ut-haired Englishwoman. For
some considerable time Hearn always addressed her in Japanese. At last
one day she remarked: "You know, Mr. Hearn, I am not Japanese." "Oh,
really," was his reply, as if for the first time he had realised the
fact. From that time forward he addressed her in English.

Mr. Young was kind enough to furnish me with copies of Hearn's
editorials during the seven or eight months he worked on the staff of
the _Kobe Chronicle_. Though not coinciding with many of Hearn's
opinions and conclusions, with regard to the Japanese and their
religious and social convictions, Mr. Young gave him a free hand so far
as subject-matter and expression of opinion were concerned. None of his
contributions, however, are distinguished by Hearn's peculiar literary
qualities. The flint-edged space of the newspaper column cramped and
hampered his genius. Work with him, he declared, was always a pain, but
writing for money an impossibility.

Of course, he said, he could write, and write, and write, but the moment
he began to write for money the little special colour vanished, the
special flavour that was within him evaporated, he became nobody again;
and the public wondered why it paid any attention to so commonplace a
fool. So he had to sit and wait for the gods. His mind, however, ate
itself when unemployed. Even reading did not fill the vacuum. His
thoughts wandered, and imaginings, and recollections of unpleasant
things said or done recurred to him. Some of these unpleasant things
were remembered longer than others; under this stimulus he rushed to
work, wrote page after page of vagaries, metaphysical, emotional,
romantic--and threw them aside. Then next day he rewrote them and
rewrote them until they arranged themselves into a whole, and the result
was an essay that the editor of the _Atlantic_ declared was a veritable
illumination, and no mortal man knew how or why it was written, not even
he himself.

Two of Hearn's characteristics, both of which militated considerably
against his being an effective newspaper correspondent, were his
personal bias and want of restraint. A daily newspaper must, above all
things, be run on customary and everyday lines, but Hearn did not
possess the ordinary hold on the conventional methods and usages of
life. For instance, when treating of the subject of free libraries he
thus expresses himself: "A library is now regarded, not as a treasury of
wisdom and beauty, but as a 'dumping-grou