Chapter XII: Appreciations and Epitomes (2)

To Carmen it is the meaning of her dream. The child has been sent by the Virgin. The tale leads on through the growing life of Chita. Finally one day Dr. La Brierre, whose wife and child had been lost in the famous storm, is summoned to Viosca's Point to the deathbed of his father's old friend, who is dying of the fever. It is Feliu who brings him. But before they can reach the Point the man has already died. The Doctor remains at Feliu's fishing smack. He feels the sickness of the fever coming over him. Then he sees Chita.... Hers is the face of his dead Adele. Through the fury of the fever, which has now seized him, the past is mingled with the present. He re-lives the agony of that death-storm, re-lives all the horror of that scene, when all that he held dear was swept away--until his own soul passes out into the night.

The description of Dr. La Brierre in the throes of the fever is terrible. It is so realistic that one shudders.

TWO YEARS IN THE FRENCH WEST INDIES[27] (6) was the _piece de resistance_ of the sojourn in the tropics. Some of the papers appeared first in _Harper's Magazine_. They are marvellous colour-pictures of the country, its people, its life, its customs, with many of the picturesque legends and the quaintnesses that creep into the heart.

[27] Copyright, 1890, by Harper and Brothers.

"There is not a writer who could have so steeped himself in this languorous Creole life and then tell so well about it. Trollope and Froude give you the hard, gritty facts, and Lafcadio Hearn the sentiment and poetry of this beautiful island." (387.)

More and more is Hearn realizing the necessity of finding new colour. "I hope to be able to take a trip to New Mexico in the summer just to obtain literary material, sun-paint, tropical colour, etc." It is always the intense that his fancy craves, and indeed _must_ have in order to work. "There are tropical lilies which are venomous, but they are more beautiful than the frail and icy white lilies of the North." "Whenever I receive a new and strong impression, even in a dream, I write it down, and afterwards develop it at leisure.... There are impressions of blue light and gold and green, correlated to old Spanish legend, which can be found only south of this line." "I will write you a little while I am gone,--if I can find a little strange bit of tropical colour to spread on the paper,--like the fine jewel-dust of scintillant moth-wings." "Next week I go away to hunt up some tropical or semi-tropical impressions."

He is bewitched by St. Pierre--"I love this quaint, whimsical, wonderfully coloured little town." On opening the present volume we at once feel how thoroughly sympathetic this whole Nature is to him, how ravished his senses are with all that she portrays.

From Pier 49, East River, New York, we travel with Hearn through days of colour and beauty to the glorious Caribbean Sea, where we sail on to Roseau and St. Pierre. Here the colour is becoming so intense that the eyes are blinded.

The luminosities of tropic foliage could only be imitated in
fire. He who desires to paint a West Indian forest,--a West
Indian landscape,--must take his view from some great height,
through which the colours come to his eye softened and subdued
by distance,--toned with blues or purples by the astonishing
atmosphere.

... It is sunset as I write these lines, and there are
witchcrafts of colour. Looking down the narrow, steep street
opening to the bay, I see the motionless silhouette of the
steamer on a perfectly green sea,--under a lilac sky,--against a
prodigious orange light.

Over her memoried paths we wander with Josephine, and then we pause before the lovely statue which seems a living presence.

She is standing just in the centre of the Savane, robed in the
fashion of the First Empire, with gracious arms and shoulders
bare: one hand leans upon a medallion bearing the eagle profile
of Napoleon.... Seven tall palms stand in a circle around her,
lifting their comely heads into the blue glory of the tropic
day. Within their enchanted circle you feel that you tread holy
ground,--the sacred soil of artist and poet;--here the
recollections of memoir-writers vanish away; the gossip of
history is hushed for you; you no longer care to know how rumour
has it that she spoke or smiled or wept: only the bewitchment of
her lives under the thin, soft, swaying shadows of those
feminine palms.... Over violet space of summer sea, through the
vast splendour of azure light, she is looking back to the place
of her birth, back to beautiful drowsy Trois-Islets,--and always
with the same half-dreaming, half-plaintive smile,--unutterably
touching....

"Under a sky always deepening in beauty" we steam on to the level, burning, coral coast of Barbadoes. Then on past to Demerara.

We pass through all the quaint beautiful old towns and islands. We see their wonders of sky and sea and flowers. We see their people and all that great race of the mixed blood.

With dear old Jean-Marie we wait for the return of Les Porteuses, and we hear his call:--

"_Coument ou ye, che? coument ou kalle?_" ... (How art thou,
dear?--how goes it with thee?)

And they mostly make answer, "_Toutt douce, che,--et ou?_" (All
sweetly, dear,--and thou?) But some, over-weary, cry to him,
"_Ah! decharge moin vite, che! moin lasse, lasse!_" (Unload me
quickly, dear; for I am very, very weary.) Then he takes off
their burdens, and fetches bread for them, and says foolish
little things to make them laugh. And they are pleased and
laugh, just like children, as they sit right down on the road
there to munch their dry bread.

Again we follow on: this time to La Grande Anse, where we see the powerful surf-swimmers. With the population we turn out to witness the procession of young girls to be confirmed; we see the dances and games; we hear the chants, and the strange music on strange instruments.

At St. Pierre once more we listen to the history of Pere Labat, who in twelve years made his order the richest and most powerful in the West Indies.

