Chapter VI: Introduction (1)

"I am conscious they are only trivial," wrote Lafcadio Hearn from New Orleans in 1880 to his friend H. E. Krehbiel, speaking of the weird little sketches he was publishing from time to time in the columns of the _Daily Item_, the New Orleans newspaper which first gave him employment in the city where he spent the ten years from 1877 to 1887.

"But I fancy," he goes on, "that the idea of the fantastics is artistic. They are my impressions of the strange life of New Orleans. They are dreams of a tropical city. There is one twin-idea running through them all--Love and Death. And these figures embody the story of life here, as it impresses me. I hope to be able to take a trip to Mexico in the summer just to obtain literary material, sun-paint, tropical color, etc. There are tropical lilies which are venomous, but they are more beautiful than the frail and icy-white lilies of the North. Tell me if you received a fantastic founded upon the story of Ponce de Leon. I think I sent it in my last letter. I have not written any fantastics since except one--inspired by Tennyson's fancy fancy--

"My heart would hear her and beat,
Had it lain for a century dead--
Would start and tremble under her feet--
And blossom in purple and red."

It was this "Fantastic," published first in the _Item_ on October 21, 1880, and later re-written in more ornate style and published in the _Times-Democrat_ on April 6, 1884, under the title of "L'Amour après la Mort," which is the only one of the weird little sketches that has appeared in book form, outside of those which he himself republished in _Stray Leaves from Strange Literature_, and _Some Chinese Ghosts._

For it was this one which he sent to a friend with the deprecatory criticism that it "belonged to the Period of Gush" and the request "to burn or tear it up after reading." He had merely enclosed it to show how and when he had first used the phrase "lentor inexpressible" to which his friend had objected.

"Fortunately his correspondent--as did most of those to whom he wrote--treasured everything in his handwriting," says his biographer, Mrs. Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore, "and the fragment which bore--my impression is--the title of 'A Dead Love' (the clipping lacks the caption) remains to give an example of some of the work that bears the flaws of his 'prentice hand, before he used his tools with the assured skill of a master." And she quotes the strange, fanciful little sketch in full, with the comment: "To his own, and perhaps other middle-aged taste, 'A Dead Love' may seem negligible, but to those still young enough, as he himself then was, to credit passion with a potency not only to survive 'the gradual furnace of the world,' but even to blossom in the dust of graves, this stigmatization as 'Gush' will seem as unfeeling as always does to the young the dry and sapless wisdom of granddams. To them any version of the Orphic myth is tinglingly credible. Yearningly desirous that the brief flower of life may never fade, such a cry finds an echo in the very roots of their inexperienced hearts. The smouldering ardor of its style, which a chastened judgment rejected, was perhaps less faulty than its author believed it to be in later years."

"It was to my juvenile admiration for this particular bit of work," she goes on, "that I owed the privilege of meeting Lafcadio Hearn in the winter of 1882, and of laying the foundation of a close friendship which lasted without a break until the day of his death."

His linking of love with death in this and the other "Fantastics" was in full accord with the sombre atmosphere of the trebly stricken city to which he had come--a city with a glorious and a joyous past, but just then ruined by three horrors:--recent war, misrule under the carpet-baggers, and oft-recurring pestilence. He had come expecting much from a semi-tropical environment. He found sorrow and trouble and a wasted land; and his mood was soon in unison with the disastrous elements around him. His letter to his friend Watkin when he first came to this smitten Paradise shows how strong the impression was: "When I saw it first--sunrise over Louisiana--the tears sprang to my eyes. It was like young death--a dead bride crowned with orange flowers--a dead face that asked for a kiss. I cannot say how fair and rich and beautiful this dead South is. It has fascinated me. I have resolved to live in it; I could not leave it for that chill and damp Northern life again."

From the files of the _Item_ and the _Times-Democrat_ over a score of these "Fantastics" have been gathered, and with them certain other fanciful little sketches that seem worth preserving, though they do not deal so directly with the mystic "twin-idea of Love and Death."

In his sympathetic Introduction to Hearn's _Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist_, Mr. Ferris Greenslet deplores the loss of that collection of these "Fantastics" made by Hearn himself as one section of the book he evidently planned to publish under the title _Ephemeræ, or Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist._ Says Mr. Greenslet:

Apparently it was Hearn's intention to add to the "Floridian
Reveries" a little collection of "Fantastics," with such
savory titles as "Aïda," "The Devil's Carbuncle," "A
Hemisphere in a Woman's Hair," "The Fool and Venus," etc[1].

This group, however, is, unfortunately, lost. From the notebook labeled upon its cover "Fantastics" many leaves have been cut, and there remains only the paper on "Arabian Women."

