The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1904-11-13


a decided impression in that voca-
ton. When / first began to read him
if was when ne was writing for the
New Orleans Times-Democrat. His
renutation as a writer of very unique
charming style grew with the years,
and as a New York daily SAID OF him,
he was great con1uror win words.
A sketch of him in the Springfield,
(Nass.) Republican, says of him:
"He spent two or three years in
the West Indies, and then, returning
to New York City, became a part Of
the literary life. His rhapsodic prose,
something new and exotic IN Afnerl-
ca a compound of MaupasSant,
Daudet, and Lott, blended with Ihat
native bent he got from lrlsh ana
Greek ancestry, suggested TO the mar
per house that he was the man 70
white them a book on Japan and ac-
cordingly he went there in 1890, with
Charles ID. Weldon, the artist, TO make
pictures to accompany his articles Tor
Harper's Magazine. For some reason
or other he threw up his contract with
the Harpers, and his writings ABOUT
Japan appeared instead in The AT
lantic Monthly, and appeared later IN
book form as 'GlimpseS of Unfamll-
iar Japan While writing these he
was teacher of English in q large
town on the west coast; then ne
taught at KumanotO, on Kiushiu Is
land, and later became editor of for
eign newspaper at Kobe, a treaty
port All his life in Japan was stud
iously Japanese"
He published several books while
in Japan. that were much read by
people of culture. The Times-Dem-
ocrat said of him, that he was vast
of power, yet able to translate all his
strength into the delicacy of line.
| know from reading his productions
while he was residing in the South,
that they were of extraordinary at
tractiveness and richly were granish-
ed by a fertile and responsive fancy.
The great New orleans paper with
which he was connected celebrates
mis- gifts as highly appreciatiVe and
elegant continues which are worthy
of being reproduced and generally
read. 1t says among other charming
things of his rich and almost UNI
rivalled English:
What could be more beautiful than
Lafcadio Hearn's volumes from. Japan,
unless it be those works which were
written in Louisiana while the author
was at the height of his power and
under the spell Of our own Gulf, not
yet tropical but foreshadoWing the
tropics with signs of delicacy and mys-
terry that Hearn alone knew how to
read
by his one volume, 'Chita'-the
most human he ever Wrote-Lafcadio
Hearn will longest live in Louisiana.
and of all tributes paid to the state
by literary genius we know of none
so concentrated in beauty as this. The
music of the vast sea prairies he
translated into the music of words. a
prose music very distinct from the
soporitic cadence of poetry and his
paintings of the Gulf in it's many as
4 rssrI,t
vivid in the minds eye as memories
of some great sea painting, a Courbet,
Masdag, or Harrison. Yet none of
these so revealed in the opals, iri-
descent pearls, and amethysts as he"
He wrote elegant, pure and
limpid English. His pictures of ia
pan his revelation of Japanese
life and character, his exquisite
and delicate descriptions of the ORR
entail people among whom he dweit
are marvels of their kind, and through
the years have drawn out many eX-
pressions of wonder and admiration.
The Denver Republican has recently
written of him, ana l cite a striking
passage:
with his mastery gift of descrip-
ton he brought Japan closer to the
Western world than it has ever stood
before. He has shown the Western
people the great forces that rest be-
hind hitherto ineXplcable Oriental
writer's. he has Shown to be fun CT
dignity, reason and charm. In fact,
he has stood interpreter between ma
tons and religions that have long
been separated by an apparently inn
penetrable barrier of misunderstood
ing and ignorance. Having done ali
this, and having left books whose
myriad beauties of style form a strong
form a strong bid for Immortality"
His last book but just completed be-
fore he laid down his mastery pen
forever, is particularly instructive #
may judge from quotations | have
seen from it. He makes a revelation
of Japanese life that will at once in
terest and fascinate. A short and in
terpretative notice of him in the New
York Nation" says of this strange,
winsome child of genius. that begin
ming as a teacher in the South, he rose
to be lecturer on English literature in
the Imperial University in Toxic. Mar
rying a native lady and getting natur-
allied, he withdrew from the society
Of Occidental folk in Japan and be-
came a veritable sensitive plate for
impressions of the Variegated life of
Japan, past and present, visible and
invisible, in its minute details. He
was, was no other alien, the pho
tograDher Of the Japanese soul. No
one understood more thoroughly the
aesthetic asset of Japan's treasure
house"
He died at Toxic September 20
1904, of heart trouble. For year he
had been in poor health. He was
but nineteen when he came to New
Orleans and became connected with
the Times-Democrat. Later he wrote
for the magazines articles that were
noted for their grace and literary fin
ish" to quote the Nation" 1t is sur
prising that the death of so rich
unique, cunning an artifcer in the use
OF words, with such a strange. roman
tic life, and a creator of so many writ
ings of rich, rare. marvellous charm,
should not have attracted more gem
eral notice in the press in the South
especially as he began his Wondrous
career in a Gulf State and in one Of
the chief cities in our Southland. /
regret | am not in possession of ma
terial to present a description of the
writer. In the years past l read
from time to time pictures or glmpses
of his rare personality, and saw ac-
counts of his almost complete meta
morphosis in being changed into a
Japanese and marrying a woman of
that race, and other accounts as to his
life and work in that remote land, but
the articles are inaccessible to me un-
o11ll6 overhaul hn11.1 of