you please.

"--Yes, I have lost an eye, and look horrible. The operation in Dublin
did not cause the disfigurement, but a blow, or rather the indirect
results of a blow, received from a play-fellow.

"--You ask me if I should like a photograph of father. I certainly
should, if you can procure me one without trouble. I hope--much more
than to see England,--to visit India, and try to find some tradition of
him. I did not know positively, until last year, that father had been in
the West Indies. When I went there, I had the queerest, ghostliest
sensation of having seen it all before. I think I should experience even
stranger sensations in India! The climate would be agreeable for me.
Remember, I passed fourteen years of my life south of winter. The first
snow I saw from 1876 to 1890 was on my way through Canada to Japan.
Indeed, if ever I become quite independent, I want to return to the
tropics.

"Enough to tire your eyes,--isn't it?--for this time.

"Ever affectionately,
"LAFCADIO HEARN.

"In the names of the eight hundred myriads of Gods,--do give me your
address. The only way I have been able to write you is by finding the
word _Portadown_ in _Whittaker's Almanac_. You are a careless, naughty
'Sis.'

"I enclose my name and address in Japanese.

"YAKUMO KOIZUMI,
"_Tsuboi,
"Nichihorabata 35,
"Kumamoto, Kyushu_."

All the women are making funny little Japanese baby-clothes, and all the
Buddhist Divinities, who watch over little children, are being prayed
to.... "Letters of congratulation," he said, "were coming from all
directions, for the expectation of a child is always a subject of great
gladness in Japan.... Behind all this there is a universe of new
sensations, revelations of things in Buddhist faith which are very
beautiful and touching. About the world an atmosphere of delicious,
sacred naivete,--difficult to describe because resembling nothing in the
Western world...."

Hearn's account of his home before the birth of his son throws most
interesting lights on Japanese methods of thought and daily life. He
refers to the pretty custom of a woman borrowing a baby when she is
about to become a mother. It is thought an honour to lend it. And it is
extraordinarily petted in its new home. The one his wife borrowed was
only six months old