cient faiths enters
into one's blood with the sense of the doctrine of filial piety, and the
meaning of ancestor worship,--how very, very strange and cruel it seems
to me that my little sister should be afraid of being thought
_sentimental_ about the photograph of her father! What self-repression
does all this mean, and what iron influences in Western life--English
life that I have almost forgotten! However, character loses nothing:
under the exterior ice, the Western could only gain warmth and depth if
it be of the right sort. I hope, nevertheless, my little sister will be
just as 'sentimental' as she possibly can when she writes to Japan,--and
feel sure of more than sympathy and gratitude. Unless she means by
'sentimental' only something in regard to style of writing--in which
case I assure her that she cannot err. If she is afraid of being thought
really sentimental, I should be much more afraid of meeting her,--for I
should wish to say sweet things and to hear them, too, should I deserve.

"At all events remember that you have given me something very
precious,--not only in itself,--but precious because precious to you.
And it shall never be lost,--in spite of earthquakes and possible
fires."

(The something he alludes to as "very precious" was a photograph of
their father, Charles Hearn, that Mrs. Atkinson had sent him.)

"--I wish I could talk to you more about Father and India. I wish to ask
a hundred thousand questions. But on paper it is difficult to express
all one wishes to say. And letters of mere questions carry no joy with
them, and no sympathy. So I shall not ask _now_ any more. And you must
not tire your dear little aching head to write when you do not feel
well. I shall write again soon. For a little while good-bye, with love
and all sweet hope to you ever,

"LAFCADIO HEARN.

"_Kumamoto,
"Kyushu, Japan.
"Jan_. 30, '94."

On November 17th, 1893, at one o'clock in the morning, Hearn's eldest
son, Leopold Kazuo Koizumi, was born.

He declared that the strangest and strongest sensation of his life was
hearing for the first time the cry of his own child. There was a strange
feeling of being double; something more, also, impossible to
analyse--the echo in a man's heart of all the sensations felt by all the
fathers and mothers of his race at a similar instant in the past.

A few weeks later he writes to his sister, giving her new