"Enough to tire your eyes,—isn't it?—for this time.
"Ever affectionately,
"Lafcadio Hearn."
"In the names of the eight hundred myriads of Gods,—do give me your address. The only way I have been able to write you is by finding the word Portadown in Whittaker's Almanac. You are a careless, naughty 'Sis.'
"I enclose my name and address in Japanese.
Yakumo Koizumi,
"Tsuboi,
"Nichihorabata 35,
"Kumamoto, Kyushu."
All the women are making funny little Japanese baby-clothes, and all the Buddhist Divinities, who watch over little children, are being prayed to.... "Letters of congratulation," he said, "were coming from all directions, for the expectation of a child is always a subject of great gladness in Japan.... Behind all this there is a universe of new sensations, revelations of things in Buddhist faith which are very beautiful and touching. About the world an atmosphere of delicious, sacred naïveté,—difficult to describe because resembling nothing in the Western world...."
Hearn's account of his home before the birth of his son throws most interesting lights on Japanese methods of thought and daily life. He refers to the pretty custom of a woman borrowing a baby when she is about to become a mother. It is thought an honour to lend it. And it is extraordinarily petted in its new home. The one his wife borrowed was only six months old, but expressed in a supreme degree all the Japanese virtues; docile to the degree of going to sleep when bidden, and of laughing when it awakened. The eerie wisdom of its face seemed to suggest a memory of all its former lives. The incident he relates also of a little Samurai boy whom he and his wife had adopted is interesting as showing the Spartan discipline exercised over Japanese children from earliest youth, enabling them in later life to display that iron self-control that has astonished the world; interesting, also, as showing how nothing escaped Hearn's quick observation and assiduous intellect. Hearn, at first, wanted to fondle the child, and make much of him, but he soon found that it was not in accordance with custom. He therefore ceased to take notice of him; and left him under the control of the women of the house. Their treatment of him Hearn thought peculiar; the little fellow was never praised and rarely scolded. One day he let a little cup fall and broke it. No notice was taken of the accident for fear of giving him pain. Suddenly, though the face remained quite smilingly placid as usual, he could not control his tears. As soon as they saw him cry, everybody laughed and said kind things to him, till he began to laugh, too. But what followed was more surprising. Apparently he had been distantly treated. One day he did not return from school until three hours after the usual time; suddenly the women began to cry—they were, indeed, more deeply affected than their treatment of the boy would have justified. The servants ran hither and thither in their anxiety to find him. It turned out that he had only been taken to a teacher's house for something relating to school matters. As soon as his voice was heard at the door, every one was quiet, cold, and distantly polite again.
On September 17th he writes again to his sister, thanking her for a copy she had sent him of the Saturday Review. "You could send me nothing more pleasing, or more useful in a literary way. It is all the more welcome as I am really living in a hideous isolation, far away from books, and book-shops, and Europeans. When I can get—which I hope is the next year—into a more pleasant locality, I shall try to pick out some pretty Oriental tales to send to the little ones." He was not able, he goes on, to go far from Kumamoto, not liking to leave his little wife too long alone; so his vacation was rather monotonous. He travelled only as far as Nagasaki. It was quaint and pretty, but hotter than any West Indian port in the hot season. He was economising, he said, and had saved nearly three thousand five hundred dollars. Once he had provided for his wife, he hoped to be able to make a few long voyages to places east of Japan. "You are much to be envied," he goes on to his sister, "for your chances of travel. What a pity you are not able to devote yourself to writing and painting in a place like Algiers—full of romance and picturesqueness. If you go there, don't fail to see the old Arab part of the city—the Kasbah, I think they call it. How about the Continent? Have you tried Southern Italy? And don't you think that one gets all the benefit of travel only by keeping away from fashion-resorts and places consecrated by conventionalism? Nothing to me is more frightful than a fashionable seaside resort—such as those of the Atlantic Coast. My happiest sojourns of this sort have been in little fishing villages, and little queer old unknown towns, where there are no big vulgar hotels, and where one can dress and do exactly as one pleases.
"What will you do with your little man when he grows up? Army, or Civil Service? Whatever you do, never let him go to America, and lose all his traditions. Australia would be far better. I expect he will be gloriously well able to take care of himself anywhere,—judging by his father, but I have come to the belief that one cannot too soon begin the cultivation of a single aim and single talent in life. This is the age of specialism. No man can any longer be successful in many things. Even the 'general practitioner' in medicine has almost become obsolete.
"Nothing seems to me more important now for a little boy than the training of his linguistic faculties,—giving him every encouragement in learning languages by ear—(the only natural way); and your travelling sometimes with him will help you to notice how his faculties are in that direction. But perhaps it will be possible for him to pass all his life in England. (For me, England, Ireland and Scotland mean the same thing.) That would be pleasant indeed.... When I think of your little man with the black eyes, I hope that his life will always be in the circle of English traditions, wherever the English Flag flies, there remain.