TO MITCHELL McDONALD
Tōkyō, June, 1899.
Dear Mitchell,—I reached my little Japanese house last night, carrying with me a sort of special tropic atmosphere or magnetic cloud—composed of impressions of hearts, hands, and minds dearer and altogether superior to the things of this world. Are you not as Solomon who “made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars as the sycamore-trees that are in the lowland for multitude”?
Presently I squatted down before my hibachi, and smoked and viewed the landscape o’er—inverted in the pocket-lens of Dr. Bedloe, and invested thereby with iridescences of violet and crimson and emerald. And it occurred to me that the prismatic lights in question symbolized those fairy-tints and illusions which the two of you wove around me while I remained in the circle of your power. Spell it must have been—for I cannot yet assure myself that I left Tōkyō only yesterday morning, and not a month ago. The riddle reverses the case of Urashima;—I have been trying to argue out the question whether happiness does really make the hours shorter, or does rather stretch time infinitely, like the thread of a spider. No doubt, however, the true explanation lies in contrasts—the contrasts of the extraordinary change from real Japanese existence to the American colonial circle of the year of grace 1899. It is really, you know, like taking a single stride of a thousand years in measure,—and the result is, of course, more bewildering than the striding of Peter Schlemihl. He could only go from the Pole to the Tropics in an afternoon—just now you are like old acquaintances who come back at night to talk to us as if they had not been under the ground for thirty years and more. Are you all quite sure down there that you are alive? I believe I am,—though I have to pinch myself betimes to make sure. Then I have the evidence of that magnifying glass; and my shoes tell me that I must have been out.
Yet more—I have two letters to send you. (They need no comment, other than that which I have inscribed upon them.) I enclose them only because I know that you want to see them.
By the way, I feel otherwise displeased with you. I could forgive you for much besides getting off a moving train. There was a pillar right behind you as you stepped off. What would the not impossible Mrs. Mitchell McD. of my wishes say to you for that!
Affectionately,
Lafcadio.