TO ELIZABETH BISLAND
1890.
Dear Miss Bisland,—Do you think well enough of me to try to get me employment at a regular salary, somewhere in the United States. I have permanently broken off with the Harpers: I am starved out. My average earnings for the last three years have been scarcely $500 a year. Here in Japan prices are higher than in New York,—unless one can become a Japanese employee. I was promised a situation; but it is now delayed until September.
I shall get along somehow. But I am so very tired of being hard-pushed, and ignored, and starved,—and obliged to undergo moral humiliations which are much worse than hunger or cold,—that I have ceased to be ashamed to ask you to say a good word for me where you can, to some newspaper, or some publishing firm, able to give me steady employ, later on.
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO ELIZABETH BISLAND
1890.
My dear Sister Elizabeth,— ... Now, as for myself,—I am going to become country school-master in Japan,—probably for several long years. The language is unspeakably difficult to learn;—I believe it can only be learned by ear. Teaching will help me to learn it; and before learning it, to write anything enduring upon Japan would be absurdly impossible. Literary work will not support one here, where living costs quite as much as in New York. What I wish to do, I want to do for its own sake; and so intend to settle, if possible, in this country, among a people who seem to me the most lovable in the world.
I have been living in temples and old Buddhist cemeteries, making pilgrimages and sounding enormous bells and worshipping astounding Buddhas. Still, I do not as yet know anything whatever about Japan. I have nothing else worth telling you to write just now, and no address to give,—as I do not know where I am going or what I shall be doing next month.