"Yes, sir; I might write," was the eager reply.
"Umph!" said Watkin; "better learn some bread-winning trade and put off writing until later."
After this Hearn was installed as errand boy and helper. He was not goodly to look upon. His body was unusually puny and under-sized. The softness of his tread had something feline and feminine in it. His head, covered with long black hair, was full and intellectual, save for two defects, a weak chin and an eye of the variety known as "pearl,"—large and white and bulbous, so that it repelled people upon a first acquaintance.
Hearn felt deeply the effect his shyness, his puny body, and his unsightly eye had upon people, and this feeling served to make him even more diffident and more melancholy than he was by nature. However, as with many melancholy-natured souls, he had an element of fun in him, which came out afterwards upon his longer acquaintance with the first man who had given him a helping hand.
Hearn swept the floor of the printing shop and tried to learn the printer's craft, but failed, He slept in a little room back of the shop and ate his meals in the place with Mr. Watkin. He availed himself of his benefactor's library, and read Poe and volumes on free thought, delighted to find a kindred spirit in the older man. Together they often crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky to hear lectures on spiritualism and laugh about them. Their companionship was not broken when Mr. Watkin secured for the boy a position with a Captain Barney, who edited and published a commercial, paper, for which Hearn solicited advertisements and to which he began also to contribute articles. One of these—a singular composition for such a paper—was a proposal to cross the Atlantic in a balloon anchored to a floating buoy. It was later in the year that he secured a position as a reporter on the Enquirer, through some "feature" articles he shyly deposited upon the editor's desk, making his escape before the great man had caught him in the act. It was not long before the latent talent in the youth began to make itself manifest. He was not a rapid writer. On the contrary, he was exceedingly slow, but his product was written in English that no reporter then working in Cincinnati approached. His fellow reporters soon became jealous of him. They were, moreover, repelled by his personal appearance and chilled by his steady refusal to see the fun of getting drunk. Finding lack of congeniality among the young men of his own age and occupation, among whom he was to work for seven more years, his friendship with Mr. Watkin became all the stronger, so that he came to look upon the latter as the one person in Cincinnati upon whom he could count for unselfish companionship and sincere advice. Hearn's Cincinnati experiences ended with his service on the Enquirer. Before that he had been proofreader to a publishing house and secretary to Cincinnati's public librarian. He was also for a time on the staff of the Commercial. It was while on the Enquirer that he accomplished several journalistic feats that are still referred to in gatherings of oldtime newspaper men of Cincinnati. One was a grisly description of the charred body of a murdered man, the screed being evidently inspired by recollections of Poe. The other was an article describing Cincinnati as seen from the top of a high church steeple, the joke of it being that Hearn, by reason of his defective vision, could see nothing even after he had made his perilous climb. It was in the last days of his stay in Cincinnati that he, with H. F. Farny, the painter, issued a short-lived weekly known as Giglampz. Farny, not yet famous as an Indian painter, contributed the drawings, and Hearn the bulk of the letter press for the journal, which modestly announced that it was going to eclipse Punch and all the other famous comic weeklies. Hearn, always sensitive, practically withdrew from the magazine when Farny took the very excusable liberty of changing the title of one of the essays of the former. Farny thought the title offensive to people of good taste, and said so. Hearn apparently acquiesced, but brooded over the "slight," and never again contributed to the weekly. Shortly afterwards it died. It is doubtful whether there are any copies in existence. Many Cincinnati collectors have made rounds of the second-hand book-shops in a vain search for stray numbers.
Early in their acquaintance Watkin and Hearn called each other by endearing names which were adhered to throughout the long years of their correspondence. Mr. Watkin, with his leonine head, was familiarly addressed as "Old Man" or "Dad;" while the boy, by virtue of his dark hair and coloring, the gloomy cast of his thoughts, and his deep love for Poe, was known as "The Raven," a name which caught his fancy. Indeed, a simple little drawing of the bird stood for many years in place of a signature to anything he chanced to write to Mr. Watkin. In spite of their varying lines of work, the two were often together. When "The Raven" was prowling the city for news, he was often accompanied by his "Dad." Not infrequently, when the younger man had no especial task, he would come to Mr. Watkin's office and read some books there. One of these, whose title and author Mr. Watkin has forgotten, fascinated at the same time that it repelled Hearn by its grim and ghastly stories of battle, murder, and sudden death. One night Mr. Watkin left him reading in the office. When he opened the place the next morning he found this note from Hearn:
"10 P.M. These stories are positively so horrible that even a materialist feels rather unpleasantly situated when left alone with the thoughts conjured up by this dreamer of fantastic dreams. The brain-chambers of fancy become thronged with goblins. I think I shall go home."
For signature there was appended a very black and a very thoughtful-looking raven.
It was also in these days that Hearn indulged in his little pleasantries with Mr. Watkin. Hardly a day passed without a visit to the printing office. When he did not find his friend, he usually left a card for him, on which was some little drawing, Hearn having quite a talent in this direction,-a talent that he never afterward developed. Of course some of the cards were just as nonsensical as the nonsense verses friends often write to each other. They are merely quoted to show Hearn's fund of animal spirits at the time.
