irder ... the more terrible. Beauty there is in
the North, of its kind. But it is not, surely, comparable
with the wonderful beauty of colour in other races."[10]

[10] "The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn," Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin
& Co.

As to Hearn's more intimate life at this time there are many
contradictory accounts. Published facts and the notoriety of legal
proceedings, however, are stubborn things, and generally manage to work
their way through any deposit of inaccurate scandal or imaginative
rumour. At all hazards the truth must be set forth; otherwise how
emphasise the redemption of this hapless genius by discipline and
self-control out of the depths into which at this time he fell?

The episode in Hearn's life in Cincinnati, with the coloured woman,
"Althea Foley," remains one of those obscure psychological mysteries,
which, however distasteful, has to be accepted as a component part of
his unbalanced mental equipment.

On sifting all available evidence, there is no doubt that while doing
reporter's work for the _Enquirer_ he fell under the "Shadow of the
Ethiopian."

In treating of Hearn's vagaries it is well to remember that his brain
was abnormal by inheritance, and at this time was still further thrown
off its balance by privation, injustice, and unhappiness. All through
the course of his life there was failure of straight vision and mental
vigour when he was going through a period of difficulty and struggle.

"He may have been a genius in his line," his brother writes to Mrs.
Atkinson, referring to Lafcadio, "but genius is akin to madness, and I
do really think that dark, passionate Greek mother's blood had a taint
in it. For me, instead of nobler aspirations and thoughts, it begat
extremes of hate and love--a shrinking and sensitive morbid nature.
Whatever of the man I have in me comes from our common father. If I had
been as you were, a child of father's second wife, I could have told a
different story of my life.... It was the Eastern taint in the blood
that took Lafcadio to Japan and kept him there. His low vitality and
lack of nerve force hampered him in the battle of life, as it has me. If
we had the good old Celtic and Saxon blood in us, it would have been
better for those dependent on us."

The girl was servant in the cheap boarding-house where he lodged. Hearn,
then a struggling almost destitute newspaper writer, used to return from
work in the dead of winter in the smal