"Ghostly Japan," written in 1899, was dedicated
to
Mrs. Alice von Behrens
for auld lang syne.
We cannot trace any mention of this lady elsewhere, but conclude she was one of his New York acquaintances.
"Think not that dreams appear to the dreamer only at night: the dream of this world of pain appears to us even by day," is the translation of the Japanese poem on the first page.
To Mitchell McDonald he wrote, saying that he did not quite know what to do with regard to "Ghostly Japan." Then later he says, he has been and gone and done it. In fifteen minutes he had the whole thing perfectly packed and labelled and addressed in various languages, dedicated to Mrs. Behrens, but entrusted largely to the gods. To save himself further trouble of mind, he told the publishers just to do whatever they pleased about terms—and not to worry him concerning them. Then he felt like a man liberated from prison—smelling the perfumed air of a perfect spring day.
In 1900 came "Shadowings," dedicated to Mitchell McDonald. Some of the fantasies at the end are full of his peculiar ghostly ideas. A statement of his belief in previous existence occurs again and again: "The splendour of the eyes that we worship belongs to them only as brightness to the morning star. It is a reflex from beyond the shadow of the Now,—a ghost light of vanished suns. Unknowingly within that maiden-face we meet the gaze of eyes more countless than the hosts of Heaven,—eyes otherwhere passed into darkness and dust ... Thus and only thus do truth and delusion mingle in the magic of eyes—the spectral past suffusing with charm ineffable the apparition of the present; and the sudden splendour in the soul of the seer is but a flash, one soundless sheet lightning of the infinite memory."
"Shadowings" was succeeded by a "Japanese Miscellany," dedicated to Mrs. Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore. Here there is no reference to "Auld Lang Syne," nor is there a touch of sentiment from beginning to end. The book is perhaps more intensely Japanese and fanciful than any yet written, and to occidental readers the least interesting. One of the sketches, inspired by his sojournings in the village of Yaiduz, is a pæan, as it were, sung to the sea. Another on "Dragon-Flies" is delightful because of its impressionist translations of Japanese poems.
"Lonesomely clings the dragon-fly to the under side of the leaf.
... Ah! the autumn rains!"
And a verse written by a mother, who, seeing children chasing butterflies, thinks of her little one who is dead:—
"Catching dragon-flies!... I wonder where he has gone
to-day."