n 1903, only a year before her nursling,
whose name then had become so famous; to her it was tainted and defiled,
for had he not cast off the rule of Holy Mother Church, and declared
himself a Buddhist and a pagan? Such is the power of priest and religion
over the Celtic mind.

Hearn's references to the nameless terror of dreams, to which he was a
prey in his childhood, especially as set forth in a sketch entitled
"Nightmare Touch," reveals the sufferings of a creature highly strung
and sensitive to the point almost of lunacy.

He was condemned, when about five years of age, it seems, to sleep by
himself in a lonely room. His foolish old grand-aunt, who had never had
children of her own and could not therefore enter into his sufferings,
ordained that no light should be left in his room at night. If he cried
with terror he was whipped. But in spite of the whippings, he could not
forbear to talk about what he heard on creaking stairways and saw behind
the folds of curtains. Though harshly treated at school, he was happier
there than at home, because he was not condemned to sleep alone, and the
greater part of his day was spent with "living human beings" and not
"ghosts."

The most interesting portion of Dr. Gould's book, "Concerning Lafcadio
Hearn," is that which treats of Hearn's eyesight. As an oculist, he
maintains that Hearn must have suffered from congenital eyestrain,
brought on by pronounced myopia from his earliest childhood, long before
the accident at Ushaw.

The description that Hearn gives somewhere of the "sombre yellowish
glow, suffusing the dark, making objects dimly visible, while the
ceiling remained pitch black, as if the air were changing colour from
beneath," is a phenomenon familiar to all who have suffered from
eyestrain.

After Hearn's death, in a drawer of his library at Tokyo half-a-dozen
envelopes were found, each containing a sketch neatly written in his
small legible handwriting. He apparently had intended to construct a
book of childish reminiscences after the manner of Pierre Loti's "Livre
de la Pitie et a de la Mort." These sketches throw many sidelights on
his early years, but, except the one named "Idolatry" they are not up to
the level of his usual work. The material is too scanty, events seen
through the haze of memory are thrown out of focus, unimportant
incidents made too important.

"Only with much effort," he writes to Mrs. Atkinson, "can I recall
scattered memories of my boy