After a seven months' hunt for work Hearn saw some of the hardest times of his life in New Orleans. The situation, as he described in his letter to Mr. Watkin, could not have been worse than when, as a waif, he wandered the streets of London. It was postmarked June 14, 1878.
"Dear Old Man: Wish you would tell me something wise and serviceable. I'm completely and hopelessly busted up and flattened out, but I don't write this because I have any desire to ask you for pecuniary assistance,—have asked for that elsewhere. Have been here seven months and never made one cent in the city. No possible prospect of doing anything in this town now or within twenty-five years. Books and clothes all gone, shirt sticking through seat of my pants,—literary work rejected East,—get a five-cent meal once in two days,—don't know one night where I'm going to sleep next,—and am d—d sick with climate into the bargain. Yellow fever supposed to be in the city. Newspapers expected to bust up. Twenty dollars per month is a good living here; but it's simply impossible to make even ten. Have been cheated and swindled considerably; and have cheated and swindled others in retaliation. We are about even. D—n New Orleans!—wish I'd never seen it. I am thinking of going to Texas. How do you like the idea?—to Dallas or Waco. Eyes about played out, I guess. Have a sort of idea that I can be wonderfully economical if I get any more good luck. Can save fifteen out of twenty dollars a month—under new conditions (?). Have no regular place of residence now. Can't you drop a line to P. O. next week, letting shining drops of wisdom drip from the end of your pen?"
It was right after this in the same month, when his fortunes were at the lowest ebb, that things took a turn for the better, as is indicated by the following, in which in jest he proposes to engage in a "get-rich-quick" scheme:
"Dear Old Man: Somehow or other, when a man gets right down in the dirt, he jumps up again. The day after I wrote you, I got a position (without asking for it) as assistant editor on the Item, at a salary considerably smaller than that I received on the Commercial (of Cincinnati), but large enough to enable me to save half of it. Therefore I hasten to return Will's generous favor with the most sincere thanks and kindest wishes. You would scarcely know me now, for my face is thinner than a knife and my skin very dark. The Southern sun has turned me into a mulatto. I have ceased to wear spectacles, and my hair is wild and ghastly. I am seriously thinking of going into a fraud, which will pay like hell,—an advertising fraud: buying land by the pound and selling it in boxes at one dollar per box. I have a party here now who wants to furnish bulk of capital and go shares. He is an old hand at the dodge. It would be carried along under false names, of course; and there is really no money in honest work.... I think I shall see you in the fall or spring; and when I come again to Cincinnati, it will be, my dear old man, as you would wish, with money in my pocket. It did me much good to hear from you; for I fancied my postal card asking for help might have offended you; and I feared you had resolved that I was a fraud. Well, I am something of a fraud, but not to everybody I don't like the people here at all, and would not live here continually. But it is convenient now, for I could not live cheaper elsewhere."
Again undated, but belonging to his early New Orleans period, is the letter in which, after discussing some business venture he had in mind, he says:
"There is a strong feeling down here that the South will soon be the safest place to live in. The labor troubles North promise to be something terrible. I assure you that few well-posted newspaper men here would care to exchange localities until after these labor troubles have assumed some definite shape. There is no labor element here that is dangerous.
"There are some businesses which would pay here: a cheap restaurant, a cheap swimming bath, or a cheap laundry. Money just now could be coined at any of these things. Everything else here is dead. I met a highly educated Jew here not long ago, who had lived and made money in New Zealand, Martinique, British Columbia, Panama, Sandwich Islands, Buenos Ayres, and San Francisco. 'I have been,' he said, 'almost every place where money can be made, and I know almost every dodge known to Hebrews in the money-making way. But I do not see a single chance to make anything in this town.' He left for the North. He was from London.
"I should like to see you down here, if it were not for malaria. You would not escape the regular marsh fever; but that is not dangerous when the symptoms are recognized and promptly treated. When I had it I did not know what it was. I took instinctively a large dose of castor oil. Sometime after I met the druggist, a good old German, who sold it me. 'I never expected to see you again,' he said; 'you had a very bad case of fever when I saw you.'
"But everybody gets that here. You live so abstemiously and thirst so little after the flesh-pots that I think you would not have much to fear. I go swimming a good deal; but I find the water horribly warm. The lake seems to be situated directly over the great furnace of Hell....
"I'll be doubly d—d if I have the vaguest idea what I shall do. I have a delightfully lazy life here; and I assure you I never intend to work fourteen hours a day again. But whether to leave here I don't know. I'm only making about ten dollars a week, but that is better than making twenty-five dollars and being a slave to a newspaper. I write what I please, go when I please, and quit work when I please. I have really only three hours a day office duty,—mostly consumed in waiting for proofs. If I stay here, I can make more soon. But I don't really care a damn whether I make much money or not. If I have to make money by working hard for it, I shall certainly remain poor. I have done the last hard work I shall ever do.