Project Gutenberg's The Romance of the Milky Way, by Lafcadio Hearn

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Title: The Romance of the Milky Way
And Other Studies & Stories

Author: Lafcadio Hearn

Release Date: March 10, 2005 [EBook #15320]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SHORT STORY

THE ROMANCE OF THE MILKY WAY

AND OTHER STUDIES & STORIES

BY LAFCADIO HEARN

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK 1905

COPYRIGHT 1905 BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PUBLISHED OCTOBER 1905

CONTENTS

THE ROMANCE OF THE MILKY WAY 1

GOBLIN POETRY 51

"ULTIMATE QUESTIONS" 103

THE MIRROR MAIDEN 125

THE STORY OF IT[=O] NORISUK['E] 139

STRANGER THAN FICTION 167

A LETTER FROM JAPAN 179

INTRODUCTION

Lafcadio Hearn, known to Nippon as Yakumo Koizumi, was born in
Leucadia in the Ionian Islands, June 27, 1850. His father was an Irish
surgeon in the British Army; his mother was a Greek. Both parents died
while Hearn was still a child, and he was adopted by a great-aunt,
and educated for the priesthood. To this training he owed his
Latin scholarship and, doubtless, something of the subtlety of
his intelligence. He soon found, however, that the prospect of an
ecclesiastical career was alien from his inquiring mind and vivid
temperament, and at the age of nineteen he came to America to seek
his fortune. After working for a time as a proof-reader, he obtained
employment as a newspaper reporter in Cincin