I have a little daughter; and all that anxiety is past. (If I could only get quite strong, I could make a good fight for myself later on.) Anyhow, I see no great difficulty about an American trip, once the sharp cold is over; and I think you will be glad of this note from your troublesome but always grateful
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO MRS. WETMORE
Tōkyō, December, 1903.
Dear Mrs. Wetmore,— ... Of course your critics have been kind. Other things of yours seemed to have a distinct quality; but this is your Self, the clearest and dearest best of you. It is so much alive that I cannot believe I have been reading a story: I thought that I knew and remembered all the people and all that they said—surely none of the life in those pages could have been imagined! I am puzzled by the brightness of the memories and the freshness of the feeling: the real world of self-seeking has such power to dull and numb that I cannot understand how you could have conserved the whole delightfulness of child-experience in spite of New York....
With me all the past is a blur—except the pain of it. It is not so much what one sees in your story, or what one hears folk say, that makes the thing so pleasing: it is rather the soft appeal made to one’s moral understanding. I mean that I never imagined how good and brave and lovable those people were till you made me comprehend. And I felt about as “home-sick” as it is lawful for a Japanese citizen to feel. But I am afraid that your very own South is now of the past:—wherefore we can appreciate it incomparably more than when it was our every-day environment....
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO TANABE
Tōkyō, January, 1904.
Dear Mr. Tanabe,—I received your kind New Year’s greeting, and your good letter; and if I have delayed so long in replying, it has been only because, for some weeks past, I have not had five minutes to spare.