"Eh, Pere Labat!--what changes there have been since thy day!...
And all that ephemeral man has had power to change has been
changed,--ideas, morals, beliefs, the whole social fabric. But
the eternal summer remains,--and the Hesperian magnificence of
azure sky and violet sea,--and the jewel-colours of the
perpetual hills; the same tepid winds that rippled thy
cane-fields two hundred years ago still blow over Sainte-Marie;
the same purple shadows lengthen and dwindle and turn with the
wheeling of the sun. God's witchery still fills this land; and
the heart of the stranger is even yet snared by the beauty of
it; and the dreams of him that forsakes it will surely be
haunted--even as were thine own, Pere Labat--by memories of its
Eden-summer: the sudden leap of the light over a thousand peaks
in the glory of a tropic dawn,--the perfumed peace of enormous
azure noons,--and shapes of palm, wind-rocked in the burning of
colossal sunsets,--and the silent flickering of the great
fire-flies, through the lukewarm darkness, when mothers call
their children home.... '_Mi fanal Pe Labatt!--mi Pe Labatt ka
vini pouend ou!_'"

Then we see the lights of the shrines that will protect us from the Zombi and the Moun-Mo, and all the terrible beings who are filled with witchcraft; and we listen to the tale of that Zombi who likes to take the shape of a lissome young negress.

By this time it is Carnival Week with its dances and games and maskers. But a little later we are shuddering at the horrible pestilence Verette that has seized the city. A gleam of the old love of horror is caught in the following quotation:--

She was the prettiest, assuredly, among the pretty shop-girls of
the Grande Rue,--a rare type of _sang-melee_. So oddly pleasing,
the young face, that once seen, you could never again dissociate
the recollection of it from the memory of the street. But one
who saw it last night before they poured quick-lime upon it
could discern no features,--only a dark brown mass, like a
fungus, too frightful to think about.

At the beautiful Savane du Fort our eyes and hearts are gladdened by the quaint sight of the Blanchisseuses with their snowy linen spread out for miles along the river's bank. Their laughter echoes in our ears, and we try to catch the words of their little songs.

One warm and starry, and to us unforgettable, September morning we make the ascent of Mt. Pelee by the way of Morne St. Martin, and on our way we come to know the country that lies all around. Let me quote our sensation as we reach the summit:--

At the beginning, while gazing south, east, west, to the rim of
the world, all laughed, shouted, interchanged the quick delight
of new impressions: every face was radiant.... Now all look
serious; none speaks.... Dominating all, I think, is the
consciousness of the awful antiquity of what one is looking
upon,--such a sensation, perhaps, as of old found utterance in
that tremendous question of the Book of Job: "_Wast thou brought
forth before the hills?_"

And the blue multitudes of the peaks, the perpetual congregation
of the mornes, seem to chorus in the vast resplendence,--telling
of Nature's eternal youth, and the passionless permanence of
that about us and beyond us and beneath,--until something like
the fulness of a grief begins to weigh at the heart.... For all
this astonishment of beauty, all this majesty of light and form
and colour, will surely endure,--marvellous as now,--after we
shall have lain down to sleep where no dreams come, and may
never arise from the dust of our rest to look upon it.

Another day we are laughing at the little _ti canotie_ who in the queerest tiny boats surround a steamer as soon as she drops anchor. These are the boys who dive for coins. A sad tale is told of Maximilien and Strephane. Again our hearts are moved by the pathos and the tragedy of La Fille de Couleur; and in this chapter we find that characteristic description:--

I refer to the celebrated attire of the pet slaves and _belles
affranchies_ of the old colonial days. A full
costume,--including violet or crimson "petticoat" of silk or
satin; chemise with half-sleeves, and much embroidery and lace;
"trembling-pins" of gold (_zepingue tremblant_) to attach the
folds of the brilliant Madras turban; the great necklace of
three or four strings of gold beads bigger than peas
(_collier-choux_); the ear-rings, immense but light as
egg-shells (_zanneaux-a-clous_ or _zanneaux-chenilles_); the
bracelets (_portes-bonheur_); the studs (_boutons-a-clous_); the
brooches, not only for the turban, but for the chemise, below
the folds of the showy silken foulard or shoulder-scarf,--would
sometimes represent over five thousand francs' expenditure. This
gorgeous attire is becoming less visible every year: it is now
rarely worn except on very solemn occasions,--weddings,
baptisms, first communions, confirmations. The _da_ (nurse) or
"_porteuse-de-bapteme_" who bears the baby to church, holds it
at the baptismal font, and afterwards carries it from house to
house in order that all the friends of the family may kiss it,
is thus attired: but now-a-days, unless she be a professional
(for there are professional _das_, hired only for such
occasions), she usually borrows the jewellery. If tall, young,
graceful, with a rich gold tone of skin, the effect of her
costume is dazzling as that of a Byzantine Virgin. I saw one
young _da_ who, thus garbed, scarcely seemed of the earth and
earthly;--there was an Oriental something in her appearance
difficult to describe,--something that made you think of the
Queen at Sheba going to visit Solomon. She had brought a
merchant's baby, just christened, to receive the caresses of the
family at whose house I was visiting; and when it came to my
turn to kiss it, I confess I could not notice the child: I saw
only the beautiful dark face, coiffed with orange and purple,
bending over it, in an illumination of antique gold. What a
_da_!... She represented really the type of that _belle
affranchie_ of other days, against whose fascination special
sumptuary laws were made: romantically she imaged for me the
supernatural godmothers and Cinderellas of the Creole
fairy-tales.

