of them, and hugged
them in English style, which they could not understand."

The kind dull veil that nature keeps stretched between mankind and the
Unknown was drawn again. The world became to Hearn nearly the same as it
had been before the birth of his child, and he could plan, he said, for
the boy's future. He was afraid he might be near-sighted, and wondered
if he would be intellectual. "He was so proud of him," his wife says,
"that whenever a guest, a student, or a fellow-professor called, he
would begin talking about him and his perfections without allowing his
friend to get a word in. He perfectly frightened me with a hundred toys
he brought home when he returned."

After his son's birth, Hearn naturally became still more anxious to have
Setsu registered legally as his wife, but he was always met by official
excuses and delays. He was told that if he wished the boy to remain a
Japanese citizen he must register him in the mother's name only. If he
registered him in his own name his son became a foreigner. On the other
hand, Hearn knew that if he nationalised himself his salary would be
reduced to a Japanese level.

[Illustration: Kazuo (Hearn's Son) and his Nurse.]

"I don't quite see the morality of the reduction," he says, "for
services should be paid according to the market value at least;--but
there is no doubt it would be made. As for America, and my relatives in
England, I am married: that has been duly announced. Perhaps I had
better wait a few years and then become a citizen. Being a Japanese
citizen would, of course, make no difference whatever as to my relations
in any civilised countries abroad. It would only make some difference in
an uncivilised country,--such as revolutionary South America, where
English or French, or American protection is a good thing to have. But
the long and the short of the matter is that I am anxious about Setsu's
and the boy's interests: my own being concerned only at that point where
their injury would be Setsu's injury."

The only way out of the difficulty, he concluded, was to abandon his
English nationality and adopt his wife's family name, Koizumi. As a
prefix for his own personal use he selected the appellation of the
Province of Izumo "Yakumo" ("Eight clouds," or the "Place of the Issuing
of Clouds," the first word of the ancient, Japanese song "Ya-he-gaki").

On one of his letters he shows his sister how his name is written in
Japanese.

Mrs. Atkinson's younge