ut to him it
was a relaxation from his daily task of journalism and literary work.
Dr. Gould says that, while stopping in his house at Philadelphia, Hearn
would sometimes break off suddenly in the midst of a discussion,
especially if he were afraid of losing his temper, and retire to his own
room, where he would fill sheets of the yellow paper, which he
habitually used, with theories and reasons for and against his argument;
these he would leave later on Gould's study table.

To his literary brother, Krehbiel, he discourses, as if they were face
to face, of artistic endeavour and the larger life of the intellect. In
his "jeremiads" to Mr. Watkin he reveals his most intimate feelings and
sufferings; the routine of his daily work is told hour by hour.
Perpetually standing outside himself, as it were, he studies his nature,
inclinations, habits, and yet never gives you the impression of being
egotistical. His attitude is rather that of a scientist studying an odd
specimen. The intellectual isolation of his latter years, passed amongst
an alien race with alien views and beliefs, seems to have created a
necessity for converse with those of his own race and mode of thought;
his correspondence with Chamberlain reflects all his perturbations of
spirit--perturbations that he dared not confide to those surrounding
him--a record of illusion and disillusion with regard to his adopted
country. The Japanese letters, therefore, above all, have the charm of
temperament, the very essence of the man, recorded in a style of
remarkable picturesqueness and reality.

The series of letters to Mrs. Atkinson, of which I have been given
possession for use in this sketch of Hearn's life, have an entirely
different signification to those already referred to. Unfortunately I am
not permitted to give them in their entirety, as Hearn in his usual
petulant, reckless fashion refers to family incidents, and speaks of
relations in a manner which it would be impossible to publish to the
world.

Many of the most characteristic passages have necessarily, therefore,
been omitted; in spite of this, there are many portions intensely
interesting as a revelation of a side of his character not hitherto
shown to the public. Pathetic recurrences to childish memories,
incidents of his boyhood that reveal a certain tenderness for places and
people which, hitherto, reserved as he was, he never had expressed to
outsiders. The sudden awakening of brotherly romantic a