Still we have much to learn about the little creatures in the shapes of ants and scorpions and lizards. They form no small part of the population of Martinique. And still more about the fruits and the vegetables do we learn from good Cyrillia, Ma Bonne. One longs to have a housekeeper as loving and child-like and solicitous. We leave her gazing with love unutterable at the new photograph of her daughter, and wondering the while why they do not make a portrait talk so that she can talk to her beautiful daughter.

And day by day the artlessness of this exotic humanity touches
you more;--day by day this savage, somnolent, splendid
Nature--delighting in furious colour--bewitches you more.
Already the anticipated necessity of having to leave it all some
day--the far-seen pain of bidding it farewell weighs upon you,
even in dreams.

But before we go, we must learn how Nature must treat those who are not born under her suns.

Then at last reluctantly we board the _Guadeloupe_, and with Mademoiselle Violet-Eyes, who is leaving her country, perhaps for a very long time, to become a governess in New York, we realize that nowhere on this earth may there be brighter skies.

Farewell, fair city,--sun-kissed city,--many-fountained
city!--dear yellow-glimmering streets,--white pavements learned
by heart,--and faces ever looked for,--and voices ever loved!
Farewell, white towers with your golden-throated
bells!--farewell, green steeps, bathed in the light of summer
everlasting!--craters with your coronets of forests!--bright
mountain paths upwinding 'neath pomp of fern and angelin and
feathery bamboo!--and gracious palms that drowse above the dead!
Farewell, soft-shadowing majesty of valleys unfolding to the
sun,--green golden cane-fields ripening to the sea!...

Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Pelee--so they vanish behind us. Shall not we too become _Les Revenants_?

YOUMA[28] (5) was written in Martinique, and also belongs to the New Orleans period. "I think you will like it better than 'Chita.' It is more mature and exotic by far,"--so Hearn wrote of the story in one of his letters. Later on, when living in Japan, he wrote:--

[28] Copyright, 1890, by Harper and Brothers.

It gave me no small pleasure to find that you like "Youma": you
will not like it less knowing that the story is substantially
true. You can see the ruins of the old house in the Quartier du
Fort if you ever visit Saint-Pierre, and perhaps meet my old
friend Arnoux, a survivor of the time. The girl really died
under the heroic conditions described--refusing the help of the
blacks and the ladder. Of course I may have idealized her, but
not her act. The incident of the serpent occurred also; but the
heroine was a different person,--a plantation girl, celebrated
by the historian Rufz de Lavison. I wrote the story under
wretched circumstances in Martinique, near the scenes described,
and under the cross with the black Christ.

An English notice says:--

"It is an admirable little tale, full of local characteristics with curious fragments of Creole French from Martinique, and abundance of wide human sympathy. It deserves reprinting for English readers more than three-fourths of the fiction which is wont to cross the Atlantic under similar circumstances." (294.)

"Youma" is the tale of the exquisite devotion and loyalty of a _da_. (A _da_ is the foster-mother and nurse of a Creole child.) At the death of Aimee, Youma's playmate and rich foster-sister, little Mayotte, her child, becomes Youma's charge. An intimate description is given us of the Creole life of Mayotte and Youma. The love of this _da_ is very beautiful. Once with an extraordinary heroism Youma saves Mayotte from a serpent which has slipped into their room. With a still greater heroism she refuses to run away with Gabriel, who has opened the world to her,--Gabriel who has brought her love, and whom she can marry in no other way. No, above the pleadings of her lover, comes the voice of her dying mistress, begging, with such trust,--

"Youma, O Youma! you will love my child?--Youma, you will never
leave her, whatever happens, while she is little? promise, dear
Youma!"

And she had--promised....

Then comes the final test of Youma's strength of devotion. There is an outbreak among the blacks, who have become inflamed by the dreams of coming freedom. The Desrivieres with many other families are forced to flee for refuge in safer quarters. Under one roof all these people gather. Youma is urged to leave and save herself. But she will not forsake Mayotte or her master. The infuriated blacks surround the house, and horror follows. Presently the house is set on fire. Youma, with Mayotte in her arms, appears at an upper window. Gabriel, "daring the hell about him for her sake," puts up a ladder. Youma hands him Mayotte. "Can you save her?" she asks.

"Gabriel could only shake his head;--the street sent up so
frightful a cry....

"_Non!--non!--non!--pa le yche-beke--janmain yche-beke!_"

"Then you cannot save me!" cried Youma, clasping the child to
her bosom,--"_janmain! janmain, mon ami._"

"Youma, in the name of God...."

"In the name of God, you ask me to be a coward!... Are you vile,
Gabriel?--are you base?... Save myself and leave the child to
burn?... Go!"

"Leave the _beke's yche_!--leave it!--leave it, girl!" shouted a
hundred voices.

"_Moin!_" cried Youma, retreating beyond the reach of Gabriel's
hand,--"_moin!_ ... Never shall I leave it, never! I shall go to
God with it."

"Burn with it, then!" howled the negroes ... "down with that
ladder! down with it, down with it!"

The ladder catches fire and burns. The walls quiver, and there are shrieks from the back of the house. Unmoved, with a perfect calm, Youma remains at the window. "There is now neither hate nor fear on her fine face." Softly she whispers to Mayotte, and caresses her with an infinite tenderness. Never to Gabriel had she seemed so beautiful.

Another minute--and he saw her no more. The figure and the light
vanished together, as beams and floor and roof all quaked down
at once into darkness.... Only the skeleton of stone
remained,--black-smoking to the stars.

A stillness follows. The murderers are appalled by their crime.

