han hitherto, or face a future devoid of settled
purpose or stability. His state of health also demanded domestic comfort
and feminine care. The only alternative that presented itself to a
celibate life was to choose a wife from amongst the people with whom his
lines were cast.

From the first moment of his arrival, Hearn had been carried away by
enthusiasm for the gentleness, the docility, of the women of Japan. He
compares them, much to their advantage, with their American sisters. "In
the eternal order of things, which is the highest being, the childish,
confiding, sweet Japanese girl, or the occidental Circe women of
artificial society, with their enormous power of evil and their limited
capacity for good?" In his first letter to Miss Bisland, he writes:
"This is a domesticated nature, which loves man and makes itself
beautiful for him in a quiet grey and blue way like the Japanese women."

It seems an unromantic statement to make with regard to an artist who
has written such exquisite passages on the sentiment that binds a man to
a woman, but Hearn, in spite of his intellectual idealism, had from
certain points of view a very material outlook. All considerations--even
those connected with the deepest emotions that stir the human
heart--were secondary to the necessities of his genius and artistic
life.

His intimacy with Althea Foley in Cincinnati was prompted and fostered
by gratitude for her care in preparing his meals, and nursing him when
ill, thus saving him from the catastrophe of relinquishing his position
on the staff of the _Enquirer_, which meant not only the loss of all
means of subsistence, but also the possibility of prosecuting the
ambition of his life--a literary career.

Now, at Matsue, after a touch of somewhat severe illness obliging him to
pass some weeks in bed, it became really a matter of life or death that
he should give up living from hand to mouth in country inns.

With the Japanese teacher of English at the Matsue College, an
accomplished English scholar, Hearn had formed a close intimacy from the
moment of his arrival, an intimacy, indeed, only broken by Nishida
Sentaro's death in 1898.

"His the kind eyes that saw so much for the stranger, his the kind lips
that gave him so much wise advice, helping him through the difficulties
that beset him, in consequence of his ignorance of the language." At the
beginning of his first term Hearn found the necessity of remembering or
pronouncing