own again and
again to Yokohama, and again and again make him smoke good cigars, drink
good wine, and eat nourishing food. Once, when the little man had, with
characteristic carelessness, forgotten to bring a great-coat, McDonald
wrapped him up in his own to send him home--an incident which Hearn
declared he would remember for its warmth of friendship until he died.
Another time, when he complained of toothache, McDonald got the navy
doctor to remove, as he thought, the primary cause. Hearn gives a
humorous account of this incident. He found that when he returned home
the wrong one had been pulled. Its character, he said, had been modest
and shrinking, the other one, on the contrary, had been Mount Vesuvius,
the last great Javanese earthquake, the tidal wave of '96, and the
seventh chamber of the Inferno, all in mathematical combination.

It was magnanimous of Hearn to dedicate "Gleanings in Buddha Fields" to
the doctor after this incident. McDonald and his genial surroundings
seemed to have thoroughly understood how to manage the little man. When
he became irritable and unreasonable they apparently took not the least
notice, and good-naturedly wheedled him back into a good temper
again--treated him, in fact, as Mr. Watkin had treated him during his
attacks of temper at Cincinnati.

So, without any real break, this friendship, as well as Mrs. Wetmore's,
lasted until the end. Since Hearn's death, Captain McDonald has loyally
stood by his widow and children, taking upon himself the self-imposed
duties of executor, collecting together scattered MS., and arranging the
sale of the copyright of his books in the United States.

CHAPTER XXIII

USHIGOME

"Every one has an inner life of his own,--which no other eye
can see, and the great secrets of which are never revealed,
although occasionally, when we create something beautiful, we
betray a faint glimpse of it--sudden and brief, as of a door
opening and shutting in the night.... Are we not all
Dopplegangers?--and is not the invisible the only life we
really enjoy?"

In spite of his railings against Tokyo, Hearn was probably happier at
Ushigome and Nishi Okubo than he had ever been during his other
sojournings in Japan, excepting always the enchanted year at Matsue.

To paraphrase George Barrow, there was day and night, both sweet things,
sun, moon, and stars, all swe