But for the solitary copy of the files of the _Item_, preserved in the office of that paper, most of these earliest bits of original fantasy wrought by the shabby, eccentric young journalist, whose passion for exquisite words was so incomprehensible to the other "newspaper boys," would have been wholly lost.

"The modest _Item_ goes no farther than St. Louis," wrote Hearn to Krehbiel; and it was for this little two-page paper, too insignificant at that time to be preserved even in the city archives or in the public libraries, that he wrote most of the "tales of Love and Death" reproduced in this volume. Twenty-nine out of the thirty-odd are to be found only, so far as we know, in the brittle yellow pages of bound volumes of the _City Item_, from June, 1878, to December, 1881, to which we have been given access through the courtesy of the present owners of the _New Orleans Item._ The other six, some of which were rearrangements and paraphrases of earlier "Fantastics," appeared in the _Times-Democrat_, of which several nearly complete files exist in libraries.

Among these thirty-five brief but vitally imaginative sketches several are far superior to "L'Amour après la Mort."

The "Fantastics" proper and the "Other Fancies" have been grouped indiscriminately in chronological order, though differing greatly in spirit and in excellence of style. "The Little Red Kitten" and "At the Cemetery" are less labored in point of diction; but they are charming in their simplicity and unaffected tenderness. In the earlier of these little pictures his sympathy with our "poor brothers"--in this case "sisters"--of the animal world, from first to last a striking trait in his character, is beautifully expressed. There is delicate humor, too, as well as pathos, in the sketch. In the latter we have the glow of his feeling for the sorrow of a child, and the spring of his wonderful imagination which a few handfuls of sand not native to the spot evoke. In neither is there the least trace of the weird which is in so large a degree characteristic of most of the others. Slight as they are in texture, they seem to me to rise far above the more subtle and fanciful tales in the strength and beauty of simple truth to nature--to the best that was in his own nature.

But the others, notably "The Black Cupid," "The Undying One," "Aphrodite and the King's Prisoner," "The Fountain of Gold," "The Gypsy's Story," are not to be undervalued. There is a power of vision, an imaginative magnificence, a weird melody of word-music in them that grips the mind of the reader as in a vise.

"The Fountain of Gold" was later reproduced in the form of "A Tropical Intermezzo," recently given to a wider public in the pages of _Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist._ It is interesting to compare the first sketch with the finished picture. The earlier work is less dramatic, less convincing, less artistic, though full of a charm of its own. The whole design is transmuted into something immensely effective by the simple device of an equating the language of him who tells the tale.

In a less degree the same thing may be remarked in the comparison of "A Dead Love," written for the _Item_, and "L'Amour après la Mort," contributed to the _Times-Democrat._

In "The Tale of a Fan" may be traced, it seems to me, the germ of what he later expanded or meant to expand into "A Hemisphere in a Woman's Hair," which has not been found.

But it is not alone the charm that clings about all that is weird and fanciful that gives value to this early work of Hearn's. It sheds rich light upon one phase of his development and forms an essential part of his biography; and it helps to furnish proof, along with much else of varying form and excellence, that he put forth a vast deal of literary effort in the years of his stay in New Orleans before his engagement with the _Times-Democrat._

The extent and value of his work as literary editor of the _Item_ has been wholly ignored by his biographers and critics. This is due largely to the fact that the matter he selected for publication in his earlier literary career was drawn from the _Times-Democrat._ But to those who have gone carefully over the files of the _Item_ it is evident that he did far more original work for that paper than for the other. His forte was supposed by the editors of the _Times-Democrat_ to be translation, and, with the exception of some striking editorials, his work for that paper was mostly translation. Even the _Stray Leaves from Strange Literatures_ and _Some Chinese Ghosts_ belong to that category.

Besides the "Fantastics," he wrote for the _Item_ many editorials on a variety of subjects and many book reviews, dramatic criticisms, and translations both from the French and the Spanish, as well as Creole sketches and certain fanciful squibs illustrated with quaint original designs distinctly akin to those that appear in _Letters from the Raven._

But unquestionably his most remarkable contributions to the _Item_ were the "Fantastics."

From a hint given him by a traveler's tale, by a trivial street incident, by a couplet of verse, or a carven cameo in an antique shop, by an old legend, or a few grains of sand, his genius was able to create a series of vivid and mystical visions, more real to him and to his readers than the political contests or the personal gossip which fill the surrounding columns of print.

To discover these vibrant bits of poesy in their commonplace setting is like finding rare and glorious orchids in the midst of the crowfoots and black-eyed Susans that crowd the banquettes and gutters' edges of our New Orleans streets.

"He hated the routine work, and was really quite lazy about it," testifies Colonel John W. Fairfax, former owner of the _Item_, and Hearn's first New Orleans employer and friend. At the age of seventy-two this genial old gentleman recalls many incidents of his association with the eccentric young literary editor who for three years and a half aided him and Mark F. Bigney in the task of filling the columns of the unpretentious little paper which he had purchased from the printers and tramp journalists who were its original owners--for the _Item_ was started on a cooperative, profit-sharing basis.

