for many a long month! The pleasure
of the sense of rest! whilst overhead the stars were shining in the
frosty air. Beneath, he could hear the horses stirring heavily, and he
thought of the sense of force and life that issued from them. They were
of use in the world, but of what use was he?... And the sharp shining
stars, they were suns, enormous suns, inhabited perhaps by creatures
like horses, with small things like rats and mice hiding in the hay. The
horses did not know that there were a hundred million of suns, yet they
were superior beings worth a great deal of money, much more than he was,
yet he knew that there were hundreds of millions of suns and they did
not.

"I endeavoured later," he tells Mrs. Atkinson, "to go as accountant in a
business office, but it was soon found that I was incapable of filling
the situation, defective in mathematical capacity, and even in ordinary
calculation power. I was entered into a Telegraph Office as Telegraph
Messenger Boy, but I was nineteen and the other boys were young; I
looked ridiculously out of place and was laughed at. I was touchy--went
off without asking for my wages. Enraged friends refused to do anything
further for me. Boarding-houses warned me out of doors. At last I became
a Boarding-house servant, lighted fires, shovelled coals, etc., in
exchange for food and privilege of sleeping on the floor of the
smoking-room. I worked thus for about one and a half years, finding time
to read and write stories. The stories were published in cheap Weekly
Papers, long extinct; but I was never paid for them. I tried other
occupations also--canvassing, show-card writing, etc. These brought
enough to buy smoking tobacco and second-hand clothes--nothing more."

It is typical of Hearn that, though driven to such straits, he never
applied to Mr. Cullinane, to whose charge he had been committed. We are
not surprised that the little room at the back of Mr. Watkin's shop,
with the bed of paper shavings, and Mr. Watkin's frugal meals, yes, even
sleeping in dry-goods boxes in a grocer's shed, or the shelter of a
disused boiler in a vacant "lot," was preferable to the acceptance of
money sent through the intervention of Henry Molyneux to Henry
Molyneux's brother-in-law.

In his book, "Concerning Lafcadio Hearn,"[9] Dr. George Milbury Gould
alludes to this gentleman in the following terms:--

[9] Messrs. Fisher Unwin.

"There is still living, an Irishman, to whom Lafcadio was sent fr