ave said before, was an exemplification of the theory of
heredity. The fancy for mulattos, Creoles and orientals, which he
displayed all his life, is most likely to be accounted for as an
inheritance from his Arabian and oriental ancestors on his mother's
side. He but took up the dropped threads of his barbaric ancestry.

All his life he preferred to mix in the outer confines of society; the
"levee" at Cincinnati; the lower Creoles and mixed races at New Orleans;
fishermen, gardeners, peasants, were chosen by preference as companions
in Japan. He railed against civilisation. "The so-called improvements in
civilisation have apparently resulted in making it impossible to see,
hear, or find anything out. You are improving yourself out of the
natural world. I want to get back amongst the monkeys and the parrots,
under a violet sky, among green peaks, and an eternally lilac and
luke-warm sea--where clothing is superfluous and reading too much of an
exertion.... Civilisation is a hideous thing. Blessed is savagery!
Surely a palm two hundred feet high is a finer thing in the natural
order than seventy times seven New Yorks."[11]

[11] "The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn," Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

Hearn was a born rebel, and every incident of his life hitherto had
goaded him into further rebellion against all constituted authority.
That a race should be trampled upon by one regarding itself as superior
was a state of things that he could not contemplate without a protest,
and by his action he protested in the most emphatic manner possible. He
never took into consideration whether it was wise to do so or not.
Later, when the turbulent spirit of youth had settled down to accept the
discipline of social laws and conventions, he took a very different view
of the racial question in the United States and confessed the want of
comprehension he had displayed on the subject. Writing years afterwards
to a pupil in Japan, he alludes to the unfortunate incident in
Cincinnati. He resolved to take the part of some people who were looked
down upon in the place where he lived. He thought that those who looked
down upon them were morally wrong, so he went over to their side. Then
the rest of the people stopped speaking to him, and he hated them. But
he was then too young to understand. The trouble was really caused by
moral questions far larger than those he had been arguing about.

Hearn was certainly correct in thinking that, from the p