medan curse, "May God put a Hat on you!" All the
professors were obliged to stand out in the sleet and snow--no overcoats
allowed, though it was horribly cold. They were twice actually permitted
to bow down before His Majesty. Most of them got cold, but nothing more
for the nonce. "Lowell discovered one delicious thing in the Far
East--'The Gate of everlasting Ceremony.' But the ancient ceremony was
beautiful. Swallow-tails and plugs are not beautiful. My little wife
tells me: 'Don't talk like that: even if a robber were listening to you
upon the roof of the house, he would get angry.' So I am only saying to
you: 'I don't see that I should be obliged to take cold, merely for the
privilege of bowing to H. M.' Of course this is half-jest, half-earnest.
There is a reason for things--for anything except--a plug hat...."

* * * * *

As nearly as we can make out, his friend, Nishida Sentaro, died during
the course of this winter. He was an irreparable loss to Hearn,
representing, as he did, all that constituted his most delightful
memories of Japan. In his last book, "Japan, an Interpretation," he
alludes to him as the best and dearest friend he had in the country, who
had told him a little while before his death: "When in four or five
years' further residence you find that you cannot understand the
Japanese at all, then you may boast of beginning to know something about
them."

With none of the professors at the university at Tokyo does Hearn ever
seem to have formed ties of intimacy. Curiously enough, the professor of
French literature, a Jesuit priest, was to him the most sympathetic.
Hearn in some things was a conservative, in others a radical. During the
Boer War he took up the cause of the Dutch against the English, only
because he inaccurately imagined the Boers to have been the original
owners of Dutch South Africa. Protestant missionaries he detested,
looking upon them as iconoclasts, destroyers of the beautiful ancient
art, which had been brought to Japan by Buddhism. The Jesuits, on the
other hand, favoured the preservation of ancient feudalism and
ecclesiasticism. Hearn's former prejudices, therefore, on the subject of
Roman Catholicism were considerably mitigated during his residence in
Japan. He describes his landlord, the old _sake_-brewer, coming to
definitely arrange the terms of the lease of the house. When he caught
sight of Kazuo he said, "You are too pretty,--you ought to