to soar; sometimes a half-crazy passion for a great night with
wine and women and music; but the wandering passion was strongest of
all, and he felt no inclination to avail himself of the only anchor
which keeps the ship of a man's life in port.... Nights were so liquid
with tropic moonlight, days so splendid with green and gold, summer so
languid with perfume and warmth, that he hardly knew whether he was
dreaming or awake.

In 1881, Hearn succeeded in becoming a member of the staff of the
leading New Orleans paper, the _Times Democrat_, "the largest paper," he
tells his sister, "in the Southern States." He now seemed to have
entered on a halcyon period of life--congenial society, romantic and
interesting surroundings. Penetrated with enthusiasm for the modern
French literary school as he was, he here met intellects and
temperaments akin to his own. Now he was enabled to get his translations
from Gautier and Baudelaire printed, and read for the first time by an
appreciative public. "Everybody was kind," he tells his sister; "I
became well and strong, lived steadily, spent my salary on books. I was
thus able to make up for my deficiencies of education.... I had only a
few hours of work each day;--plenty of time to study. I wrote novels and
other books which literary circles approved of."

With Page Baker, the owner and editor-in-chief of the _Times Democrat_,
he formed a salutary and enduring friendship. The very difference in
character between the two seems to have made the bond all the more
enduring. Page Baker was a man of great business capacity, and at the
same time keen discrimination in literary affairs. From the first he
conceived the highest opinion of Hearn's literary ability. However
fantastic or out-of-the-way his contributions to the columns of the
_Times Democrat_, they were always inserted without elision. Years
afterwards, writing to him from Japan, Hearn declares, in answer to a
panegyric written by Page Baker on some of his Japanese books, that the
most delightful criticisms he ever had were Page Baker's own readings
aloud of his vagaries in the "_T. D._" office, after the proofs came
down, just fresh from the composition room, with the wet, sharp, inky
smell still on the paper. Baker, apparently, in 1893 sent him
substantial help, and Hearn writes thanking him from the bottom of his
much-scarified heart. Often amidst the cramped, austere conditions of
his existence in Japan, he recalled these days o