ame defined within him the thought of having beheld just such a
coast very long ago, he could not tell where, in those childish years of
which the recollections were hardly distinguishable from dreams....

Then he found himself thinking of the vague terror with which he had
listened years before, as a child, to the voice of the sea; and he
remembered that on different coasts, in different parts of the world,
the sound of surf had always revived the feeling. Certainly this emotion
was older than he was himself by thousands and thousands of centuries,
the inherited sum of numberless terrors ancestral.

The quotation set at the beginning of this chapter, taken from a
fragment entitled "Gulf Winds,"[3] shows his inspiration at its best.
Freeing himself from the trammels of journalistic work on the
_Commercial_, while cooped up in the streets of New Orleans, he recalls
the delight of the sea in connection with the Levantine sailors in the
marketplace, and breaks into a piece of poetic prose which I maintain
has not been surpassed by any English prose writer during the course of
last century.

[3] "Gulf Winds" is in print, but it is not known when and where it was
published. Dr. Gould quotes it in his book, "Concerning Lafcadio Hearn,"
published by Messrs. Fisher Unwin.

"Chita," Hearn's first work of fiction, is in no way an artistic
production; it lacks construction and the delicate touches that
constitute the skilful delineation of character; but every now and then
memories of his childhood fall across its pages, illumining them as with
sudden light. _Chita_, at the Viosca Cheniere, conquering her terror of
the sea, and learning to swim, watching the quivering pinkness of waters
curled by the breath of the morning under the deepening of the
dawn--like a far-fluttering and scattering of rose leaves; _Chita_
learning the secrets of the air, many of those signs of heaven, which,
the dwellers in cities cannot comprehend, the scudding of clouds,
darkening of the sea-line, and the shriek of gulls flashing to land in
level flight, foretelling wild weather, are but reminiscences of his own
childish existence at Tramore.

For him, as for _Chita_, there was no factitious life those days, no
obligations to remain still with every nimble nerve quivering in dumb
revolt; no being sent early to bed for the comfort of his elders; no
cruel necessity of straining eyes for long hours over grimy desks in
gloomy school-rooms, though birds