life would quicken to a joy so large, so
deep that it frightened him. But at other times there would come to him
a new, strange sadness, a shadowy and inexplicable pain.

A new day had dawned for this impressionable, ardent young spirit; he
had crossed the threshold between childhood and youth; henceforth the
"Eternal Haunter" abode with him; never might he even kiss the hem of
her garment, but hers the shining presence that, however steep and
difficult the pathway, led him at last into the "great and guarded" city
of artistic appreciation and accomplishment.

CHAPTER IV
USHAW

"Really there is nothing quite so holy as a College
friendship. Two lads, absolutely innocent of everything in
the world or in life, living in ideals of duty and dreams of
future miracles, and telling each other all their troubles,
and bracing each other up. I had such a friend once. We were
both about fifteen when separated. Our friendship began with
a fight, of which I got the worst; then my friend became for
me a sort of ideal which still lives. I should be almost
afraid to ask where he is now (men grow away from each other
so): but your letter brought his voice and face back--just as
if his ghost had come in to lay a hand on my shoulder."

St. Cuthbert's College, Ushaw, is situated on a slope of the Yorkshire
Hills, near Durham. In the estimation of English Roman Catholics, it
stands next to Stonyhurst as an educational establishment. Since Patrick
Lafcadio Hearn's days it has counted amongst its pupils Francis Thomson,
the poet, and Cardinal Wiseman, the archbishop, both of whom ever
retained an affectionate and respectful memory of their Alma Mater.

Lafcadio Hearn was sent there from Redhill in Surrey, arriving on
September 9th, 1863, at the age of thirteen. Mrs. Brenane is not likely
to have been a determining influence in sending him to college. For all
her narrow-minded piety, the old lady was warm-hearted and intensely
attached to Lafcadio, and must have known how unfitted he was for
collegiate life in consequence of constitutional delicacy and defective
eyesight.

We have seen, also, that she had little to do with his religious
education. In a letter written from Japan to his half-sister, Mrs.
Atkinson, Lafcadio declares that he was sent to a school "kept by a
hateful, venomous-hearted old maid," but hi