e unenviable name of being ungrateful, inconstant, and
capricious. To those friends made in his youthful days of struggle and
adversity he remained constant, but with the exception of Mitchell
McDonald, Nishida Sentaro, and Amenomori, it is the same story of
perversity and estrangement.

An unceremonious entry into his house, without deference to ancient
Japanese etiquette, which enjoined the taking off of boots and the
putting on of sandals, a sneer at Shinto ancestor worship, a difference
of opinion on Herbert Spencer, and Hearn would disappear actually and
metaphorically. This proves his want of heart, you say. But a careful
study of Hearn's "Wesen" will show that his apparent inconstancy did not
arise from a change of affection, but because his very affection for the
people he had turned from made the taut strands of friendship more
difficult to reunite, especially for a person of his shy temperament.
Which of us has not recognised the greater difficulty of making up a
"tiff" with a friend for whom one cares deeply than with a person to
whom one is indifferent? The tougher the stuff the more ravelled the
edges of the tear, and the more difficult to join together.

At Kobe, an incident was related to us by Mr. Young, his chief on the
_Kobe Chronicle_ and a person to whom Hearn owed much and was attached
by many ties of gratitude and friendship. A guest at dinner ventured to
dissent from Hearn's opinion that the reverential manner in which people
prostrated themselves before the mikado was in no way connected with
religious principles. Hearn shrugged his shoulders, rose, walked away
from the table, and nothing would induce him to return. He did not,
indeed, enter Mr. Young's house again for some days, though doing his
work at the office for the newspaper as usual.

When Hearn left Tokyo to take up his appointment at Matsue, he was
accompanied by his friend Akira, a young student and priest, who spoke
English and could, therefore, act as interpreter. At Kobe they left the
railway and continued their journey in jinrikishas, a journey of four
days with strong runners, from the Pacific to the Sea of Japan.

"Out of the city and over the hills to Izumo, the Land of the Ancient
Gods!" The incantation is spoken, we find ourselves in the region of
Horai--the fairyland of Japan--with its arch of liquid blue sky,
lukewarm, windless atmosphere, an atmosphere enormously old, but of
ghostly generations of souls blended into one