"Hearn was really quite lazy about his regular work," Colonel Fairfax insists. "We had to prod him up all the time--stick pins in him, so to speak. But when he would write one of his own little fanciful things, out of his own head--dreams--he was always dreaming--why, then he would work like mad. And people always noticed those little things of his, somehow, for they were truly lovely, wonderful. 'Fantastics' he called them."

It was Colonel Fairfax who deserves the credit of "discovering" Hearn in New Orleans, when he applied, shabby and half-starved, at the _Item_ office for a job, just after he had written to his friend Watkin, June 14, 1878: "Have been here seven months and never made one cent in the city. No possible prospect of doing anything in this town now or within twenty-five years."

But his next letter (undated) says--and it is evident that the impression he had made had secured him more than he had asked for:

"The day after I wrote you, I got a position (without asking for it) as assistant editor on the _Item_, at a salary considerably smaller than that I received on the _Commercial_, but large enough to enable me to save half of it."

And the old gentleman appears still to regard the Hearn he recalls with the sort of half-admiring, half-contemptuous, wholly marveling affection which a fine healthy turkey-cock would feel for the "ugly duckling" just beginning to reveal himself of the breed of swans.

Apparently he and Bigney allowed Hearn considerable latitude in his choice and treatment of subject. The three years of his work in their employ show bolder and more varied editorial comment, as well as five or six times as many "Fantastics" as are to be found in the six years of his work under the Bakers, and prove that the quality of his work was already fine enough to justify Page Baker's choice of him for a place on the staff of "the new literary venture."

How these strange little blossoms of Hearn's genius attracted the admiration of lovers of beauty and won him fame and friends among professional men and scholars is told most vividly in the words of Dr. Rodolph Matas, now a surgeon of international reputation, who was Hearn's friend and early foresaw his fame.

In those days [says he] I was not so busy as I am now, and
had more time to read the books I enjoyed, and to spend long
hours in talk with Hearn.

It was in the early eighties, I remember, that I knew him
first. Whitney, of the _Times-Democrat_, was a friend of
mine, and I asked him one day: "Who writes those wonderful
things--translations, weird sketches, and remarkable
editorials--in your paper?" And he told me, "A queer little
chap, very shy--but I'll manage for you to meet him."

I became editor of the _New Orleans Medical and Surgical
Journal_ in 1883, and it must have been shortly before this
that I first met Hearn. He was astonished to find that I
knew him so well--but then, you see, I had been reading
these "Fantastics" and his wonderful book-reviews and
translations, and his editorials on all sorts of unusual
subjects, for a long time.

He often came to me to get information about medical
points which he needed in some of his work. He was deeply
interested in Arabian studies at that time, and I was
able to give him some curious facts about the practice of
medicine among the Arabs, which happened to be exactly what
he was seeking. Not only did he read every book on Arabia
which he could find, but he actually practiced the Arabic
script, and he used to write me fantastic notes, addressing
me as if I had been an Arab chief.

His capacity for reading swiftly--for getting the heart
out of a book--was amazing. While others read sentences,
he read paragraphs, chapters--in the time it would take an
ordinary reader to finish a chapter, he would have read
the whole book. And this in spite of his defective vision.
With his one great near-sighted eye roving over the page,
he seemed to absorb the meaning of the author--to reach his
thought and divine his message with incredible rapidity.
He knew books so well--knew the habits of thought of their
writers, the mechanics of literature. His power of analysis
was intuitive. Swiftly as he read, it would be found on
questioning him afterward that nothing worth while had been
over-looked, and he could refer back and find any passage
unerringly.

Both in taste and temperament he was morbid, and in many
respects abnormal--in the great development of his genius
in certain directions, and also in his limitations and
deficiencies in other lines. His nature towered like a
cloud-topping mountain on one side, while on others it
was not only undeveloped--it was a cavity! I understood
this better, perhaps, than others of his friends, knowing
as I did the pathology of such natures, and for that
reason our intercourse was singularly free and candid,
for Hearn revealed himself to me with a frankness and
unconventionality which would have startled another. I
never judged him by conventional standards. I listened
to the brilliant, erratic, intemperate outpourings of
his mind, aware of his eccentricities without allowing
them to blind me to the beauty and value of his really
marvelous nature. For example, he would bitterly denounce
his enemies--or fancied enemies--for he had an obsession
of persecution--in language that was frightful to listen
to--inventing unheard-of tortures for those whom he deemed
plotters against him. Yet in reality he was as gentle and as
tender-hearted as a woman--and as passionately affectionate.
But there was an almost feminine jealousy in his nature,
too, and a sensitiveness that was exaggerated to a degree
that caused him untold suffering. He was singularly and
unaffectedly modest about his work--curiously anxious to
know the real opinion of those whose judgment he valued,
on any work which he had done, while impatient of flattery
or "lionizing." Yet with all his modesty he had, even
in those days of his first successes, a high and proud
respect for his work. He was too good a critic not to know
his value; and he consistently refused to cheapen it by
allowing it to appear in any second-rate medium--I mean,
any of his literary work, as distinct from the journalistic
matter he did for his daily bread. Nor would he lower
himself by criticizing any book or poem which he did not
consider worthy of his opinion. Thus he was obliged, in
spite of his kind nature, which impelled him to do anything
which a friend might ask, to refuse to criticize books of
inferior worth, and he was very firm and dignified about
such refusals. He would not debase his pen by using it on
inferior subjects.

