"I don't quite see the morality of the reduction," he says, "for services should be paid according to the market value at least;—but there is no doubt it would be made. As for America, and my relatives in England, I am married: that has been duly announced. Perhaps I had better wait a few years and then become a citizen. Being a Japanese citizen would, of course, make no difference whatever as to my relations in any civilised countries abroad. It would only make some difference in an uncivilised country,—such as revolutionary South America, where English or French, or American protection is a good thing to have. But the long and the short of the matter is that I am anxious about Setsu's and the boy's interests: my own being concerned only at that point where their injury would be Setsu's injury."
The only way out of the difficulty, he concluded, was to abandon his English nationality and adopt his wife's family name, Koizumi. As a prefix for his own personal use he selected the appellation of the Province of Izumo "Yakumo" ("Eight clouds," or the "Place of the Issuing of Clouds," the first word of the ancient, Japanese song "Ya-he-gaki").
On one of his letters he shows his sister how his name is written in Japanese.
Mrs. Atkinson's youngest child, Dorothy, was born in March, 1894. There is an interval of exactly four months between her and her cousin Kazuo. It is in reference to this event that the following letter was written:—
"How sweet of you to get Mrs. or Miss Weatherall to write me the dear news! You will be well by the time this reaches you, so that I may venture to write more than congratulations.
"I was quite anxious about you,—feeling as if you were the only real fellow-soul in my world but one:—and birth is a thing so much more terrible than all else in the universe—more so than death itself—that the black border round the envelope made my heart cold for a moment. I had forgotten the why. Now I hope you will not have any more sons or daughters; you have three,—and I trust you will have no more pain or trouble. As for me, I am very resolved not to become a father again.
"You will laugh at me, and perhaps think it very strange that when only thirty-five I began to feel a kind of envy of friends with children. I knew their troubles, anxieties, struggles; but I saw their sons grow up, beautiful and gifted men, and I used to whisper to myself,—'But I never shall have a child.' Then it used to seem to me that no man died so utterly as the man without children: for him I fancied (like some folk still really think in other lands) that death would be utter eternal blackness. When I did, however, hear the first cry of my boy—my boy, dreamed about in forgotten years—I had for that instant the ghostly sensation of being double. Just then, and only then, I did not think,—but felt, 'I am TWO.' It was weird but gave me thoughts that changed all pre-existing thoughts. My boy's gaze still seems to me a queerly beautiful thing: I still feel I am looking at myself when he looks at me. Only the thought has become infinitely more complicated. For I think about all the dead who live in the little heart of him—races and memories diverse as East and West. But who made his eyes blue and his hair brown? And will he be like you? And will he ever see the little cousin who has just entered the world? The other day, for one moment, he looked just like your boy in the picture."
Mrs. Atkinson about this time went through private trials upon which it is unnecessary to touch here. The following letter of consolation and encouragement was written to her by her half-brother:—
"Well, you too have had your revelations,—which means deep pains. One must pay a terrible price to see and to know. Still, the purchase is worth making. You know the Emerson lines:—
"Though thou love her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay;
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know
When half-Gods go,
The Gods arrive!...