It is felt that no apology is necessary for offering to the interested public, even though it be a limited one, the letters and extracts from letters which appear in this little volume. In a day when the letters of Aubrey Beardsley—who was a draughtsman rather than a writer—are gravely offered to possible readers by a great publishing house, it is surely allowable to present for the first time epistles of a really great author. No excuse was offered for printing such things as: "Thank you so much. It was very good of you to call." If this tells us anything concerning the unfortunate young master of white and black, I am unable to discern it. I feel quite sure that no one can make the same objection to the correspondence herewith given. It tells us many things concerning Hearn\'s life and moods and aspirations that otherwise would have been unknown to us. He wrote to Mr. Henry Watkin as to his dearest friend. In his letters, we get what we do not find elsewhere. We have here facts without which his future biographer would be at a loss.

If there be any repetitions in the sections which follow, the indulgence of the reader is craved. Such as they are, they were written at widely separated intervals in the hope that material might be finally gathered for a "Life and Letters of Hearn." This hope has so far been frustrated, but it is felt that much is here offered that will lead to a better understanding and appreciation of this famous writer. The endeavor of the editor has been so far as possible to let Hearn tell his own story, giving only enough comment to make clear what Hearn himself had to say.

In writing of their beloved R. L. S., enthusiasts tell us Stevenson is endeared to mankind not only because of his writings, but also because of his dauntless cheerfulness in the face of incurable disease. Hearn, in another field, was equally charming in his work and, in the face of another danger, equally dauntless. From the first he was confronted by the possible fate of the sightless. At best he had but a pearly vision of the world. The mere labor of writing was a physical task with him, demanding hours for the composition of a single letter. Yet he accomplished almost two score volumes, none of which is carelessly written. Seeing as through a ghostly vapor, in his books he revelled in color as few writers of our day have been able to do. How he managed to see, or rather to comprehend, all the things he so vividly described, was one of his secrets.

The best work of his life was commenced at the age of forty, when he arrived in Japan. He had many qualifications for his chosen field. During the long, lazy two years in Martinique he had literally soaked his mind, as it were, with Oriental philosophy. When he came to Japan he was weary of wandering, and the courtesy, gentleness and kindliness of the natives soon convinced him that they were the best people in the world among whom to live. A small man physically, he felt at home in a nation of small men. It pleased his shy, sensitive nature to think that he was often mistaken for a Japanese.

To his studies and his work he brought a prodigious curiosity, a perfect sympathy, and an admirable style. He had an eye that observed everything in this delightful Nippon, from the manner in which the women threaded their needles to the effect of Shinto and Buddhism upon the national character, religion, art, and literature. Japanese folk-lore, Japanese street songs and sayings, the home life of the people,—everything appealed to him, and the farther removed from modern days and from Christianity, the stronger the appeal.

Zangwill has acutely said, in speaking of Loti\'s famous story of Japan, "Instead of looking for the soul of a people, Pierre Loti was simply looking for a woman."

Hearn did not fail to tell us of many women, but his most particular search was for just that soul of a people which Loti ignored; and in the hunt for that soul, he became more and more impressed by that Buddhism which enabled him the better to comprehend the people. His whole religious life had been a wandering away from the Christianity to which he was born and a finding of a faith compounded of Buddhism modified by paganism, and a leaven of the scientific beliefs of agnostics such as Spencer and Huxley, whom he never wearied of reading and quoting. In all his writings this tendency is displayed. In one of the letters we see him an avowed agnostic, or perhaps "pantheist" would be the better word. In his little-known story of 1889, published in Lippincott\'s, with the Buddhist title of "Karma," there is a curious tribute to a fair, pure woman. It shows the hold the theory of heredity and evolution and the belief in reincarnation already had upon him:

"In her beauty is the resurrection of the fairest past;—in her youth, the perfection of the present;—in her girl dreams, the promise of the To-Be.... A million lives have been consumed that hers should be made admirable; countless minds have planned and toiled and agonized that thought might reach a higher and purer power in her delicate brain;—countless hearts have been burned out by suffering that hers might pulse for joy;—innumerable eyes have lost their light that hers might be filled with witchery;—innumerable lips have prayed that hers might be kissed." On his first day in the Orient he visited a temple and made an offering, re............