Hearn was an early riser; but lest he should disturb the sleep of myself and children, he was always waiting for us and keeping quiet in the library, sitting regularly upon the cushion and smoking with a charcoal-brazier before him, till I got up and went to his library.
In the morning of Sept. 26th—the sad, last day—as I went to his library about 6.30 A. M., he was already quietly sitting as usual on the cushion. “Ohayō gozaimasu” (good-morning) I said. He seemed to be thinking over something, but upon my salutation he said his “good-morning,” and told me that he had an interesting dream last night, for we were accustomed to tell each other when we had a pleasant dream. “What was it,” I asked. He said: “I had a long, distant journey. Here I am smoking now, you see. Is it real that I travelled or is it real that I am smoking? The world of dream!...” Thus saying he was pleased with himself.
Before going to bed, our three boys used to go to his library and say in English: “Papa! Good-night! Pleasant dream!” Then he says in Japanese: “Dream a good dream,” or in English: “The same to you.”
On this morning when Kazuo, before leaving home for school, went to him, and said a “good-morning,” he said: “Pleasant dream.” Not knowing how to say, Kazuo answered: “The same to you.”
About eleven o‘clock in the morning, while walking to and fro along the corridor, he looked into my sitting-room and saw the picture hung upon the wall of alcove. The picture entitled “Morning Sun,” represented a glorious, but a little mistic, scene of seashore in the early morning with birds thronging. “A beautiful scenery! I would like to go to such a land,” he remarked.
He was fond of hearing the note of insects. We kept matsu mushi (a kind of cricket) this autumn. Toward evening the plaintive notes which matsu mushi made at intervals made me feel unusually lonesome. I asked my husband how it sounded to him. He said: “That tiny creature has been singing nicely. It’s getting cold, though. Is it conscious or unconscious that soon it must die? It’s a pity, indeed.” And, in a lonesome way, he added: “Ah, poor creature! On one of these warm days let us put him secretly among the grasses.”
Nothing particularly different was not to be observable in all about him that day through. But the single blossom of untimely cherry, the dream of long journey he had, and the notes of matsu mushi, all these make me sad even now, as if there had existed some significance about them. At supper he felt sudden pain in the breast. He stopped eating; went away to his library; I followed him. For some minutes, with his hands upon his breast, he walked about the room. A sensation of vomiting occurred to him. I helped him, but no vomiting. He wanted to lie on bed. With his hands on breast, he kept very calm in bed. But, in a few minutes after, he was no more the man of this side of the world. As if feeling no pain at all, he had a little smile about his mouth.
APPENDIX
The following was one of Hearn’s general lectures at the University of Tōkyō as it was taken down at the time of its delivery by T. Ochiai, one of his students. It contains, together with some characteristic literary opinions, striking evidence of the curious felicity of Hearn’s method of approach to the Japanese mind.