owledge that the resources of intellectual life were
lacking; no libraries, no books in any language; a mind accustomed to
discipline became, he said, like a garden long uncultivated, in which
rare flowers returned to their primitive savage forms, smothered by
rank, tough growths, which ought to be pulled up and thrown away.
"Nature does not allow serious study or earnest work, and if you revolt
against her, she leaves you helpless and tortured for months. One must
not seek the Holy Ghost, the world is young here,--not old and wise and
grey as in the North.... The material furnished by the tropics could
only," he said, "be utilised in a Northern atmosphere...." The climate
numbed mental life, and the inspiration he hoped for wouldn't come.

During his stay in New York, while preparing "Youma" (a story written in
the West Indies) for press and going over the proofs of "Chita" before
its appearance in book form, he seems to have been in a pitiable state
of destitution, obliged to make a translation of Anatole France's "Le
Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard" to keep bread in his mouth.

"So you read my translation of 'Sylvestre Bonnard?'" he says to his
sister, writing from Japan. "I made it in two weeks, the Publishers
paying me only $100. Of course the translation was too quickly done to
be very good. I could not have written it all in the prescribed time, so
a typewriter was hired for me. She was a pretty girl and I almost fell
in love with her."

In 1889, Hearn made that ill-advised visit to Philadelphia, to Dr.
George Milbury Gould. He had only known this gentleman hitherto through
an interchange of letters. Gould had written to him at New Orleans,
expressing delight with some of Hearn's translations from the French,
upon which Hearn, in his usual impulsive way rushed into a
correspondence. This was in April, 1887. Gould had written several
pamphlets on the subject of myopia and defective sight, these he sent to
Hearn, and Hearn had responded, touching, as usual, on every sort of
philosophical and literary subject. When he returned to the United
States, after his two years in the French West Indies, he thought he
would like to consult Gould on the subject of his eyesight. He therefore
wrote, suggesting that if a quiet room could be found for him in
Philadelphia he would try his luck there.

Gould's account of his first appearance in his consulting-room is
familiar to all who have read his book. "The poor exotic was so sadl