To fail, after being recommended by you, would be an unpardonable sin against all the higher virtues. Can’t risk it.
Well, if President Schurman can make good use of me, and arrange things within my capacity, I will go straight to your Palace of Faery before going elsewhere. Only to see you again—even for a moment,—and to hear you speak (in some one of the Myriad Voices), would be such a memory for me. And you would let me “walk about gently, touching things”?...
It is an almost divine pleasure and wonder to watch the unfolding of a soul-blossom, as you say,—providing that one is strong enough not to be afraid. I am, or have been, always afraid: the Future-Possible of Nightmare immediately glooms up,—and I flee, and bury myself in work. Absurd?
And your book—of course that will be some opportunity for a delightful chat. You will find me as good as I can be in expressing an opinion,—if the subject be within my range. I know that the work of such a person as—Mrs. Deland, for example—is beyond my limit; and I imagine that you would write of highly complex existences....
Excuse my anxiety about my chicken. I want to feel sure that I can make him comfortable and warm if I do go to Cornell. I want to make all the money, too, that I honestly can earn, for his sake and the mother’s. She will have some trying moments in the hour of parting with him. But there is no other future chance for him, and no educational place here to which I could trust him—least of all, the Jesuits. Very different it is with my second sturdy boy, who has no trace of European blood. His way is straight and smooth. I send his picture, that you may see the difference. And my third boy—sturdiest of all—will have other friends to help him, I fancy....
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO MRS. WETMORE
Tōkyō, January, 1903.
Dear Mrs. Wetmore,—It was a shock to receive your beautiful letter, because I had waited so long and anxiously,—fearing that the last gleam of hope in my Eastern horizon had been extinguished. It would be of no use whatever to tell you half my doubts and fears—they made the coming of your letter an almost terrible event.