ng of the year 1896, to spy out the land and decide what he would
do. To his friend, Ellwood Hendrik, he writes, giving him a description
of the university, such a contrast in every way to his preconceived
ideas, with its red-brick colleges and imposing facade, a structure that
would not appear out of place in the city of Boston or Philadelphia, or
London.

After his final acceptance of the appointment, and his move to the
capital, he experienced considerable difficulty in finding a house. 21,
Tomihasa-chio, Ichigaya, situated in Ushigome, a suburb of Tokyo, was
the one he at last selected. He describes it as a bald utilitarian house
with no garden, no surprises, no delicacies, no chromatic contrasts, a
"rat-trap," compared to most Japanese houses, that were many of them so
beautiful that ordinary mortals hardly dared to walk about in them.

In telling the story of Lafcadio Hearn's life at Tokyo, it is well to
remember that he only occupied the house where his widow now lives at
Nishi Okubo for two years before his death. The bulk of his literary
work was done at 21, Tomihasa-chio.

When I was at Tokyo I endeavoured to find the house, but my ignorance of
the language, the "fantastic riddle of streets," that constitute a Tokyo
suburb, to say nothing of the difficulties besetting a stranger in
dealing with Japanese jinrikisha men, obliged me at last to abandon the
quest as hopeless. I did not even succeed in tracing the proprietor, a
_sake_-brewer, who had owned eight hundred Japanese houses in the
neighbourhood, or in locating the old Buddhist temple of Kobduera, where
Hearn spent so much of his time, wandering in the twilight of the great
trees, dreaming out of space, out of time.

The suburb of Ushigome is situated at some distance from the university.
One hour daily to go, and one to return by jinrikisha. But Hearn had one
joy; he was able to congratulate himself on the absence of visitors. Any
one who endeavoured to invade the solitude of his suburban abode must
have "webbed feet and been able to croak and spawn!"

Hearn's description of Tokyo might be placed as a pendant to his
celebrated description of New York City. To any one who has visited the
Japanese metropolis during the last five years, it is most vividly
realistic--the size of the place, stretching over miles of country; here
the quarter of the foreign embassies, looking like a well-painted
American suburb--near by an estate with quaint Chinese gates s