onster City of the West, if you open his
"Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan," and read his description of his first
visit to a Buddhist temple, you will find the silence of centuries
descending upon your soul, the thrill of something above and beyond the
commonplace of this everyday world. The bygone spirit of the race, with
its hidden meanings and allegories, its myths and legends, the very
essence of the heart of the people, that has lain sleeping in the temple
gloom, will reveal itself; the faint odour of incense will float to your
nostrils; the shuffling of pilgrim feet to your ear; you will see the
priests sliding back screen after screen, pouring in light on the gilded
bronzes and inscriptions; involuntarily you will look for the image of
the Deity, of the presiding spirit between the altar groups of
convoluted candelabra, and you will see "only a mirror! Symbolising
what? Illusion? Or that the universe exists for us solely as the
reflection of our own souls? Or the old Chinese teaching that we must
seek the Buddha only in our hearts?"

A storm soon passed across the heaven of his dreams. He suddenly
terminated his contract with Harpers. "I am starved out," he wrote to
Miss Bisland. "Do you think well enough of me to try to get me
employment at a regular salary, somewhere in the United States?"...

It is said that his reason for breaking with Harpers was a difference of
opinion as to the relative position of himself and their artist, Mr.
Charles D. Weldon. Hearn was expected to write up to the illustrations
of the articles sent to the magazine, instead of the illustrations being
done for Hearn's letterpress. Besides which, the fact transpired that
the artist was receiving double Hearn's salary.

The little Irishman was a mixture of exaggerated humility and sensitive
pride on the score of his literary work; always in extremes in this, as
in all else. He was also, as we have seen, extremely unbusinesslike; he
never attempted to enter into an agreement of any kind. It seems
difficult to accept his statement that his publishers, having made a
success with "Chita" and "Youma" and "Two Years in the French West
Indies," paid him only at the rate of five hundred dollars a year. No
doubt Harpers might have been able to put a very different complexion on
the matter. As a proof of the difficulty in conducting affairs with him,
when he threw up his Japanese engagement he declined to accept royalties
on books already in print. Ha