CONCLUSION 339

INDEX 351

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE

LAFCADIO HEARN AND HIS WIFE. _Frontispiece_

MAJOR CHARLES BUSH HEARN (HEARN'S FATHER). 16

MRS. ATKINSON (HEARN'S HALF-SISTER). 204

KAZUO (HEARN'S SON) AND HIS NURSE. 220

KAZUO, (HEARN'S SON, AGED ABOUT SEVEN). 228

DOROTHY ATKINSON. 232

KAZUO, (HEARN'S SON, AGED ABOUT SEVENTEEN). 314

CARLETON ATKINSON. 318

LAFCADIO HEARN

CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS

"Buddhism finds in a dewdrop the symbol of that other
microcosm which has been called the soul.... What more,
indeed, is man, than just such a temporary orbing of viewless
ultimates--imaging sky, and land, and life--filled with
perpetual mysterious shudderings--and responding in some wise
to every stir of the ghostly forces that environ him?... In
each of a trillion of dewdrops there must be differences
infinitesimal of atom-thrilling and of reflection, and in
every one of the countless pearls of ghostly vapour, updrawn
from the sea of birth and death, there are like infinitesimal
peculiarities. Personality, individuality, the ghosts of a
dream in a dream! Life infinite only there is; and all that
appears to be is but the thrilling of it--sun, moon, and
stars--earth, sky, and sea--and mind and man, and space and
time, all of them are shadows, the shadows come and go; the
Shadow-maker shapes for ever."

On the fly-leaf of a small octavo Bible, given to Charles Hearn by his
grandmother, the following entry may be read: "Patricio, Lafcadio,
Tessima, Carlos Hearn. August 1850, at Santa Maura."

The characters are in cramped Romaic Greek, the paper is yellow, the ink
faded with age. Whether the entry was made by Lafcadio's father or
mother it is difficult to say; one fact is certain: it announces the
appearance on this world's stage of one of the most picturesque and
remarkable fi