At the time when I knew him best, he was already highly
esteemed by many who appreciated his great gifts, while
others regarded him with some jealousy and would gladly have
seen him put down. From the first I recognized his genius
so clearly that he used to laugh at me for my faith in his
future fame. For I would often predict that he would be
known to future generations as one of the great writers of
the century, though it was easy to foresee that he would not
receive full recognition in his lifetime.

And though he used to smile at my enthusiasm, he himself
felt, I am convinced, the same certainty as to the quality
of his gift, the ultimate fame that Fate held for him. It
was this that made him regard his work with a reverent
humility, and it was this that accounted in some degree for
his extraordinary shyness, which made him shrink from being
lionized or exploited by those who, at that time, would have
been glad enough to entertain him and make much of him,
for he had already begun to be quite an important literary
person in the circles here which cared for such matters.

But Hearn fled from social attentions as from the plague.
He was by nature suspicious and he loathed flattery and
pretense.

His sense of literary and artistic values was singularly
sure, and it has always seemed to me that it was
intuitive--a sort of instinctive feeling for beauty and
truth.

When he became acquainted with the work of Herbert
Spencer--through the enthusiasm of his friend Ernest Crosby
for that philosopher and for the Darwinian theory of
evolution, which we were all discussing with deep interest
at that time--he used that thinker's philosophy as a
foundation upon which to base his marvelous speculations as
to the ultimate development of the race and the infinite
truths of the universe. I used to listen in wonder while
he talked by the hour along these lines, weaving the most
beautiful and imaginative visions of what might be. For his
theory of the universe was essentially literary rather than
philosophical.

It was to Dr. Matas that "Chita" was dedicated, not only as a token of the warm admiration and affection which the sensitive soul of Hearn felt for the broad-minded young physician, but as an acknowledgment of the help Dr. Matas had given him in gathering the material for the setting of the story. The physician's cosmopolitan rearing and his scattered practice among French, Spanish, and even Filipino settlers in the region about Grand' Isle enabled him to give Hearn in each instance the appropriate phraseology in the dialect of the people he was writing about.

Some of the "Other Fancies" are noteworthy for special reasons. In "A River Reverie" one gets an odd glimpse of Mark Twain reflected in the personality of the dream-haunted Irish-Greek, who handles the visit of the humorist in so unjournalistic a way. How ruthlessly his recollections of the old river-captain would be excised by the copy-reader of the modern newspaper!

In several of these sketches Hearn gives a picture of the horrors of yellow fever which shows even more clearly than his letters how vivid was the impression made on him by that summer of 1878, when he passed through the epidemic with only an attack of the dengue, a mild form of the tropical plague.

Others of these sketches show the influence of contact with Spanish friends and acquaintances, and the strong longing for the tropics, which seems to have lasted all his life.

"Aïda" is, of course, merely the story of the well-known opera by Verdi. Hearn wrote for the _Item_, during the opera season of 1880, brief outlines like this of the stories of several of the operas played at the French Opera House that winter: this one is included in this volume only because it is mentioned among the "Fantastics" in the list given in Dr. George Gould's book, _Concerning Lafcadio Hearn._ "Hiouen-Thsang" is included for the same reason, as it is not strictly a "Fantastic."

"The Devil's Carbuncle," besides being a translation, is not a "Fantastic," according to Hearn's definition of the term: it is not a story of love and death; it is a story of greed and death.

"The Post-Office" is much more breezy and out-of-doors than any of the "Fantastics," and does not properly belong with them; but it is so charming a sketch of his visit to Grand' Isle, the place which gave him the material for his first successful original story, "Chita," that it seems worth while to reproduce it.

