It was, he declared, a lonely sensation, that of finding yourself alone in a strange city. He felt inclined to cry during the solitary hours of the night, as he used to do when a college boy returned from vacation.... "I suppose," he adds, "you are beginning to think I am writing quite often. I suppose I am, and you know the reason why; and perhaps you are thinking to yourself, 'He feels lonely, and is accordingly affectionate, but by and by he will forget.' Well, I suppose you are right." By and by, when he was less lonely, he said, he would write perhaps only by weeks, or perhaps by months, or perhaps, again, only by years—until the times and places of old friendships were forgotten and old faces had become dim as dreams.
At last the New Orleans steamer, the Thompson Dean, arrived, and Hearn floated off on board into the current of the mighty river, and also, inspired by the enchantment of his surroundings, into the flood-tide of his genius. A letter contributed to the Commercial, describing the "Fair Paradise of the South," the great sugar country, in which he now found himself, shows how he was gaining in the manipulation of his material, also gaining in the power of appreciating the splendour of the vision, the inmost ultimate secret Nature ever reveals to those who can comprehend and decipher it.
As the little half-blind genius sat on the cotton bales on the deck of the Thompson Dean those autumn days, peering forth one moment, the next with nose close to the paper, his pen scratching rapidly, describing the marvellous pictures, setting down the impressions that slipped by on either hand, all the joy of an imprisoned tumultuous soul set free, mentally and morally free, must have come to him. It breathes in every line, in every paragraph of his work. And not only was this passionate joy his, but also the exhilarating assurance of knowing that by self-denial, industry and the determination to succeed he had achieved and perfected the power to describe and expound the marvellous pageant to others. From the horizon widening in front of him, through the "Great South Gate," from "The Gulf" and the Tropics, from Martinique and Florida came the health-giving breeze, carrying on its wings courage, regeneration, and the promise of future recognition and fame.
Many were his backslidings, even to the extent of meditating suicide during the first years of his sojourn in New Orleans, but never did he fall so morally low as at Cincinnati. That life of sordidness and ignominy was left behind, the unclean spirit exorcised and cast forth! He had made his body a house of shame, but that very shame had set throbbing subtle, infinite vibrations, a spiritual resonance and response to higher endeavour and hope. He knew himself to be a man again, sane, clear-brained, his deep appreciation of beauty able to rise on the heights of the music of utterance as he poured forth the delight of his soul.
Surely some light from the Louisiana sun must have flashed from the page athwart the gloom of the dusty office of the Commercial; some magic, bewitching the senses of the practical, hard-headed editor, inducing him to offer the piece of poetic prose contributed by his "Ozias Midwinter" correspondent, describing a Louisiana sunrise, to the ordinary reading public of a Cincinnati daily newspaper.
CHAPTER IX
NEW ORLEANS
"The infinite gulf of blue above seems a shoreless sea, whose foam is stars, a myriad million lights are throbbing and flickering and palpitating, a vast stillness filled with perfume prevails over the land,—made only more impressive by the voices of the night-birds and crickets; and all the busy voices of business are dead. The boats are laid up, cotton presses closed, and the city is half empty. So that the time is really inspiring. But I must wait to record the inspiration in some more energetic climate."