a
legendary character to his quiet-going Irish kindred. The arrival of the
first letter, therefore, was looked upon as quite an event and was
passed from house to house, and hand to hand, becoming considerably
mutilated in its journeyings to and fro. The first page is entirely
gone, and the second page so erased and torn that it is only
decipherable here and there. We are enabled to put an approximate date
to it by his reference to Miss Bisland's marriage, of which he had heard
towards the end of his stay at Matsue.

"I have written other things, but am rather ashamed of them," he adds.
"So Miss Bisland has married and become Mrs. Wetmore. She is as rich at
least as she could wish to be, but I have not heard from her for more
than a year. I suppose friendship ends with marriage. If my sister was
not married, I think--I only think--I would feel more brotherly.

"Well, I will say _au revoir_. Many thanks for the letter you wrote me.
I would like Please give me you can. Don't
think busy to write--much I teach for a week--English and
Elementary Latin: the time I study and write for
pleasure, not for profit. There isn't much profit in literature unless,
as a novelist, one happens to please a popular taste,--which isn't good
taste. Some exceptions there are, like Rudyard Kipling; but your brother
has not his inborn genius for knowing, seizing and painting human
nature. Love to you and yours--from

"LAFCADIO HEARN.

"_Tetorihomnatu_ 34,
"_Kumamoto, Kyushu,
"Japan._"

Mrs. Atkinson replied immediately, thus beginning a series of delightful
letters, which alas! relate, so many of them, to intimate family affairs
that it is impossible to publish them in their original form.

"My sweet little sister," he wrote in answer, "your letter was more than
personally grateful: it had also an unexpected curious interest for me,
as a revelation of things I did not know. I don't know anything of my
relations--their names, places, occupations, or even number: therefore
your letter interested me in a peculiar way, apart from its amiable
charm. Before I talk any more, I thank you for the photographs. They
have made me prouder than I ought to be. I did not know that I had such
nice kindred and such a fairy niece. My wife stole your picture from me
almost as soon as I had received it, to caress it,