e attractive. 'My first love'--at fourteen. I
used to write her foolish letters, and wore a lock of her hair for a
year or two....

"Well,--there is enough reminiscences for once. If you wish for any
more, little sister mine, I'll chatter another time. To-day, under
pressure of work, I have to say good-bye.

"Lovingly ever,
"LAFCADIO HEARN."

In another letter, he says, "I know Aunt Brenane made a Will; for she
told me so in Dublin, when living at 73, Upper Leeson Street; and I used
to go to an aged Lawyer with her, but I can't remember his name. I don't
think the matter is very important after all; but it might, if
accurately known, give revelation about some other matters."

CHAPTER III
TRAMORE

"If you, O reader, chance to be a child of the sea; if in
early childhood, you listened each morning and evening to
that most ancient and mystic hymn-chant of the waves, ... if
you have ever watched wonderingly, the far sails of the
fishing vessels turn rosy in the blush of sunset, or once
breathed as your native air the divine breath of the ocean,
and learned the swimmer's art from the hoary breakers....
When the long, burning summer comes, and the city roars
dustily around you, and your ears are filled with the droning
hum of machinery, and your heart full of the bitterness of
the struggle for life, does not there visit you at long
intervals in the dingy office or the crowded street some
memory of white breakers and vast stretches of wrinkled sand
and far-fluttering breezes that seem to whisper, 'Come!'?

"So that when the silent night descends, you find yourself
revisiting in dreams those ocean shores thousands of miles
away. The wrinkled sand, ever shifting yet ever the same, has
the same old familiar patches of vari-coloured weeds and
shining rocks along its level expanse: and the thunder-chant
of the sea which echoes round the world, eternal yet ever new,
is rolling up to heaven. The glad waves leap up to embrace
you; the free winds shout welcome in your ears; white sails
are shining in the west; white sea-birds are flying over the
gleaming swells. And from the infinite expanse of eternal sky
and everlasting sea, there comes to you, with the heavenly
ocean-b