As one who reads Hearn's writings chronologically passes from the West Indian books to the Japanese, there is evident a remarkable change, not only of atmosphere but of tone, and, despite the continuity of the Spencerian preoccupation, of what we may perhaps call 'soul.' The tropical luxuriance of his earlier manner has been replaced by quieter tints and subtler cadences, and henceforth he gives free rein to his faculty only in rare heightened passages, which rise above the narrow, quiet stream of his habitual prose with an effect incomparably telling. In part this was the result of his sensitive perception of the peculiar color of Japanese landscape, a domesticated Nature, which loves man, and makes itself beautiful in a quiet gray-and-blue way like the Japanese women'; which must in consequence be reproduced in water-color rather than in the oils in which he had been working. In part it was the result of his greater maturity, and that assured control over his medium, which left him no impulse to mere virtuosity. But still more, one thinks as one reads the letters, it was the result of happier and more normal conditions of life. As a professor of English literature, he had something approaching a secure social and economic position. As the friend of men like Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain, and Paymaster Mitchell McDonald, some of his oddities were neutralized. (He felt always more of a man, he said, after contact with their reality, 'like Antæus, who got stronger every time his feet touched the solid ground.') As the father of three boys and the head of a Japanese household of eleven persons, he had for the first time a stake in the world. And finally in what was clearly a marriage of almost miraculous suitability for him, his restless spirit found a measure of peace. [Footnote 1: It was a happy coincidence which, within a week of the search in the Boston Public Library that revealed the literary sources of these writings, brought me from Japan, the gift of Mrs. Hearn, this very book from Hearn's own collection of works dealing with the Odd, the Queer, etc.] II