San Francisco magazine as
likely to shock the sentiments of its readers and injure the circulation
of the periodical in consequence of the morals of the mother of the
_Luck_, we are not surprised that Hearn's attempt to introduce the
American public to the masterpieces of the French Impressionist School
was foredoomed to failure. There is a certain naive, determined defiance
of convention in his insistence on gaining admiration both from his
friends and the public for productions that were really quite unsuited
to general circulation at that time in America. We find him, for
instance, recommending the perusal of "Mdlle. de Maupin" to a clergyman
of the Established Church and sending a copy of Gautier's poems to Miss
Bisland in New Orleans.

"I shall stick," he says, "to my pedestal of faith in literary
possibilities like an Egyptian Colossus with a broken nose, seated
solemnly in the gloom of my own originality, seeking no reward save the
satisfaction of creating something beautiful; but this is worth working
for."

It is a noteworthy fact and one that may be mentioned here that, in
spite of his extraordinary mastery of the subtleties of the French
language, he always spoke French with an atrociously bad accent. "He had
a very bad ear," his friend, Henry Krehbiel, tells us in his article on
"Hearn and Folk Music," "organically incapable of humming the simplest
tune; he could not even sing the scale, a thing that most people do
naturally."

From these Cincinnati days dates Hearn's hatred of the drudgery of
journalism, "a really nefarious trade," he declared later; "it dwarfs,
stifles and emasculates thought and style.... The journalist of to-day
is obliged to hold himself in readiness to serve any cause.... If he can
enrich himself quickly and acquire comparative independence, then,
indeed, he is able to utter his heart's sentiments and indulge his
tastes...."

Amongst his colleagues on the staff of the _Enquirer_ Hearn was not
popular. He was looked upon as what Eton boys call a "sap"; his
fussiness about punctuation and style, soon earned for him the sobriquet
of "Old Semi-Colon." This meticulous precision on the subject of
punctuation and the value of words remained a passion with him all his
life. He used to declare he felt about it as a painter would feel about
the painting of his picture. He told his friend, Tunison, that the word
"gray" if spelt "grey" gave him quite a different colour sensation.

We rememb