le beauty
of dead ladies who lived when all the surroundings were new. For they
were the gardens of the past. The future would know them only as dreams,
creations of a forgotten art, whose charm no genius could produce.

The working of Hearn's heart and mind at this time is an interesting
psychological study. He had been wont to declare that his vocation was a
monastic one. He now initiated an asceticism as severe in its discipline
as that of St. Francis of Assisi on the Umbrian hills. The code on which
he moulded his life was formulated according to the teaching of the
great Gautama. If the soul is to attain life and effect progress,
continual struggle against temptation is necessary. Appetites must be
restrained. Indulgence means retrogression.

It is not without a sense of amusement that we observe the complex
personality, Lafcadio Hearn, in the Matsue phase of self-suppression and
discipline. Well might Kinjuro, the old gardener, tell him that he had
seven souls. A dignified university professor had taken the place of the
erratic Bohemian who frequented the levee at Cincinnati, and of the
starving little journalist who, arrayed in reefer coats, flannel shirt,
and outlandish hat, used to appear in the streets of New Orleans. Now
clad in official robes, he passed out through a line of prostrate
servants on his way to college, each article of clothing having been
handed to him, as he dressed, with endless bows of humility and
submission by the daughter of a line of feudal nobles.

He gives to his sister the same account of his austere, simple day, as
to Basil Hall Chamberlain: the early morning prayer and greeting of the
sun, his meals eaten alone before the others, the prayers again at
eventide, some of them said for him as head of the house. Then the
little lamps of the _kami_ before the shrine were left to burn until
they went out; while all the household waited for him to give the signal
for bedtime, unless, as sometimes, he became so absorbed in writing as
to forget the hour.

Sometimes, however, in spite of severe discipline and mortification of
the flesh, ghostly reminders returned to prove that the old self was
very real indeed.

The "Markham Girl" is certainly well done. "I asked myself: 'If it was
I?' and conscience answered: 'If it was you, in spite of love, and duty,
and honour, and Hell fire staring you in the face, you would have gone
after her....'" Then he adds a tirade as to his being a liar and