nes and ancient groves and cemeteries of Japan, vague ancestral
dreams of the mystery of his birthplace in the distant Greek island with
its classic memories, stirred dimly within him. After seeing, for
instance, the ancient cemetery of Hamamura, in Izumo, he pictures a
dream of a woman, sitting in a temple court--his mother,
presumably--chanting a Celtic dirge, and a vague vision of the
celebrated Greek poetess who had wandered amidst the ilex-groves and
temples of the ancient Leucadia.... Awakening, he heard, in the night,
the moaning of the real sea--the muttering of the Tide of the Returning
Ghosts.

Towards the end of 1851, England agreed to relinquish her military
occupation of the greater portion of the Ionian Islands. The troops were
withdrawn, and Charles Hearn received orders to proceed with his
regiment from Corfu to the West Indies. With a want of foresight
typically Hibernian, he arranged that his wife and two-year-old son
should go to Dublin, to remain with his relations during the term of his
service in the West Indies. The trio proceeded together as far as Malta.
How long husband and wife stopped there, or if she remained after he had
left with his regiment, it is impossible to say.

Years afterwards, Lafcadio declared that he was almost certain of having
been in Malta as a child, and that he specially remembered the queer
things told him about the Old Palace, the knights and a story about a
monk, who, on the coming of the French had the presence of mind to paint
the gold chancel railings with green paint. Precocious the little boy
may have been, but it is scarcely possible that his brain could have
been retentive enough to bear all this in memory when but two years old.
He must have been told it later by his father, or read a description of
the island in some book of history or travels. From Malta Mrs. Hearn
proceeded to Paris, to stop with her husband's artist brother, Richard.
Charles Hearn had written to him beforehand, begging him to smooth the
way for his wife's arrival in Dublin. His brother "Dick"--indeed, all
his belongings--were devoted to good-looking, easy-going Charles, but it
was with many qualms and much hesitation that Richard undertook the task
entrusted to him.

Charles Hearn's mother and an unmarried aunt, Susan, lived in Dublin at
Gardner's Place. "Auntie Sue," as the spinster lady is always referred
to by the present generation of Hearns, was the possessor of a ready
pen. A novel