It has been almost a commonplace, with writers treating of Hearn's development, to date from this visit the beginnings of his interest in far-away lands. But they mistake in assigning a late date for his delight in the tropics and his longing for Japan. His articles in the _Item_ years before go to show that from the first it was almost an instinct with him to yearn for glimpses of the Orient and the Spanish Main. Throughout the volume of the _Item_ for 1879 the column headed "Odds and Ends" reveals his interest in Spanish-American countries. It is generally shown in translated citations or quotations from _La Raza Latina._

In finding these cameo-like studies buried in the pages of the newspapers of a generation ago, and in identifying them beyond question as Hearn's, I have been aided by Mr. John S. Kendall and by my daughter, Ethel Hutson, who have been for some years gathering traces of Hearn's journalistic activities in New Orleans. To Mr. C. G. Stith, of the _New Orleans Item_, we are indebted for the finding of the first two or three of the "Fantastics" in that paper, after we had located Hearn's work in the _Times-Democrat._

To one who has studied his way of expressing himself in his imaginative writings the internal evidence would be quite enough to prove that these "Fantastics" were woven in the brain-cells of Lafcadio Hearn. But in addition to this we have the avowal of the editor-in-chief of the _Item_, elicited by the praise of the _Claiborne Guardian._[2]

The author named them only "Fantastics." We have given to each its separate title, as indicated by the most striking feature in the story. To the "Other Fancies," which we have included in the collection, he gave the titles under which they now appear, and some of them he signed.

CHARLES WOODWARD HUTSON

[Footnote 1: Among the papers held by Dr. Gould is a memorandum of some of the "Fantastics," thus numbered:

1. Aïda.
2. Hiouen-Thsang.
3. El Vómito.
4. The Devil's Carbuncle.
5. A Hemisphere in a Woman's Hair.
6. The Clock.
7. The Fool and Venus.
8. The Stranger.

Two of these--"Aïda" and "Hiouen-Thsang"--were published under those titles. Some of the others we think we have identified among the pieces entitled simply "Fantastics" at the time of their publication. "The Fool and Venus" may have been meant for what we ave called "Aphrodite and the King's Prisoner." "The Clock" we have not found.]

[Footnote 2: In the issue of Sunday evening, September 19, 1880, appears this excerpt, with the editor's comment:

FANTASTICS

_Claiborne Guardian_

We do not remember to have ever read a series of more
brilliant articles than those which occasionally appear
under the above heading in that bright little paper THE CITY
ITEM. The writer, with a perfect command of the language,
unites a vivid imagination. His fancy is as exuberant as the
growth of tropical flowers, and is as pleasing as glowing
and fascinating. We always turn to the editorial page for
'Fantastics' when we receive the ITEM. Would it be out of
place to inquire who this rare genius is? It can't be that
grave and dignified gentleman, M. F. Bigney. We have read
many excellent sketches from his pen, but never anything
like these pieces. Who is the writer that adds another to
the many attractions of our prosperous and worthy exchange?

"We gladly comply," replies the ITEM editorially, "with
the request of our appreciative Claiborne contemporary.
The writer of 'Fantastics' is Mr. Lafcadio Hearne [_sic_],
who has been our assistant co-laborer for nearly three
years.--ED. ITEM."
]

FANTASTICS AND OTHER FANCIES

ALL IN WHITE[1]

"No," he said, "I did not stay long in Havana. I should think it would be a terrible place to live in. Somehow, in spite of all the tropical brightness, the city gave me the idea of a huge sepulchre at times. One feels in those narrow streets as though entombed. Pretty women?--I suppose so, yes; but I saw only one. It was in one of the quaint streets which make you think that the Spaniards learned to build their cities from the Moors--a chasm between lofty buildings, and balconies jutting out above to break the view of the narrow strip of blue sky. Nobody was in the street except myself; and the murmur of the city's life seemed to come from afar, like a ghostly whisper. The silence was so strange that I felt as if walking on the pavement of a church, and disturbing the religious quiet with my footsteps. I stopped before a great window--no glass, but iron bars only;--and behind the iron bars lay the only beautiful woman I saw in Havana by daylight. She could not have been more than eighteen--a real Spanish beauty--dark, bewitching, an oval face with noble features, and long eyelashes resting on the cheek. She was dead! All in white--like the phantom bride of the German tradition--white robes, white satin shoes, and one white tropical flower in her black hair, shining like a star. I do not know what it was; but its perfume came to me through the window, sweet and strange. The young woman, sleeping there all in white, against the darkness of the silent chamber within, fascinated me. I felt as if it was not right to look at her so long; yet I could not help it. Candles were burning at her head and feet; and in the stillness of the hot air their yellow flames did not even tremble. Suddenly I heard a heavy tramping at the end of the street. A battalion of Spanish soldiers were coming towards me. There was no means of proceeding; and I had no time to retreat. The street was so narrow that I was obliged to put my back to the wall in order to let them pass. They passed in dead silence--I only heard the tread of the men, mechanically regular and heavily echoing. They were all in white. Every man looked at me as he passed by; and every look was dark, sinister, suspicious. I was anxious to escape those thousands of Spanish eyes; but I could not have done it without turning my face to the wall. I do not think one of them looked at the dead girl at all; but each one looked at me, and forced me to look at him. I dared not smile,--not one of the swarthy faces smiled. The situation became really unpleasant. It was like one of those nightmares in which you are obliged to witness an endless procession of phantoms, each one of whom compels you to look at it. If I had even heard a single "Carajo Americano," I should have felt relieved; but all passed me in dead silence. I was transpierced by the black steel of at least two thousand Spanish eyes, and every eye looked at me as if I had been detected in some awful crime. Yet why they did not look at that window instead of looking at me, I cannot tell. After they had passed, I looked an instant at the dead girl again; and it seemed to me that I saw the ghost of a smile--a cynical, mocking smile about her lips. She was well avenged--if her consecrated rest had been disturbed by my heretic eyes. I can still smell the white flower; and I can see even the silk stitches in the white satin shoes--the motionless yellow tongues of the candles--the thin dead face that seemed to smile, and the thousand sinister faces that smiled not, and dared me to smile."

