The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lafcadio Hearn, by Nina H. Kennard

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Title: Lafcadio Hearn

Author: Nina H. Kennard

Release Date: August 3, 2010 [EBook #33345]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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LAFCADIO HEARN

The Hearn crest is "on
a mount vert a heron
arg.," and the motto
"Ardua petit ardea."

[Illustration: Lafcadio Hearn and His Wife.]

LAFCADIO HEARN

BY
NINA H. KENNARD

_CONTAINING SOME LETTERS FROM LAFCADIO HEARN
TO HIS HALF-SISTER, MRS. ATKINSON_

[Illustration]

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
MCMXII

Copyright, 1912, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

REMEMBRANCE

No regret is vain. It is sorrow that spins the
thread,--softer than moonshine, thinner than
fragrance, stronger than death,--the Gleipnir-chain
of the Greater Memory.

PREFACE

When Death has set his seal on an eminent man's career, there is a not
unnatural curiosity to know something of his life, as revealed by
himself, particularly in letters to intimate friends. "All biography
ought, as much as possible, to be autobiography," says Stevenson, and of
all autobiographical material, letters are the most satisfactory.
Generally written on the impulse of the moment, with no idea of
subsequent publication, they come, as it were, like butter fresh from
the churning with the impress of the mind of the writer stamped
distinctly upon them. One letter of George Sand's written to Flaubert,
or one of Goethe's to Frau von Stein, or his friend Stilling, is worth
pages of embellished reminiscences.

The ci