ve the same
sense of shyness and force), "who came into New Orleans from the
country, and wrote nice things for a paper there, and was so kind to a
particular variety of savage, that he could not understand--and was
afraid." But all this was long ago, he concludes regretfully; "since
then I have become grey and the father of three boys."

For the greater part of Lafcadio Hearn's and Elizabeth Bisland's
friendship they seem to have occupied towards one another the position
of literary brother and sister. From the very beginning he tried to
induce her to share his literary enthusiasm. With that odd social
unconventionality that distinguished him, he endeavoured to make this
young girl of eighteen sympathise with his admiration of the artistic
beauties of Flaubert and Gautier. Sending a volume of Gautier's poems,
he writes: "I won't presume to offer you this copy; it is too shabby,
has travelled about with me in all sorts of places for eight years. But
if you are charmed by this 'parfait magicien des lettres francaises' (as
Beaudelaire called him) I hope to have the pleasure of offering you a
nicer copy...."

Years afterwards he refers to literary obligations that he owed her,
mentioning evening chats in her New York flat, when the sound of her
voice, low and clear, and at times like a flute, was in his ear. "The
gods only know what I said; for my thoughts in those times were seldom
in the room--but in the future, which was black without stars!"

In 1884 Hearn went to Grande Isle, in the Archipelago of the Gulf, for
his summer holiday. Miss Bisland would appear to have been there at the
same time, yet with that half-tamed, barbaric, incomprehensible nature
of his, his fancy seems to have been turned rather towards the
copper-coloured ladies of Barataria. "A beauty that existed in the
Tertiary epoch--three hundred thousand years ago. The beauty of the most
ancient branch of humanity."

It was during this visit to Grande Isle that the story of "Chita" was
written and contributed to _Harper's Magazine_ under the title of "Torn
Letters."

We know not at what date Miss Bisland left New Orleans to go to New
York. One thing only is certain, that so firm a spiritual hold had she
taken of Lafcadio Hearn's genius that no distance of space nor spite of
circumstance could separate her intellect from his. Like a delicious and
subtle perfume, wafted from some garden close, her presence meets you as
you pass from letter to letter i