THE LITTLE RED KITTEN[2]

The kitten would have looked like a small red lion, but that its ears were positively enormous--making the head like one of those little demons sculptured in mediæval stonework which have wings instead of ears. It ate beefsteak and cockroaches, caterpillars and fish, chicken and butterflies, mosquito-hawks and roast mutton, hash and tumble-bugs, beetles and pigs' feet, crabs and spiders, moths and poached eggs, oysters and earthworms, ham and mice, rats and rice pudding--until its belly became a realization of Noah's Ark. On this diet it soon acquired strength to whip all the ancient cats in the neighborhood, and also to take under its protection a pretty little salmon-colored cat of the same sex, which was too weak to defend itself and had been unmercifully mauled every night before the tawny sister enforced reform in the shady yard of the old Creole house. The red kitten was not very big, but was very solid and more agile than a monkey. Its flaming emerald eyes were always watching, and its enormous ears always on the alert; and woe to the cat who dared approach the weak little sister with hostile intentions. The two always slept together--the little speckled one resting its head upon the body of its protector; and the red kitten licked its companion every day like a mother washing her baby. Wherever the red kitten went the speckled kitten followed; they hunted all kinds of creeping things together, and even formed a criminal partnership in kitten stealing. One day they were forcibly separated; the red kitten being locked up in the closet under the stairs to keep it out of mischief during dinner hours, as it had evinced an insolent determination to steal a stuffed crab from the plate of Madame R. Thus temporarily deprived of its guide, philosopher, and friend, the speckled kitten unfortunately wandered under a rocking-chair violently agitated by a heavy gentleman who was reading the "Bee"; and with a sharp little cry of agony it gave up its gentle ghost. Everybody stopped eating; and there was a general outburst of indignation and sorrow. The heavy gentleman got very red in the face, and said he had not intended to do it. "Tonnerre d'une pipe;--nom d'un petit bonhomme!"--he might have been a little more careful!... An hour later the red kitten was vainly seeking its speckled companion--all ears and eyes. It uttered strange little cries, and vainly waited for the customary reply. Then it commenced to look everywhere--upstairs, downstairs, on the galleries, in the corners, among the shrubbery, never supposing in its innocent mind that a little speckled body was lying far away upon a heap of garbage and ashes. Then it became very silent; purring when offered food, but eating nothing.... At last a sudden thought seemed to strike it. It had never seen the great world which rumbled beyond the archway of the old courtyard; perhaps its little sister had wandered out there. So it would go and seek her. For the first time it wandered beyond the archway and saw the big world it had never seen before--miles of houses and myriads of people and great cotton-floats thundering by, and great wicked dogs which murder kittens. But the little red one crept along beside the houses in the narrow strip of shadow, sometimes trembling when the big wagons rolled past, and sometimes hiding in doorways when it saw a dog, but still bravely seeking the lost sister.... It came to a great wide street--five times wider than the narrow street before the old Creole house; and the sun was so hot, so hot. The little creature was so tired and hungry, too. Perhaps somebody would help it to find the way. But nobody seemed to notice the red kitten, with its funny ears and great bright eyes. It opened its little pink mouth and cried; but nobody stopped. It could not understand that. Whenever it had cried that way at home, somebody had come to pet it. Suddenly a fire-engine came roaring up the street, and a great crowd of people were running after it. Then the kitten got very, very frightened; and tried to run out of the way, but its poor little brain was so confused and there was so much noise and shouting.... Next morning two little bodies lay side by side on the ashes--miles away from the old Creole house. The little tawny kitten had found its speckled sister.

THE NIGHT OF ALL SAINTS[3]

The Night of All Saints--a night clear and deep and filled with a glory of white moonlight.

