"Ghostly Japan." Then later he says, he has been and
gone and done it. In fifteen minutes he had the whole thing perfectly
packed and labelled and addressed in various languages, dedicated to
Mrs. Behrens, but entrusted largely to the gods. To save himself further
trouble of mind, he told the publishers just to do whatever they pleased
about terms--and not to worry him concerning them. Then he felt like a
man liberated from prison--smelling the perfumed air of a perfect spring
day.

In 1900 came "Shadowings," dedicated to Mitchell McDonald. Some of the
fantasies at the end are full of his peculiar ghostly ideas. A statement
of his belief in previous existence occurs again and again: "The
splendour of the eyes that we worship belongs to them only as brightness
to the morning star. It is a reflex from beyond the shadow of the
Now,--a ghost light of vanished suns. Unknowingly within that
maiden-face we meet the gaze of eyes more countless than the hosts of
Heaven,--eyes otherwhere passed into darkness and dust.... Thus and only
thus do truth and delusion mingle in the magic of eyes--the spectral
past suffusing with charm ineffable the apparition of the present; and
the sudden splendour in the soul of the seer is but a flash, one
soundless sheet lightning of the infinite memory."

"Shadowings" was succeeded by a "Japanese Miscellany," dedicated to Mrs.
Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore. Here there is no reference to "Auld Lang
Syne," nor is there a touch of sentiment from beginning to end. The book
is perhaps more intensely Japanese and fanciful than any yet written,
and to occidental readers the least interesting. One of the sketches,
inspired by his sojournings in the village of Yaiduz, is a paean, as it
were, sung to the sea. Another on "Dragon-Flies" is delightful because
of its impressionist translations of Japanese poems.

"Lonesomely clings the dragon-fly to the under side of the leaf.
... Ah! the autumn rains!"

And a verse written by a mother, who, seeing children chasing
butterflies, thinks of her little one who is dead:--

"Catching dragon-flies!... I wonder where he has gone
to-day."

CHAPTER XXIV
NISHI OKUBO

"From the foot of the mountain, many are the paths ascending
in shadow; but from the cloudless summit all who climb behold
the selfsame Moon."--_Buddhist poem translated by_ Lafcadio
Hearn.