hen Lafcadio wrote to Mr. Watkin. Many of
these pen-and-ink sketches interspersed with other illustrations here
and there through the letters show considerable talent for drawing, of a
fantastic sort, that might have been developed, had Hearn's eyesight
permitted, and had he not nourished other ambitions.

Some of the letters are simply short statements left on the table for
Mr. Watkin's perusal when he returned home, or a few lines of nonsense
scribbled on a bit of paper and pinned on a door of the office.

Often when Hearn was offended by some observation, or a reprimand
administered by the older man, he would "run away in a huff." Mr.
Watkin, who was genuinely attached to the erratic little genius and
understood how to deal with him, would simply follow him, tell him not
to be a fool, and bring him back again.

In the fourth autobiographical fragment, found amongst Hearn's papers
after his death, is one entitled "Intuition." He there alludes to Watkin
as "the one countryman he knew in Cincinnati--a man who had preceded him
into exile by nearly forty years."

In a glass case at the entrance to a photographer's shop, Hearn had come
across the photograph of a face, the first sight of which had left him
breathless with wonder and delight.... The gaze of the large dark eyes,
the aquiline curve of the nose, the mouth firm but fine--made him think
of a falcon, in spite of the delicacy of the face.... He stood looking
at it, and the more he looked, the more the splendid wonder of it seemed
to grow like a fascination. But who was she? He dared not ask the owner
of the gallery. To his old friend Watkin, therefore, he went and at once
proposed a visit to the photographer's. The picture was as much a puzzle
to him as to Hearn.

For long years the incident of the photograph passed from Hearn's memory
until, in a Southern city hundreds of miles away, he suddenly perceived,
in a glass case in a druggist's shop, the same photograph.

"Please tell me whose face that is," he asked.

"Is it possible you do not know?" responded the druggist. "Surely you
are joking?"

Hearn answered in the negative. Then the man told him--it was that of
the great tragedienne, Rachel.

* * * * *

Cincinnati is separated from Kentucky by the Ohio. It is there but a
narrow river, and the Cincinnati folk were wont to migrate into Kentucky
when there were lectures on spiritualism, revivalist meetings, or
political ha