o delightful books of travel.
His reminiscences of Lafcadio Hearn at Ushaw are far the most detailed
and interesting. He says that Lafcadio's descriptive talent was already
noticeable in those days. The wild and ghostly in literature was what
chiefly attracted him. "Naturally of a sceptical turn of mind, he once
rather shocked some of us by demanding evidence of beliefs, which we had
never dreamt of questioning. He loved nature in her exterior aspects,
and his conversation, for a lad of his age, was highly picturesque.
Knightly feats of arms, combats with gigantic foes in deep forests, low
red moons throwing their dim light across desolate spaces, and glinting
on the armour of great champions, storms howling over wastes and ghosts
shrieking in the gale--these were favourite topics of conversation, and
in describing these fancies his language was unusually rich.

"I believe he was regarded as slightly off his mental balance. He and I
were at one time in the same class; but he was kept for two years in, I
think, the class or 'school,' as we called it, of 'High Figures.'[5]
This separated us a little, as the lads in the High Figures were not
permitted to use the same library as we used in the 'Grammar Class.' A
note was handed to me one evening from him as I sat reading in this
library, inviting me to take a stroll. The style of this epistle was
eminently characteristic of his tastes and style, and although it is now
more than forty years ago, I think the following is very nearly a
correct copy of it:--

[5] "High Figures" is the name of a class or "School" (as we call
"classes" at Ushaw), _e.g._ Low Figures, High Figures, Grammar, Syntax,
Poetry, Rhetoric, etc. If a boy is kept in the same school or class for
two years, _e.g._ High Figures, it is owing to his not being fit to be
moved up into the next class, Grammar. Each class has its own library,
so that a boy in the class of High Figures would not be allowed to
intrude into the Library of the school or class above him, Grammar.

"'Meet me at twelve at the Gothic door,
Massive and quaint, of the days of yore;
When the spectral forms of the mighty dead
Glide by in the moonlight with silent tread;
When the owl from the branch of the blasted oak
Shrieks forth his note so wild,
And the toad from the marsh echoes with croak
In the moonlight soft and mild,
When