Then, from below, the flames wrestled out again,--crimsoning the
smoke whirls, the naked masonry, the wreck of timbers. They
wriggled upward, lengthening, lapping together,--lifted
themselves erect,--grew taller, fiercer,--twined into one huge
fluid spire of tongues that flapped and shivered high into the
night....

The yellowing light swelled,--expanded from promontory to
promontory,--palpitated over the harbour,--climbed the broken
slopes of the dead volcano leagues through the gloom. The wooded
mornes towered about the city in weird illumination,--seeming
loftier than by day,--blanching and shadowing alternately with
the soaring and sinking of the fire;--and at each huge pulsing
of the glow, the white cross of their central summit stood
revealed, with the strange passion of its black Christ.

... And at the same hour, from the other side of the world,--a
ship was running before the sun, bearing the Republican gift of
liberty and promise of universal suffrage to the slaves of
Martinique.

There are two little bits of description which are so characteristic that I quote them:--

Then she became aware of a face ... lighted by a light that came
from nowhere,--that was only a memory of some long-dead morning.
And through the dimness round about it a soft blue radiance
grew,--the ghost of a day.

Sunset yellowed the sky,--filled the horizon with flare of
gold;--the sea changed its blue to lilac;--the mornes brightened
their vivid green to a tone so luminous that they seemed turning
phosphorescent. Rapidly the glow crimsoned,--shadows purpled;
and night spread swiftly from the east,--black-violet and full
of stars.

KARMA[29] (242) was written during the Philadelphia period, but was not published in _Lippincott's Magazine_ until after Hearn had sailed for Japan. The story is concentrated, with its every word a shaft of light, and it seems a wrong to attempt to epitomize it. Except in its entirety no adequate conception can be formed of this marvellous revelation of the anguish that a human soul may suffer; nor of the artistic power with which Hearn has developed and perfected his study. Many quotations could be gleaned from his subsequent books which reflect the inspiration of "Karma."

[29] Copyright, 1889, by Lafcadio Hearn; and, copyright, 1890
by J. B. Lippincott Company.

Despite her unusual intellect, the heroine had a childlike simplicity and frankness which invited her lover's confidence, but he had never told her his admiration, for a dormant power beneath her girlishness made a compliment seem a rudeness. He was often alone with her, which is helpful to lovers, but her charm always confused him, and his embarrassment only deepened. One day she archly asked him to tell her about it.

Is there one who does not know that moment when the woman beloved becomes the ideal, and the lover feels his utter unworthiness? Yet, if she is one of those rare souls, the illusion, however divine, is less perfect than is her worth. Do you know what she truly is--how she signifies "the whole history of love striving against hate, aspiration against pain, truth against ignorance, sympathy against pitilessness? She,--the soul of her! is the ripened passion-flower of the triumph. All the heroisms, the martyrdoms, the immolations of self,--all strong soarings of will through fire and blood to God since humanity began,--conspired to kindle the flame of her higher life."

And then you question yourself with a thousand questions, and then there are as many more of your duty to her, to the future, and to the Supreme Father.

She was not surprised when he told her his wish, but she was not confident that he really loved her, nor whether she should permit herself to like him. Finally she bade him go home and "as soon as you feel able to do it properly,--write out for me a short history of your life;--just write down everything you feel that you would not like me to know. Write it,--and send it.... And then I shall tell you whether I will marry you."

How easy the task seemed, and his whole being was joyous; but the lightness lasted for only a moment, and gradually all that her command meant crept over him.... "_Everything you feel you would not like me to know._" Surely she had no realization of what she had asked. Did she imagine that men were good like women--how cruel to hurt her.

Then for a period he was uplifted with the desire to meet her truthfulness, but his courage failed again after he had written down the record of his childhood and youth. It was no slight task to make this confession of his sins. And how pale and trivial they had seemed before. Was it possible that he had never before rightly looked at them? Yet why should he so falter? Surely she meant to pardon him. He must put everything down truthfully, and then recolour the whole for her gaze. But his face grew hot at the thought of certain passages.

Hour after hour he sat at his desk until it was past midnight, but no skill could soften the stony facts. Finally he lay down to rest: his fevered brain tried to find excuses for his faults. He could forgive himself everything ... except--ah, how unutterably wicked he had been there. No, he could not tell her _that_: instead he must lose her for ever. And in losing her he would lose all the higher self which she had awakened. To lose her--when he of all men had found his ideal.

"_Everything you feel you would not like me to know._" Perhaps when she had put this ban upon him, she suspected that there were incidents in his life which he dared not tell her. Could he not deceive her? No, he might write a lie, but he could never meet her fine sweet eyes with a lie. What was he to do? And why had he always been so humble before that slight girl? "Assuredly those fine grey eyes were never lowered before living gaze: she seemed as one who might look God in the face."

Slowly his senses became more confused, and a darkness came, and a light in the darkness that shone on her; and he saw her bathed in a soft radiance, that seemed of some substance like ivory. And he knew that she was robing for her bridal with him.

He was at her side: all around them was a gentle whispering of many friends, who were dead. Would they smile thus--_if they knew_?

Then there arose something within him, and he knew that he must tell her all. He commenced to speak, and she became transfigured, and smiled at him with the tenderness of an angel; and the more he told the greater was her forgiveness. And he heard the voices of the others lauding him for his self-sacrifice and his sincerity. Yet as they praised a fear clutched him for one last avowal that he must make. And with the growing of this doubt all seemed maliciously to change, and even she no longer smiled. He then would have told her alone, but even as he tried to hush his voice, it seemed to pierce the quietude "with frightful audibility, like the sibilation of a possessing spirit." Then with a reckless despair he shouted it aloud, and everything vanished, and the darkness of night was about him.

