st child, Dorothy, was born in March, 1894. There
is an interval of exactly four months between her and her cousin Kazuo.
It is in reference to this event that the following letter was
written:--

"How sweet of you to get Mrs. or Miss Weatherall to write me the dear
news! You will be well by the time this reaches you, so that I may
venture to write more than congratulations.

"I was quite anxious about you,--feeling as if you were the only real
_fellow-soul_ in my world but one:--and birth is a thing so much more
terrible than all else in the universe--more so than death itself--that
the black border round the envelope made my heart cold for a moment. I
had forgotten the why. Now I hope you will not have any more sons or
daughters; you have three,--and I trust you will have no more pain or
trouble. As for me, I am very resolved not to become a father again.

"You will laugh at me, and perhaps think it very strange that when only
thirty-five I began to feel a kind of envy of friends with children. I
knew their troubles, anxieties, struggles; but I saw their sons grow up,
beautiful and gifted men, and I used to whisper to myself,--'But I never
shall have a child.' Then it used to seem to me that no man died so
utterly as the man without children: for him I fancied (like some folk
still really think in other lands) that death would be utter eternal
blackness. When I did, however, hear the first cry of my boy--_my_ boy,
dreamed about in forgotten years--I had for that instant the ghostly
sensation of being _double_. Just then, and only then, I did not
think,--but _felt_, 'I am TWO.' It was weird but gave me thoughts that
changed all pre-existing thoughts. My boy's gaze still seems to me a
queerly beautiful thing: I still feel I am looking at myself when he
looks at me. Only the thought has become infinitely more complicated.
For I think about all the dead who live in the little heart of
him--races and memories diverse as East and West. But who made his eyes
blue and his hair brown? And will he be like you? And will he ever see
the little cousin who has just entered the world? The other day, for one
moment, he looked just like your boy in the picture."

Mrs. Atkinson about this time went through private trials upon which it
is unnecessary to touch here. The following letter of consolation and
encouragement was written to her by her half-brother:--

"Well, you too have had your revelations,--which means deep pains. One
m