And a low sweet Wind came up from the West, and wandered among the tombs, whispering to the Shadows.

And there were flowers among the tombs.

They looked into the face of the moon, and from them a thousand invisible perfumes arose into the night.

And the Wind blew upon the flowers until their soft eyelids began to close and their perfume grew fainter in the moonlight. And the Wind sought in vain to arouse them from the dreamless sleep into which they were sinking.

For the perfume of a flower is but the presence of its invisible soul; and the flowers drooped in the moonlight, and at the twelfth hour they closed their eyes forever and the incense of their lives passed away from them.

Then the Wind mourned awhile among the old white tombs; and whispered to the cypress trees and to the Shadows, "Were not these offerings?"

And the Shadows and the cypresses bowed weirdly in mysterious reply. But the Wind asked, "To Whom?" And the Shadows kept silence with the cypresses.

Then the Wind entered like a ghost into the crannies of the white sepulchres, and whispered in the darkness, and coming forth shuddered and mourned.

And the Shadows shuddered also; and the cypresses sighed in the night.

"It is a mystery," sobbed the Wind, "and passeth my understanding. Wherefore these offerings to those who dwell in the darkness where even dreams are dead?"

But the trees and the Shadows answered not and the hollow tombs uttered no voice.

Then came a Wind out of the South, murmuring to the orange groves, and lifting the long tresses of the palms with the breath of his wings, and bearing back to the ancient place of tombs the souls of a thousand flowers. And the Wind of the South whispered to the souls of the flowers, "Answer, little spirits, answer my mourning brother."

And the flower-souls answered, making fragrant all the white streets of the white city of the dead:

"We are the offerings of love bereaved to the All-loving--the sacrifices of the fatherless to the All-father. We know not of the dead--the Infinite secret hath not been revealed to us; we know only that they sleep under the eye of Him who never sleeps. Thou hast seen the flowers die; but their perfumes live in the wings of the winds and sweeten all God's world. Is it not so with that fragrance of good deeds, which liveth after the deed hath been done--or the memories of dead loves which soften the hearts of the living?"

And the cypresses together with the Shadows bowed answeringly; and the West Wind, ceasing to mourn, spread his gauzy wings in flight toward the rising of the sun.

The moon, sinking, made longer the long shadows; the South Wind caressed the cypresses, and, bearing with him ghosts of the flowers, rose in flight toward the dying fires of the stars.

THE DEVIL'S CARBUNCLE[4]

Ricardo Palma, the Lima correspondent of _La Raza Latina_,
has been collecting some curious South American traditions
which date back to the Spanish Conquest. The following
legend, entitled "El Carbunclo del Diablo," is one of these:

When Juan de la Torre, one of the celebrated Conquistadores, discovered and seized an immense treasure in one of the huacas near the city of Lima, the Spanish soldiers became seized with a veritable mania for treasure-seeking among the old forts and cemeteries of the Indians. Now there were three ballesteros belonging to the company of Captain Diego Gumiel, who had formed a partnership for the purpose of seeking fortunes among the huacas of Miraflores, and who had already spent weeks upon weeks in digging for treasure without finding the smallest article of value.

On Good Friday, in the year 1547, without any respect for the sanctity of the day--for to human covetousness nothing is sacred--the three ballesteros, after vainly sweating and panting all morning and afternoon, had not found anything except a mummy--not even a trinket or bit of pottery worth three pesetas. Thereupon they gave themselves over to the Father of Evil--cursing all the Powers of Heaven, and blaspheming so horribly that the Devil himself was obliged to stop his ears with cotton.

By this time the sun had set; and the adventurers were preparing to return to Lima, cursing the niggardly Indians for the unpardonable stupidity of not having been entombed in state upon beds of solid gold or silver, when one of the Spaniards gave the mummy so ferocious a kick that it rolled a considerable distance. A glimmering jewel dropped from the skeleton, and rolled slowly after the mummy.

"Canario!" cried one of the soldiers, "what kind of a taper is that? Santa Maria! what a glorious carbuncle!"

And he was about to walk toward the jewel, when the one who had kicked the corpse, and who was a great bully, held him back with the words:

"Halt, comrade! May I never be sad if that carbuncle does not belong to me; for it was I who found the mummy!"

"May the Devil carry thee away! I first saw it shine, and may I die before any other shall possess it!"

"Cepos quedos!" thundered the third, unsheathing his sword, and making it whistle round his head. "Sol am nobody?"

"Caracolines! Not even the Devil's wife shall wring it from me," cried the bully, unsheathing his dagger.

And a tremendous fight began among the three comrades.