For many restless days and nights he harried himself with bitter self-analysis; and day by day he tore up a certain page; yet without that page his manuscript was worthless. As the days grew into weeks a new fear seized him that his silence had betrayed him, and that already she had decided against him. In the face of this danger he became terrified, and one morning he feverishly copied the memorable page, and, addressing the whole, dropped it in the first letter-box, before he might change his mind.

Then an awful revelation of his act overcame him. Should he telegraph her to return the manuscript unopened. No, it was already too late. What was done--was done for ever. He now vaguely realized what he feared in her--"a penetrating dynamic moral power that he felt without comprehending." He tried to steel himself for the worst, but he knew with a premonition that behind his imagined worst there were depths beyond depths of worse.

The single word "Come" which he received two days later confirmed his fears. When he reached the door of her apartment, she had already risen to take from a locked drawer an envelope which he knew was his. She proffered him no greeting, but asked in a cold voice if he wished her to burn the document. At his whispered _yes_, he met her eyes, and they seemed to strip him of the last remnant of his pride. "He stood before her as before God,--morally naked as a soul in painted dreams of the Judgment Day."

The fire caught the paper, and he stood near, in fear of her next word, while she watched the flame.

At last she asked if the woman was dead. He well knew to what she referred, and replied that almost five years had passed since her death. To the penetrating questions which followed he answered that the child--a boy--was well, and that his friend was still there--in the same place. She turned to him abruptly and coldly, angered that he could have believed that she would pardon such a crime.

He must have had some hope, or he would not have sent the letter. Had he measured her by his own moral standard? Certainly he had placed her below the level of honest people. Would he dare to ask their judgment of his sin?

Speechless, he writhed under the scorn of her words, and a knowledge of shame to which his former agony was as nothing burned within him. That in him which her inborn goodness had taught her, was now laid bare to himself.

Again she spoke after a silence--perhaps he would think she was cruel; but she was not, nor was she unjust, for transcendent sin that denies "all the social wisdom gained by human experience" cannot be pardoned, it can only be atoned. And that sin was his; and God would exact his expiation. And that expiation she now demanded in God's name, and as her right. He must go to the friend whom he had wronged, and tell him the whole truth. He must ask for the child, and fulfil his whole duty; also he must place even his life at the man's will. And she would rather see him dead than believe that he could be a coward as well as a criminal. This she requested not as a favour, but as her right.

At her words he grew pale as if to death, and for a moment she feared that he might refuse, and that she must despise him. No! his colour rushed back, and her heart leaped, as with a calm resolve he answered, "I will do it."

"Then go!" she replied, betraying no gladness.

A year went by. She knew that he had kept his promise. He wrote to her often, and passionately, but the letters were never answered. Did she doubt him still?--or was she afraid of her own heart? He could not know the truth, so he waited with hopes and fears, and the seasons passed. Then one day she was startled to receive a letter which told her that he was passing through her suburb, and he begged only to be permitted to see her. To his surprise the answer brought the happy words, "You may."

From the shy, beautiful eyes of the child, whom he brought, there seemed to plead a woman's sorrow, until her own soul answered in forgiveness. And the boy and the father marvelled at the tenderness that had come upon her, and the father sobbed until her voice thrilled: that suffering was strength and knowledge, that always he must suffer for the evil he had wrought, but she would help him to bear the pain, and to endure his atonement. She would shield his frailty--she would love his boy.

THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BONNARD (21) was translated in New York, while Hearn was finishing the proofs of "Two Years in the French West Indies." Of it he writes:--

As for the "Sylvestre Bonnard" I believe I told you that that
was translated in about ten days and published in two weeks from
the time of beginning it.... But the work suffers in consequence
of haste.

After his departure for the Orient, two articles on West Indian Society appeared in the _Cosmopolitan_ (243-244). They give a sympathetic study of the sad and pathetic tragedy of the race of the mixed blood. These articles bear a similarity to the chapter upon and the references to this subject, in "Two Years in the French West Indies."

GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR JAPAN[30] (7) is the first of the series of Japanese books. It was published after Hearn had been in Japan for four years; since 1891 six of the articles had appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_ (246-251). Also in 1890, an article, "A Winter Journey to Japan," was published in _Harper's Monthly_ (245). This was his initial paper on Japan.

[30] Copyright, 1894, by Lafcadio Hearn; and published by
Houghton, Mifflin and Company.]

In many ways the present book on Japan is his happiest, for the charm over everything is fresh and radiant. It is here that we learn the old graceful customs, the touching child-like ways, and the sacred appealing rites and beliefs that so endear to us the Japanese. Later we are to have studies more philosophical, more erudite, but none more penetrating in virtue of the very simplicity of subject.

It is difficult to believe that the writer, bewitched with the warmth and colour of the tropics, giving his pen an unlicensed flow of word colour and enthusiasm, in a few years could have matured into this quiet, gentle thinker equally absorbed by the East. One finds scarcely a trace of the Hearn of the tropics: therein lies his unique genius; just so admirably as he reflected the West Indian life, does he now reflect that of the Japanese.

