"The love of Hearn and Watkin,
What is its kin?—
It is two toads encysted
Within one stone,
Two vipers twisted
Into one.
"Here is the poem:
"Fairflowers pass away:
In perfumed ruin falls the lily's urn;
In pallid pink decay
Moulders the rose;—all in their time return
To the primeval clay.
"Yet still their tiny ghosts
Hover about our homes on viewless wings;
In incense-breathing hosts
They love to haunt those stores of trifling things
Of which affection boasts,—
"Some curl of glossy hair,—
Some loving letter penned by pretty fingers,—
Some volume old and rare,
On whose time-yellow fly-leaf fondly lingers
The name of a woman fair.
"So in that hour
When brave lives fail and brave hearts cease to beat,—
Each deed of power
Lives on to haunt our memories,—faintly sweet
Like the ghost of a flower.
"Each flower we strew
In tribute to the brave to-day shall prove
A token true
Of some sweet memory of the dead we love,—
The Men in Blue.
"Perchance the story
Of Chalmette's heroes may be lost to fame,
As years wax hoary;
But Valor's Angel keeps each gallant name
On his Roll of Glory."
August 14, 1878, Hearn wrote a letter to the man who had always cheered him and who now in turn needed cheering. Business in all lines in Cincinnati was bad, and Mr. Watkin was quite despondent. He had written Hearn something of this, and also had hinted that he might move to Kansas or somewhere farther West. In return he received the following letter, expressive of all that was most fun-loving in its writer:
"My Dear Old Man: I think you had better come here next Oktober and rejoin your naughty raven. It would not do you any harm to reconnoitre. Think of the times we could have,—delightful rooms with five large windows opening on piazzas shaded by banana trees; dining at Chinese restaurants and being served by Manila waitresses, with oblique eyes and skin like gold; visiting sugar-cane plantations; scudding over to Cuba; dying with the mere delight of laziness; laughing at cold and smiling at the news of snowstorms a thousand miles away; eating the cheapest food in the world,—and sinning the sweetest kind of sins. Now you know, good old Dad, nice old Dad,—you know that you are lazy and ought to be still lazier. Come here and be lazy. Let me be the siren voice enticing a Ulysses who does not stuff wax in his ears. Don't go to horrid, dreadful Kansas. Go to some outrageous ruinous land, where the moons are ten times larger than they are there. Or tell me to pull up stakes, and I shall take unto myself the wings of a bird and fly to any place but beastly Cincinnati.
"Money can be made here out of the poor. People are so poor here that nothing pays except that which appeals to poverty. But I think you could make things hop around lively. Now one can make thirty milk biscuits for five cents and eight cups of coffee for five cents. Just think of it! ...
"Cincinnati is bad; but it's going to be a d—d sight worse. You know that as well as I do. Leave the vile hole and the long catalogue of Horrid Acquaintances behind you, and come down here to your own little man,—good little man. Get you nice room, nice board, nice business. Perhaps we might strike ile in a glorious spec. Why don't you spec.? You'd better spec, pretty soon, or the times will get so bad that you will have to get up and dust. This is a seaport. There are tall ships here. They sail to Europe,—to London, Marseilles, Constantinople, Smyrna. They sail to the West Indies and those seaports where we are going to open a cigar store or something of that kind.
Oh, I have seven tall ships at sea,
And seven more at hand;
And five and twenty jolly, jolly seamen
Shall be at your command.
May the Immortal Gods preserve you in immortal youth."
There now follow some letters whose dates it has been impossible to fix. The cancellation marks on the envelopes give the months, but not the years. However, there is internal evidence to show that they belong to the period between the last group and the group of 1882, so that they were written in the years 1879, 1880, and 1881, in all probability. The first is one of the most interesting letters in the whole set. The future great writer is displayed as the owner of a five-cent eating-house. The letter is replete with ridiculous little sketches of a bird, which he claimed was a raven. In fact:, in the following, wherever "raven" is used, the reader must understand that there is a drawing of one in the letter. It was written in February: