The "Fantastics" proper and the "Other Fancies" have been grouped indiscriminately in chronological order, though differing greatly in spirit and in excellence of style. "The Little Red Kitten" and "At the Cemetery" are less labored in point of diction; but they are charming in their simplicity and unaffected tenderness. In the earlier of these little pictures his sympathy with our "poor brothers"—in this case "sisters"—of the animal world, from first to last a striking trait in his character, is beautifully expressed. There is delicate humor, too, as well as pathos, in the sketch. In the latter we have the glow of his feeling for the sorrow of a child, and the spring of his wonderful imagination which a few handfuls of sand not native to the spot evoke. In neither is there the least trace of the weird which is in so large a degree characteristic of most of the others. Slight as they are in texture, they seem to me to rise far above the more subtle and fanciful tales in the strength and beauty of simple truth to nature—to the best that was in his own nature.
But the others, notably "The Black Cupid," "The Undying One," "Aphrodite and the King's Prisoner," "The Fountain of Gold," "The Gypsy's Story," are not to be undervalued. There is a power of vision, an imaginative magnificence, a weird melody of word-music in them that grips the mind of the reader as in a vise.
"The Fountain of Gold" was later reproduced in the form of "A Tropical Intermezzo," recently given to a wider public in the pages of Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist. It is interesting to compare the first sketch with the finished picture. The earlier work is less dramatic, less convincing, less artistic, though full of a charm of its own. The whole design is transmuted into something immensely effective by the simple device of an equating the language of him who tells the tale.
In a less degree the same thing may be remarked in the comparison of "A Dead Love," written for the Item, and "L'Amour après la Mort," contributed to the Times-Democrat.
In "The Tale of a Fan" may be traced, it seems to me, the germ of what he later expanded or meant to expand into "A Hemisphere in a Woman's Hair," which has not been found.
But it is not alone the charm that clings about all that is weird and fanciful that gives value to this early work of Hearn's. It sheds rich light upon one phase of his development and forms an essential part of his biography; and it helps to furnish proof, along with much else of varying form and excellence, that he put forth a vast deal of literary effort in the years of his stay in New Orleans before his engagement with the Times-Democrat.
The extent and value of his work as literary editor of the Item has been wholly ignored by his biographers and critics. This is due largely to the fact that the matter he selected for publication in his earlier literary career was drawn from the Times-Democrat. But to those who have gone carefully over the files of the Item it is evident that he did far more original work for that paper than for the other. His forte was supposed by the editors of the Times-Democrat to be translation, and, with the exception of some striking editorials, his work for that paper was mostly translation. Even the Stray Leaves from Strange Literatures and Some Chinese Ghosts belong to that category.
Besides the "Fantastics," he wrote for the Item many editorials on a variety of subjects and many book reviews, dramatic criticisms, and translations both from the French and the Spanish, as well as Creole sketches and certain fanciful squibs illustrated with quaint original designs distinctly akin to those that appear in Letters from the Raven.
But unquestionably his most remarkable contributions to the Item were the "Fantastics."