It is the old Japan that Hearn loves, and the passing of which he mourns even at the first. In his Preface, he says, "My own conviction, and that of many impartial and more experienced observers of Japanese life, is that Japan has nothing whatever to gain by conversion to Christianity, either morally or otherwise, but very much to lose." Also in one of his letters he writes, "I felt, as never before, how utterly dead old Japan is, and how ugly New Japan is becoming." It is old Japan that we find in the present volume. It is much as if we looked into a diary of his first days in the Orient, giving his impressions and conclusions, as well as portraying the pictures themselves.

One of the reviews of the book contains the following:--

"If Japan is all that he says; if the Japanese are so compounded of all the virtues, and so innocent of the ugly failings that mar our Western civilization, then the poet's dream of a Golden Age has actually been realized in the remote East. Much as we should like to believe that such a land and such a people actually exist, we cannot altogether conquer our doubts, or avoid the suspicion that the author's feeling sometimes gets the better of his judgment." (379.)

And another says:--

"In volume one he is still the outside observer, remote enough to be amused with the little pretty, bird-like glances of the Orient towards the Occident, pleased at the happy chance which makes a blind shampooer's cry musical as she taps her way down the street, instead of giving her a voice raucous as that which hurts and haunts the unwilling ears of wayfarers down Newgate Street and on Ludgate-Hill; or complimentary to the cunning fancy which paints a branch of flowering cherry in a cleft bamboo on a square of faintly-coloured paper and calls the cherry blossom 'beauty' and the bamboo 'long life.' He notices the shapely feet of the people: 'bare brown feet of peasants, or beautiful feet of children wearing tiny, tiny _geta_, or feet of young girls in snowy _tabi_. The _tabi_, the white digitated stocking, gives to a small light foot a mythological aspect--the white cleft grace of the foot of a fauness.'

"A little further on the leaven of witchcraft is working, and he cannot write so airily. It is not as a mere spectator that he talks of his visit to the Buddhist cemetery, where the rotting wooden laths stand huddled about the graves, and one tomb bears an English name and a cross chiselled upon it. Here he made acquaintance with the god, who is the lover of little children, Jizo-Sama, about whose feet are little piles of stones heaped there by the hands of mothers of dead children. He is not quite as much in earnest as volume two will find him, or he could not call the gentle god 'that charming divinity'; but the sight-seer is dying in him nevertheless. It was with a friend's hand that he struck the great bell at Enoshima." (286.)

But even here with a new world unfolding to his delighted eyes, it was colour that Hearn really wanted.

I am not easy about my book, of which I now await the proofs. It
lacks colour--it isn't like the West Indian book. But the world
here is not forceful: it is all washed in faint blues and greys
and greens. There are really _gamboge_, or saffron-coloured
valleys,--and lilac fields; but these exist only in the early
summer and the rape-plant season, and ordinarily Japan is
chromatically spectral.

The opening chapter is his first day in the Orient, "the first charm of Japan is intangible and volatile as a perfume." Everything seems to him elfish and diminutive. "Cha," his Kurumaya, takes him past the shops where it appears to him "that everything Japanese is delicate, exquisite, admirable--even a pair of common wooden chop-sticks in a paper bag with a little drawing upon it." The money itself is a thing of beauty. But one must not dare to look, for there is enchantment in these wares, and having looked, one must buy. In truth one wishes to buy everything, even to the whole land, "with its magical trees and luminous atmosphere, with all its cities and towns and temples, and forty millions of the most lovable people."

Before the steps leading to a temple he stops.

I turn a moment to look back through the glorious light. Sea and
sky mingle in the same beautiful pale clear blue. Below me the
billowing of bluish roofs reaches to the verge of the unruffled
bay on the right, and to the feet of the green wooded hills
flanking the city on two sides. Beyond that semi-circle of green
hills rises a lofty range of serrated mountains, indigo
silhouettes. And enormously high above the line of them towers
an apparition indescribably lovely,--one solitary snowy cone, so
filmly exquisite, so spiritually white, that but for its
immemorially familiar outline, one would surely deem it a shape
of cloud. Invisible its base remains, being the same delicious
tint as the sky: only above the eternal snow-line its dreamy
cone appears, seeming to hang, the ghost of a peak, between the
luminous land and the luminous heaven,--the sacred and matchless
mountain, Fujiyama.

Passing to the temple garden he wonders why the trees are so lovely in Japan.

Is it that the trees have been so long domesticated and caressed
by man in this land of the gods, that they have acquired souls,
and strive to show their gratitude, like women loved, by making
themselves more beautiful for man's sake? Assuredly they have
mastered men's hearts by their loveliness, like beautiful
slaves. That is to say, Japanese hearts. Apparently there have
been some foreign tourists of the brutal class in this place,
since it has been deemed necessary to set up inscriptions in
English announcing that "it is forbidden to injure the trees."

Of Hearn's first visit to a Buddhist temple, I quote what one of his critics has to say:--

"The silence of centuries seems to descend upon your soul, you feel the thrill of something above and beyond the commonplace of this every-day world, even here, amidst the turmoil, the rush, the struggle of this monster city of the West, if you take up his 'Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan,' and turn to his description of his first visit to a Buddhist temple. Marvellous is his power of imparting the mystery of that strange land, of hidden meanings and allegories, of mists and legends. The bygone spirit of the race, the very essence of the heart of the people, that has lain sleeping in the temple gloom, in the shadows of the temple shrines, awakes and whispers in your ears. You feel the soft, cushioned matting beneath your feet, you smell the faint odour of the incense, you hear the shuffling of pilgrim feet, the priest sliding back screen after screen, pouring in light upon the gilded bronzes and inscriptions; and you look for the image of the Deity, of the presiding Spirit, between the altar groups of convoluted candelabra. And you see:

Only a mirror, a round, pale disc of polished metal, and my own
face therein, and behind this mockery of me a phantom of the far
sea.

