What some people say about Miss Bisland—ah! I mean Mrs. Wetmore—being only beautiful when she wants to be is, I think, perfectly true. She can change into seventeen different women. She used to make me almost believe the stories about Circe and Lilith. She laughed to scorn the terrible scientific test of the photograph—of the science which reveals new nebulae and tells a man in advance whether he is going to get the small-pox or not. No two photos of her ever represented the same human being. In ordinary mortals the sort of thing called Ego, which is not “I” but “They,” is worked up into a recognizable composite photo. But in her case, ’tis quite otherwise. The different dead that live in her, live quite separately from each other, in different rooms, and receive upon different afternoons. And yet—if even Rudyard Kipling were to write the truth about that person—or rather that ghostly congregation of persons called Elizabeth Bisland,—who but a crazy man would believe that truth? Assuredly Mr. W. ought to think himself lucky. Ever to get tired of Elizabeth is out of human possibility. There are too many different Elizabeths, belonging to different historical epochs, countries, and conditions. If he should tire of one Elizabeth,—lo! there will appear another. And there is one very terrible Elizabeth, whom I had a momentary glimpse of once, and whom it will not be well for Mr. W. or anybody else to summon from her retirement. But I am glad for the compound Elizabeth that she has this Protector in reserve.—Lord! how irreverently I have been talking! But that is because you can read under the irreverence....

What can’t be insured against is earthquake. I have become afraid. Do you know that the earthquake the other day in Gifu, Aichi, etc., destroyed nearly 200,000 houses and nearly 10,000 lives? My house in far-off Matsue rocked and groaned like a steamer in a typhoon. It isn’t the quake one’s afraid of: it is being held down under a ton of timber and slowly burned alive. That is what happened to most of the dead. Five millions of dollars will scarcely relieve the distress....

Well, here’s a thousand happy New Years to you and yours,—all luck, all blessings, all glorious sensations.

Ever from your old disoccidentalized chum,

Lafcadio Hearn.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
Kumamoto, April, 1892.

Dear Hendrick,—Just had a long and delightful letter from you, and Mallock’s book. I hate the Jesuit; but he has a particular cleverness of his own indeed. I hate him first because he is insincere, as you suggest; then I hate him because he is morbid, with a priestly morbidness—sickly, cynical, unhealthy. I like Kipling’s morbidness, which is manly and full of enormous resolve and defiance in the teeth of God and hell and nature,—but the other—no! This book is not free from the usual faults. It is like Paul Bourget boiled into thin soup, and flavoured with a dash of M. de Camors. The Markham girl was certainly Feuillet’s imagination; but she is excellently done. Really, I don’t know;—I asked myself: “If it was I?” ... And conscience answered: “If it was you, in spite of love and duty and honour and hellfire staring you in the face you would have gone after her,—and tried to console yourself by considering the Law of Attraction of Bodies and Souls in the incomprehensible cosmical order of things, which is older than the gods.” And I was very much inclined to demur; but conscience repeated: “Oh! don’t be such a liar and quibbler;—you know you would! That was the only part of the book you really liked. Your ancestors were not religious people: you lack constitutional morality. That’s why you are poor, and unsuccessful, and void of mental balance, and an exile in Japan. You know you cannot be happy in an English moral community. You are a fraud—a vile Latin—a vicious French-hearted scalawag.”

And I could not say anything, because what conscience observed was true—to a considerable extent. “Vive le monde antique!” ...

I have been thinking a heap, because of being much alone. (The Japanese do not understand Western thought at all—at least not its emotional side. Therefore devour time and devour thought even while they stimulate it.) ...