the company of all Japanese,
however, even the most highly cultivated, Hearn declared that all
occidentals felt unhappy after an hour's communion. When the first charm
of formality is over, the Japanese suddenly drifts away into his own
world, as far from this one as the star Rephan.

Mitchell McDonald, paymaster of the United States navy, stationed at
Yokohama, was apparently the only person for whom Hearn cherished a warm
human sentiment at this time beyond his immediate family circle.

In Miss Bisland's account of her "Flying Trip Around the World" she
mentions McDonald of Yokohama--in brown boots and corduroys--as
escorting her to various places of interest during her short stay in
Japan. It was apparently through her intervention that the introduction
of Lafcadio Hearn was effected, and must have taken place almost
immediately on Hearn's arrival in Japan, for he mentions McDonald in one
of his first letters to Ellwood Hendrik, and "Glimpses of Unfamiliar
Japan" was dedicated to him in conjunction with Chamberlain.

"After all I am rather a lucky fellow," he writes to McDonald, "a most
peculiarly lucky fellow, principally owing to the note written by a
certain sweet young lady, whose portrait now looks down on me from the
ceiling of No. 21, Tomihasa-chio."

Writing from Tokyo to Mrs. Wetmore, in January, 1900, he tells her that
above the table was a portrait of a young American officer in
uniform,--a very dear picture. Many a time, Hearn said, they had sat up
till midnight, talking about things.

The conversation at these dinners, eaten overlooking the stretch of
Yokohama Harbour, with the sound of the waves lapping on the harbour
wall beneath, and the ships and boats passing to and fro beyond, never
seems to have been about literary matters, which perhaps accounts for
the friendship between the two lasting so long. "Like Antaeus I feel
always so much more of a man, after a little contact with your reality,
not so much of a _literary_ man however."

The salt spray that Hearn loved so well seemed to cling to McDonald, the
breeziness of a sailor's yarning ran through their after-dinner talks,
the adventures of naval life at sea, and at the ports where McDonald had
touched during his service. He was always urging McDonald to give him
material for stories, studies of the life of the "open ports"--only real
facts--not names or dates--real facts of beauty, or pathos, or tragedy.
He felt that all the life of the open