embroidered at the foot of Fuji-no-yama, which, in his
whimsical way, he declared to be "as beautiful as the Parthenon
marbles."

Darwin had fulminated his scientific principles of natural selection and
evolution, fanning into a flame the conflict between religious orthodoxy
and natural science. Theologians were up in arms. To doubt a single
theological tenet, or the literal accuracy of an ancient Hebraic text,
seemed to them to place the whole reality of religious life and nature
in question. Ten years before, Herbert Spencer had been introduced by
Huxley to Tyndall as "Ein Kerl der speculirt," and well had he
maintained the character; "Principles of Ethics" had already been
written and he was at work at the "Synthetic Philosophy."

Science, however, in those days seems to have been a closed book to
Lafcadio. The wrangles and discussions over eastern legend and the
creation of the world as set forth in Genesis never seem to have reached
his mind, until years afterwards in New Orleans. He appears to have
wandered rather in the byways of fiction, devouring any rubbish that
came his way in the free libraries he frequented. It is surprising to
think of the writer of "Japan, an Interpretation," having been
fascinated by Wilkie Collins's "Armadale." The name "Ozias Midwinter,"
indeed, he used afterwards as a pseudonym for the series of letters
contributed to the _Commercial_ from New Orleans. There is a certain
pathos in the appeal that the description of the personality and
character of _Midwinter_ made to his imagination. "What had I known of
strangers' hands all through my childhood? I had only known them as
hands raised to threaten. What had I known of other men's voices? I had
known them as voices that jeered, voices that whispered against me in
corners.... I beg your pardon, sir, I have been used to be hunted and
cheated and starved."

Lafcadio's stay in London lasted a year; an imagination such as his
lives an eternity in a year. A veil of mystery overhangs the period
intervening between this and his arrival in America which I have in vain
endeavoured to penetrate.

Mr. Milton Bronner, in his preface to the "Letters from the Raven,"
alludes to the "travel-stained, poverty-burdened lad of nineteen, who
had 'run away from a Monastery _in Wales_,' and who still had part of
his monk's garb for clothing."

In writing Hearn's biography, it is always well to remember his tendency
to embroider upon the drab background