misunderstandings that arose between Rosa and her relations, and later,
in the troubles between husband and wife. Mrs. Hearn, unable to speak a
word of English, was influenced and prejudiced by meanings imparted to
perfectly harmless actions and statements.

Probably sensitive to sunlight, colour, and climate, as was her son,
having passed her life hitherto in a southern land amidst orange-groves
and vineyards, overlooking a sea blue as the sky overarching it, it is
easy to imagine the depressing influences to Rosa Hearn of finding
herself beneath an atmosphere heavy with smoke, and thick with fog, the
murky, sunless world of sordid streets, such as constitutes the major
portion of the capital of Ireland.

The description, given by those who are impartial judges, rather divests
Rosa of the poetical romance that her son has cast around her memory.
She was handsome, report says, with beautiful eyes, but ill-tempered and
unrestrained, sometimes even violent. Musical, but too indolent to
cultivate the gift, clever, but absolutely uneducated, she lived the
life of an oriental woman, lying all day long on a sofa, complaining of
the dulness of her surroundings, of the climate of Ireland, of the
impossibility of learning the language. To her children she was
capricious and tyrannical, at times administering rather severe
castigation.

When people fell short of the height to which he had raised them in
imagination, when he discovered that they had not all the qualities he
imagined them to possess, Lafcadio, as a rule, promptly cast them from
their high estate, and nothing was too bitter to say or think of them.
In his mother's case, before the searchlight of reality had time to
dissipate the illusion, she had passed from his ken forever.

When his own life was transformed by the birth of his first child, the
idea of maternal affection was deepened and expanded, and gradually
became connected with a belief in ancestral influences and transmission
of a "Karma" ruling human existence from generation to generation. He
then imagines the beauty of a mother's smile surviving the universe, the
sweetness of her voice echoing in worlds still uncreated, and the
eloquence of her faith animating prayers made to the gods of another
time, another heaven.

Years later he makes an eloquent appeal to his brother, asking him if he
does not remember the dark and beautiful face that used to bend over his
cradle, or the voice which told him eac