slab was an oval cavity filled with water; two
smaller round holes for burning incense flanked the larger one. On
either side were bamboo cups in which flowers were placed. On the slab
was the inscription--

"Shogaku In-den Jo-ge Hachi-un Ko ji"--"Believing Man Similar to
Undefiled Flowers Blooming like Eight Rising Clouds, who dwells in
Mansion of Right Enlightenment."

The light was fading and the air felt bitterly cold as we stood beside
the grave; the dark clouds that had lain in ambush, as it were, in the
background, came driven across the sky by gusts of wind, swaying the
thicket of evergreens and the tall maple and plane-trees beyond the
cemetery boundary. Snowflakes began to fall, and, with the suddenness
characterising all atmospheric changes in this unstable land, a thin
coating covered the evergreens in a few seconds, and lay on the
plum-blossom in the bamboo holders, placed on the stone platform in
front of the tombstone. The "Snow Woman" (or Yuki-Onna), of whom Hearn
wrote his strange legend, seemed to touch our hearts with her cold hand,
as we turned and walked away, saddened by the thought of our kinsman,
Lafcadio Hearn, whose name was on so many English-speaking lips at the
moment, buried--an alien amongst aliens--in a Buddhist grave, under a
Japanese name, thousands of miles away from his own land, his own
people.

CONCLUSION

LAFCADIO HEARN'S was a personality and genius which people will always
judge from the extreme point of view in either direction. Most ordinary
common-sense folk, with whom he came in contact, looked upon him as an
odd, irritable, prejudiced little man, distinctly irreligious, and
rather immoral; but the elect few, admitted to his intimacy, recognised
the tender heart, luminous brain, gentlemanly breeding, and human
morality that lay hidden behind the disguise of Japanese kimono and obi,
or beneath the flannel shirt, reefer coat, and extraordinary headgear of
his New Orleans days. As to his genius, the English public, who
consistently ignored it until a few years ago, are now inclined to blow
his trumpet too lustily. He has recently been placed by critics amongst
the greatest English letter-writers; declared to be "a supreme
prose-poet," "one of those whose influence will last through the ages";
while Miss Bisland, his American biographer, has no hesitation in
locating him amongst the greater fixed stars in the literary firmament.

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