where she, as a
neophyte, also worshipped.

* * * * *

Miss Elizabeth Bisland was the daughter of a Louisiana landowner,
ruined, like many others, in the war. With the idea of aiding her family
by the proceeds of her pen, the young girl quitted the seclusion of her
parents' house in the country and bravely entered the arena of
journalistic work in New Orleans.

Hearn at that time was regularly working on the staff of the _Times
Democrat_. The faithfulness of his translations from the French, and the
beauty of the style of some of his contributions, had found an
appreciative circle in the Crescent City, and a clique had been formed
of what were known as "Hearn's admirers."

His translations from Gautier, Maupassant, "Stray Leaves from Strange
Literature," all appeared in the columns of Page Baker's newspaper. He
also, under the title of "Fantastics," contributed every now and then
slight sketches inspired by his French prototypes. Dreams, he called
them, of a tropical city, with one twin idea running through them
all--love and death. They gave him the gratification of expressing a
thought that cried out within his heart for utterance, and the pleasant
fancy that a few kindred minds would dream over them as upon pellets of
green hashisch.

One of these was inspired by Tennyson's verse--

"My heart would hear her and beat
Had I lain for a century dead;--
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red."

The sketch appeared apparently in the columns of the _Times Democrat_.
There Miss Bisland saw it, and in the enthusiasm of her seventeen years,
wrote an appreciative letter to the author. By chance the "Fantastic"
was recovered from his later correspondence. Writing to Mitchell
McDonald years afterwards in Japan, we find Hearn referring to the
expression "Lentor Inexpressible." "I am going to change 'Lentor
Inexpressible,' which you did not like. I send you a copy of the story
in which I first used it--years and years ago. Don't return the
thing--it has had its day. It belongs to the Period of Gush."

Mitchell McDonald, we imagine, obeyed his injunction, and did not return
the "Fantastic," but laid it away amongst his papers, and so "A Dead
Love" has been saved for re-publication. It certainly is crude enough to
deserve the designation of belonging to the "Period of Gush," and is
distinguished by a