Only a mirror! Symbolizing what? Illusion? Or that the Universe
exists for us solely as the reflection of our own souls? Or the
old Chinese teaching that we must seek the Buddha only in our
own hearts? Perhaps some day I shall be able to find out. (350.)

Many more temples are visited in the following chapter. What impresses him the most is the joyousness of the people's faith: everything is bright and cheerful, and the air is filled with the sound of children's voices as they play in the courts. He sees the many representations of Jizo, the loving divinity who cares for the souls of little children, who comforts them, and saves them from the demons. The face of Jizo is like that of a beautiful boy, and the countenance is made "heavenly by such a smile as only Buddhist art could have imagined, the smile of infinite lovingness and supremest gentleness." There is also Kwannon, "the goddess of mercy, the gentle divinity who refused the rest of Nirvana to save the souls of men." Her face is golden, smiling with eternal youth and infinite tenderness. And he sees Emma Dai-O, the unpitying, tremendous one. He learns many things of many gods and goddesses. There is the temple of Kishibojin--the mother of Demons. For some former sin she was born a demon and devoured her own children. But through the teaching of Buddha she became a divine being, loving and protecting the little ones, and Japanese mothers pray to her, and wives pray for beautiful boys. At her shrine what impresses the visitor are hundreds of tiny dresses, mostly of poor material, stretched between tall poles of bamboos. These are the thank-offerings of poor simple country mothers whose prayers to her have been answered.

In another chapter Hearn writes of the Festival of the Dead, for between the 13th and the 15th day of July the dead may come back again. Every small and great shrine is made beautiful with new mats of purest rice straw, and is decorated with lotus flowers, _shikimi_ (anise) and _misohagi_ (lespedeza). Food offerings, served on a tiny lacquered table--a _zen_--are placed before the altars. Every hour, tea daintily served in little cups is offered to the viewless visitors. At night beautiful special lanterns are hung at the entrances of homes. Those who have dead friends visit the cemeteries and make offerings there with prayers, and the sprinkling of water, and the burning of incense. On the evening of the 15th the ghosts of those, who in expiation of faults committed in a previous life are doomed to hunger, are fed. And also are fed the ghosts of those who have no friends.

For three days everything is done to feast the dead, and on the last night there comes the touching ceremony of farewell, for the dead must then return.

Everything has been prepared for them. In each home small boats
made of barley straw closely woven have been freighted with
supplies of choice food, with tiny lanterns, and written
messages of faith and love. Seldom more than two feet in length
are these boats; but the dead require little room. And the frail
craft are launched on canal, lake, sea, or river,--each with a
miniature lantern glowing at the prow, and incense burning at
the stern. And if the night be fair, they voyage long. Down all
the creeks and rivers and canals the phantom fleets go
glimmering to the sea; and all the sea sparkles to the horizon
with the lights of the dead, and the sea wind is fragrant with
incense.

But alas! it is now forbidden in the great seaports to launch
the _shoryobune_, "the boats of the blessed ghosts."

In Kami-Ichi, in the land of Hoki, there is a glimpse into ancient Japan, for there the Bon-odori, the Dance of the Festival of the Dead, is still maintained. No longer is it danced in the cities. In the temple court, in the shadow of the tomb, with the moonlight as a guide, long processions of young girls dance a slow ghostly dance while the vast audience of spectators keeps a perfect stillness. A deep male chant is heard, and the women respond. Many songs follow, until the night is waning. Then this seeming witchcraft ends, and with merry laughter and soft chatting all disperse.

Hearn spends a long happy day at Matsue, the chief city of the Province of the Gods, where he gathers legends and impressions. Of course it has its temples. The temple is the best place to see the life of the people. There it is that the children play all day long. In the summer evening, the young artisans and labourers prove their strength in wrestling-matches. The sacred dances are held there; and on holidays it is also the place where toys are sold.

Often at night your attention will be drawn to a large, silent, admiring group of people standing before some little booth. They will be looking at a few vases of sprays of flowers--an exhibition of skill in their arrangement.

Returning homeward, there is seen a poor woman scattering some white papers into a stream of water, and, as she throws each one in, murmuring something sweet in a low voice. She is praying for her little dead child, and these are little prayers that she has written to Jizo.

Kitzuki is the most ancient shrine in Japan, and it is the living centre of Shinto. There the ancient faith burns as brightly as ever it did in the unknown past. Buddhism may be doomed to pass away, but Shinto "unchanging and vitally unchanged remains dominant, and appears but to gain in power and dignity." Many of the wisest scholars have tried to define Shinto.

But the reality of Shinto lives not in books, nor in rites,
nor in commandments, but in the national heart, of which it is
the highest emotional religious expression, immortal and ever
young. Far underlying all the surface crop of quaint
superstitions and artless myths and fantastic magic, there
thrills a mighty spiritual force, the whole soul of a race with
all its impulses and powers and intuitions. He who would know
what Shinto is must learn to know that mysterious soul in
which the sense of beauty and the power of art and the fire of
heroism and magnetism of loyalty and the emotion of faith have
become inherent, immanent, unconscious, instinctive.

