You say my friend writes nicely. He is about the most lovable man I ever met,—an old-time Southerner, very tall and slight, with a singular face. He is so exactly an ideal Mephistopheles that he would never get his photograph taken. The face does not altogether belie the character,—but the mockery is very tender play, and queerly original. It never offends. The real Mephistopheles appears only when there are ugly obstacles to overcome. Then the diabolical keenness with which motives are read and disclosed, and the lightning moves by which a plot is checkmated, or made a net for the plotter himself, usually startle people. He is a man of immense force—it takes such a one to rule in that community, but as a gentleman I never saw his superior in grace or consideration. I always loved him—but like all whom I like, never could get quite enough of his company for myself.
The papers on Mars are quite weirdly suggestive—are they not? Just how much of the theories and the discoveries were Lowell’s very own, I can’t make out—though the papers are things to be thankful for. You know the physiological side of his psychology in “Occult Japan” is no more original than the “Miscellany” of a medical weekly.
By the way, I must point out a serious mistake he makes on page 293,—when he says that the absence of the belief in possession by other living men is a proof of the absence of personality in Japan. As a matter of fact there is no such absence. I alone know of three different forms of such belief—and know that one is extremely common. So that all the metaphysical structure of argument built upon the supposed absence of that belief vanishes into nothingness!
As Huxley says, that man who goes about the world “unlabelled” is sure to be punished for it. So I can’t help thinking that I ought to have a label. Fancy the man who makes his bear drink champagne seeking my company on the ground that “Neither of us are Christians.” The Ama-terasu-Ōmi-kami business first aroused my suspicions, but the phrase itself was so raw!
Compañia de uno
1 Compañia de ninguno;
Compañia de dos
2 Compañia de Dios;
Compañia de tres
3 Compañia es (but never for me);