TO MITCHELL McDONALD Tōkyō, February, 1899.
Dear McDonald,—I have just got your dear letter: don’t think me neglectful for not writing to you sooner;—this is the heavy part of the term; and the weather has been trying me.
Well, I am glad to hear that you have read a book called “Exotics and Retrospectives.” I have not seen it. Where did it come from? How did you get it? When was it sent? Did the doctor get his copy? (Don’t answer these questions by letter in a hurry: I am not asking very seriously,—as I suppose I shall get my copies by the Doric.)
I have been doing nothing to speak of lately: too tired after a day’s work,—and the literary jobs on hand are mechanical mostly,—uninteresting,—mere ruts of duty. I hate everything mechanical; but romances do not turn up every day.
Thanks for your interest in my lecture-work; but you would be wrong in thinking the lectures worth printing. They are only dictated lectures—dictated out of my head, not from notes even: so the form of them cannot be good. Were I to rewrite each of them ten or fifteen times, I might print them. But that would not be worth while. I am not a scholar, nor a competent critic of the best; there are scores of men able to do the same thing incomparably better. The lectures are good for the Tōkyō University, however,—because they have been adapted, by long experience, to the Japanese student’s way of thinking and feeling, and are put in the simplest possible language. But when a professor in Japan prints his lectures, the authorities think they have got all that he knows in hand, and are likely to look about for a new man. It is bad policy to print anything of the kind here, and elsewhere the result would be insignificant. I had better reserve my force for work that other people cannot do better,—or at least won’t do.
Affectionately,
Lafcadio.
TO MITCHELL McDONALD
February, 1899.
Dear McDonald,—You should never take the pains to answer the details of my letters: it is very sweet of you to do it,—but it means the trouble of writing, as it were, with a sense of affectionate obligation, and it also means the trouble of re-reading, line by line, letters which are not worth reading more than once—if even once. Please forget my letters always, and write whatever you like, and don’t think that I expect you to take me very seriously. Why, I cannot even take myself always very seriously!—By the way, that was a very pretty simile of yours about the nebula condensing into a sun. But the nucleus, to tell the truth, has not yet begun to integrate: there is a hardening here and there upon the outermost edges only,—which is possibly contrary to the law that makes great suns.