er his delightful outburst in a letter to Chamberlain, that has
been so often quoted. "For me words have colour, form, character: they
have faces, ports, manners, gesticulations;--they have moods, humours,
eccentricities:--they have tints, tones, personalities," etc., etc.

Though Hearn did not get on with others of the newspaper staff, he
formed ties of intimacy with several choice spirits then moving in the
best literary circles of Cincinnati and now well known in the literary
life of the United States.

Henry Krehbiel, recognised in England and America as an eminent music
lecturer and critic, was one of his most intimate friends. Joseph
Tunison was another; he afterwards became editor of the _Dayton
Journal_, and, as well as Krehbiel, wrote sympathetically of the little
Irishman after his death, expressing indignation at the scurrilous
attacks made upon his reputation by several papers in the United States.
"He was a wonderfully attractive personality, full of quaint learning,
and a certain unworldly wisdom. He had a fashion of dropping his friends
one by one; or of letting them drop him, which comes to the same thing;
whether indifference or suspicion was at the bottom of this habit it
would be hard to say. But he never spoke ill of them afterwards. It was
not his way to tell much about himself; and what he did say was let out
as if by accident in the course of conversation on other topics.... It
was impossible to be long in his company without learning that his early
years had been years of bitterness. His reminiscences of childhood
included not only his dark-haired, dark-eyed mother, but also a
beautiful blonde lady, who had somehow turned his happiness to misery."

CHAPTER VII
VAGABONDAGE

"Now for jet black, the smooth, velvety, black skin that
remains cold as a lizard under the tropical sun. It seems to
me extremely beautiful! If it is beautiful in art, why should
it not be beautiful in nature? As a matter of fact, it is,
and has been so acknowledged, even by the most prejudiced
slave-owning races. Either Stanley, or Livingstone perhaps,
told the world that after long living in Africa, the sight of
white faces produced something like fear (and the evil
spirits of Africa are white).... You remember the Romans lost
their first battles with the North through sheer fear ... the
fairer, the we