times. He is the greatest living English poet and English story-teller. Never in this world will I be able to write one page to compare with a page of his. He makes me feel so small, that after reading him I wonder why I am such an ass as to write at all. Love to you, all the same, for thinking of me in that connection.
Term’s over—all but a beastly “dinner.” D—n dinners! I’ll see you presently.
Lafcadio.
TO MITCHELL McDONALD
Tōkyō, December, 1898.
Dear McDonald,—Do you know we talked uninterruptedly the other day for ten hours,—for the period that people are wont to qualify when speaking of the enormity of time as “ten mortal hours”? What a pity that they could not be made immortal! They will be always with me,—though I really fear that I must have tired you, in spite of protests. Every time I can get such a chat with you, you become much dearer to me—so that I really cannot feel as sorry as I ought for keeping you engaged that long.
Well, I don’t quite know what I shall do about the “Ghostly Japan.” I shall think a little longer. My duty, I feel, is to sacrifice it: only I don’t want to have any tricks played upon me,—just because tricks annoy. Nevertheless I ought to accept the annoyance cheerfully: it is part of the price one must pay for success. Huxley says that one of the things most important for anybody to learn is that a heavy price must be paid for success.
I got a letter from a Yale lad, which I enclose, and a magazine which I am sending you. The wish is for an autograph; but there the case is meritorious and I want the sympathy of boys like that—who must be the writers and thinkers of 1900. So I wrote him as kind a letter as I could,—assuring him, however, that I am not a Buddhist, but still a follower of Herbert Spencer. It is a nice little magazine. I suppose that H. M. & Co.’s advertisement had something to do with the matter; but from the business point of view, it is an excellent idea to try to work a book through the universities. Those lads are thinkers in their own way. See the poem on page 90,—also on page 83: both show thinking. I ventured to advise the writer of “Body and Soul” to make a new construction of the thought. The conditions might be reversed. First the man is the body; the woman the soul. But the woman’s soul is withered up by the act of the man; and the body only remains. Then the man gets sorry, and gets a soul through the sorrow of the wrong that he has done. Then she becomes the Flesh, and he the Ghost. I did not explain all this—only suggested it. A case of vicarious sacrifice. How many women have to lose their own souls in order to give souls to somebody else!
Wish I was with you to-day, and to-morrow, and many days in succession. But if we have plum pudding every day—! I mean not you by the plum pudding, but the circumstantial combination. I wanted to say that pleasure spoils the soul for working purposes,—but I am afraid to attempt to carry the simile further, lest you should turn it round, and hit me with it. I shall see you erelong, anyhow.