At Kaka is the Cave of the Children's Ghosts. No evil person may enter the Shin-Kukedo, for if he does, a large stone will detach itself and fall down upon him. Here in this great vault, lifting forty feet above the water, and with walls thirty feet apart, is a white rock out of which drips a water apparently as white as the rock itself. This is the Fountain of Jizo, which gives milk to the souls of little dead children.

And mothers suffering from want of milk come hither to pray that
milk may be given unto them; and their prayer is heard. And
mothers having more milk than their infants need come hither
also, and pray to Jizo that so much as they can give may be
taken for the dead children; and their prayer is heard and their
milk diminishes.

At least thus the peasants of Izumo say.

In another cavern are countless little piles of stones and pebbles, which must have been made by long and patient labour. It is the work of the dead children. One must step carefully, for the sake of these little ones, for if any work is spoiled, they will cry. In the sand are prints of little naked feet, "_the footprints of the infant ghosts_." Strewn here and there on the rocks are tiny straw sandals, pilgrims' offerings to keep the baby feet from being bruised by the stones.

In the temple of Hojinji of the Zen sect at Mionoseki, there is an altar which bears many images of Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy. Before the altar, and hung from the carven ceiling, is a bright coloured mass of embroidered purses, patterns of silk-weaving and of cotton-weaving, also balls of threads and worsted and silk. These are the first offerings of little girls. As soon as a baby girl learns how to sew or knit or embroider, she brings to the Maid-Mother of all grace and sweetness and pity, the first piece that she has made successfully.

Even the infants of the Japanese kindergarten bring their first
work here,--pretty paper-cuttings, scissored out and plaited
into divers patterns by their own tiny flower-soft hands.

Among the many Notes on Kitzuki which interest, is the annual festival of the Divine Scribe, the Tenjin-Matsuri, to which every school-boy sends a specimen of his best writing. The texts are in Chinese characters, and are generally drawn from the works of Confucius or Mencius. And Hearn remarks that the children of other countries can never excel in the art of Japanese writing. The inner ancestral tendencies will not let them catch the secret of the stroke with the brush. It is the fingers of the dead that move the brush of the Japanese boy.

At every temple festival in Japan there is a sale of toys. And every mother, however poor, buys her child a toy. They are not costly, and are charming. Many of these toys would seem odd to a little English child. There is a tiny drum, a model of the drum used in the temples; or a miniature sambo table, upon which offerings are presented to the gods. There is a bunch of bells fastened to a wooden handle. It resembles a rattle, but it is a model of the sacred _suzu_ which the virgin priestess uses in her dance before the gods. Then there are tiny images of priests and gods and goddesses. There is little of grimness in the faiths of the Far East; their gods smile. "Why religion should be considered too awful a subject for children to amuse themselves decently with never occurs to the common Japanese mind."

Besides these, there are pretty toys illustrating some fairy-tale or superstition and many other playthings of clever devices, and the little doll, O-Hina-San (Honourable Miss Hina), which is a type of Japanese girl beauty. The doll in Japan is a sacred part of the household. There is a belief that if it is treasured long enough it becomes alive. Such a doll is treated like a real child: it is supposed to possess supernatural powers. One had such rare powers that childless couples used to borrow it. They would minister to it, and would give it a new outfit of clothes before returning it to its owners. All who did this became parents. To the Japanese a new doll is only a doll; but a doll that has received the love of many generations acquires a soul. A little Japanese girl was asked, "How can a doll live?" "Why," was the lovely answer, "_if you love it enough_, it will live!"

Never is the corpse of a doll thrown away. When it has become so worn out that it must be considered quite dead, it is either burned or cast in running water, or it is dedicated to the God Kojin. In almost every temple ground there is planted a tree called _enoki_, which is sacred to Kojin. Before the tree will be a little shrine, and either there or at the foot of the sacred tree, the sad little remains will be laid. Seldom during the lifetime of its owner is a doll given to Kojin.

When you see one thus exposed, you may be almost certain that it
was found among the effects of some poor dead woman--the
innocent memento of her girlhood, perhaps even also of the
girlhood of her mother and of her mother's mother.

There is a sad and awful tradition in the history of the Kengyos, the oldest of the noble families of Izumo. Seven generations ago the Daimyo of Izumo made his first official visit to the temples of Hinomisaki, and was entertained royally by the Kengyo. As was the custom, the young wife served the royal visitor. Her simple beauty unfortunately enchanted him, and he demanded that she leave her husband and go with him. Terrified, but like a brave loving wife and mother, she answered that sooner than desert her husband and child she would kill herself.

The Lord of Izumo went away, but the little household well knew the evil that now shadowed it. And shortly the Kengyo was suddenly taken from his family; tried at once for some unknown offence, and banished to the islands of Oki, where he died. The Daimyo was exultant, for no obstacle was in the way of his desire. The wife of the dead Kengyo was the daughter of his own minister, whose name was Kamiya. Kamiya was summoned before the Daimyo, who told him that there was no longer any reason why Kamiya's daughter should not enter his household, and bade Kamiya bring her to him.

The next day Kamiya returned, and with the utmost ceremony announced that the command had been fulfilled--the victim had arrived.

Smiling for pleasure, the Matsudaira ordered that she should be
brought at once into his presence. The Karo prostrated
himself, retired, and presently returned, placed before his
master a _kubi-oke_ upon which lay the freshly-severed head of a
beautiful woman,--the head of the young wife of the dead
Kengyo,--with the simple utterance:

"This is my daughter."
Dead by her own brave will,--but never dishonoured.