th his two boys, for
sea-bathing, that he was in his element.

The Yaidzu people had the deepest affection and respect for him, and
during the summer vacation he liked to become one of them, dressing as
they did, and living their simple patriarchal life. Indeed, he preferred
the friendship of country barbers, priests and fishermen far more than
that of college professors.

As there was no inn at Yaidzu, Hearn lodged at the house of Otokichi,
who, as well as being a fisherman, kept a fish-shop, and cooked every
description of fish in a wonderful variety of ways. Aided by Hearn's
description, we can see Otokichi's shop, its rows of shelves supporting
boxes of dried fish, packages of edible seaweed, bundles of straw
sandals, gourds for holding _sake_, and bottles of lemonade, while
surmounting all was the _kamidana_--the shelf of the gods--with its
_Daruma_, or household divinity.

Many and fanciful were his dreams as he loafed and lay on the beach at
Yaidzu, sometimes thinking of the old belief, that held some dim
relation between the dead and the human essence fleeting in the
gale--floating in the mists--shuddering in the leaf--flickering in the
light of waters--or tossed on the desolate coast in a thunder of surf,
to whiten and writhe in the clatter of shingle.... At others, as when a
boy at school, lying looking at the clouds passing across the sky, and
imagining himself a part of the nature that was living and palpitating
round him.

It is impossible in the space at my command, to examine Hearn's work at
Tokyo in detail; it consists of nine books. The first one published
after his appointment as professor of English at the university was
"Gleanings in Buddha Fields: Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East."
Though it saw the light at Tokyo in 1897, the greater part of it is said
to have been written at Kobe. Henceforth all his Japanese literary work
was but "Gleanings," gathered in the fields he had ploughed and sown at
Matsue, Kobe, Kumamoto and Kyoto. Every grain of impression, of
reminiscence, scientific and emotional, was dropped into the literary
mill.

Amongst the essays comprising the volume entitled "Gleanings in Buddha
Fields," there is nothing particularly arresting. His chapter on
"Nirvana" is hackneyed and unsubstantial, ending with the vaporous
statement that "the only reality is One; all that we have taken for
substance is only shadow; the physical is the unreal: _and the outer-man
is the ghost_.