her hearts.

She may not have been obliged to submit to the trials of most Japanese
wives, the whims and tyranny, for instance, of her father- and
mother-in-law, or the drudgery to provide for, or wait upon a numerous
Japanese household; but from many indications we know that her life
sometimes was not by any means a bed of roses. Humorous, and at the same
time pathetic, are her reminiscences of these first days of marriage, as
related in later life.

"He was such an intense nature," she says, "and so completely absorbed
in his work of writing that it made him appear strange and even
outlandish in ordinary life. He even acknowledged himself that he must
look like a madman."

During the course of his life, when undergoing any severe mental or
physical strain, Hearn was subject to periods of hysterical trance,
during which he lost consciousness of surrounding objects. There is a
host of superstitions amongst the Japanese connected with trances or
fainting fits. Each human being is supposed to possess two souls. When a
person faints they believe that one soul is withdrawn from the body, and
goes on all sorts of unknown and mysterious errands, while the other
remains with the envelope to which it belongs; but when this takes place
a man goes mad; mad people are those who have lost one of their souls.
On first seeing her husband in this condition, the little woman was so
terrified that she hastened to Nishida Sentaro to seek advice. "He
always acted for us as middle-man in those Matsue days, and I confess I
was afraid my husband might have gone crazy. However, I found soon
afterwards that it was only the time of enthusiasm in thought and
writing; and I began to admire him more on that account."

The calm and material comforts of domestic life gave Hearn, for a time,
a more assured equilibrium, but these trances returned again with
considerable frequency in later days.

Amenomori, his secretary at Tokyo, tells a story of waking one night and
seeing a light in Hearn's study. He was afraid Hearn might be ill, and
cautiously opened the door and peeped in. There he saw the little
genius, absorbed in his work, standing at his high desk, his nose almost
touching the paper on which he wrote. Leaf after leaf was covered with
his small, delicate handwriting. After a while, Amenomori goes on, he
held up his head, "and what did I see? It was not the Hearn I was
familiar with; his face was mysteriously white; his eyes gleamed. He
a