The following day some Mitayos found the dead body of one of the combatants, and the other two riddled with wounds, begging for a confessor. Before they died they related the story of the carbuncle, and told how it illumined the combat with a sinister and lurid light. But the carbuncle was never found after. Tradition ascribes its origin to the Devil; and it is said that each Good Friday night travelers may perceive its baleful rays twinkling from the huaca Juliana, rendered famous by this legend.

LES COULISSES[5]

SOUVENIRS OF A STRAKOSCH OPERA NIGHT

Surely it cannot have been a poet who first inspired the popular mind with that widely spread and deeply erroneous belief that "behind the scenes" all is hollow mockery and emptiness and unsightliness;--that the comeliness of the pliant limbs which move to music before the starry row of shielded lights is due to a judicious distribution of sawdust; and that our visions of fair faces are created by the magic contained in pots of ointment and boxes of pearl powder of which the hiding-places are known only to those duly initiated into the awful mysteries of the Green Room.

No; the Curtain is assuredly the Veil which hides from unromantic eyes the mysteries of a veritable Fairy-World--not a fairyland so clearly and sharply outlined as the artistic fantasies of Christmas picture-books, but a fairyland of misty landscapes and dim shadows and bright shapes moving through the vagueness of mystery. There is really a world of stronger enchantment behind than before the scenes; all that movement of white limbs and fair faces--that shifting of shadowy fields and plains, those changing visions of mountain and wold, of towers that disappear as in tales of knight-errantry, and cottages transformed into palaces as in the "Arabian Nights"--is but a small part of the great wizard-work nightly wrought by invisible hands behind the Curtain. And when, through devious corridors and dimly-lighted ways--between rows of chambers through whose doors one catches sudden glimpses of the elves attiring in purple and silver, in scarlet and gold, for the gaslit holiday among canvas woods and flowing brooks of muslin, mystic, wonderful--thou shalt arrive within the jagged borders of the Unknown World itself to behold the Circles of bright seats curving afar off in atmospheres of artificial light, and the Inhabitants of those Circles become themselves involuntary Actors for the amusement of the lesser audience, then verily doth the charm begin. There is no disillusion as yet. The Isis of the drama has lifted her outer veil; but a veil yet more impenetrable remains to conceal the mystery of her face. The Heart of all that Mimic Life--mimic yet warm and real--throbs about thee, but dost thou understand its pulsations? Thou art in the midst of a secret, in the innermost chamber of the witch-workers--yet the witchcraft remains. Thou hast approached too near the Fata Morgana of theatrical enchantment--all has vanished or tumbled into spectral ruin. Fragments of castles and antiquated cities--torn and uneven remnants of pictures of various centuries huddled together in mystic anachronism--surround and overshadow thee; but to comprehend that harmonious whole, thou must retire to the outer circles of the shining temple, before the tall Veil. About thee it is a world wrought of many broken worlds;--a world of picturesque ruin like the moon in heaven--a world of broken lights and shadows and haunted glooms--a wild dream--a work of goblinry. Content thyself, seek not disillusion; for to the gods of this mysterious sphere human curiosity is the greatest of abominations. Satisfy thyself with the knowledge that thou art in Fairyland; and that it is not given to mortals to learn all the ways of elves. What though the woods be mockeries, and the castles be thinner than Castles of Spain, and the white statues fair Emptinesses like the elf women of Northern dreams?--the elves and gnomes and fairies themselves are real and palpable and palpitant with the ruddy warmth of life.

Perhaps thou thinkest of those antique theatres--marble cups set between the breasts of sweetly-curving hills, with the cloud-frescoed dome of the Infinite for a ceiling, and for scenery nature's richest charms of purple mountain and azure sea and emerald groves of olive. But that beautiful materialism of the ancient theatre charmed not as the mystery of ours--a mystery too delicate to suffer the eye of Day;--a mystery wrought by fairies who dare only toil by night. One sunbeam would destroy the charm of this dusky twilight world. Strange! how the mind wanders in this strange place! Yet it is easier to dream of two thousand years ago than to recollect that thou livest in the material present--that only a painted ceiling lies between thy vision and the amethystine heaven of stars above, and that only a wall of plastered brick separates thee from the streets of New Orleans or the gardens westward where the bananas are nodding their heads under the moon. For the genii of this inner world are weaving their spells about thee. Figures of other centuries pass before thy eyes, as in the steel mirror of a wizard: lords of Italian cities gorgeous as Emperor-moths, captains of free companies booted and spurred, phantoms, one may fancy, of fair women whose portraits hang in the Uffizi Gallery, and prelates of the sixteenth century. Did Macbeth's witches ever perform greater magic than this?--a series of tableaux after Racinet animated by some elfish art? If the human character of the witchery does not betray itself by a pretty anachronism!--some intermingling of the costumes of the sixteenth century with those of the seventeenth, a sacrifice of history to the beauty of woman--the illusion remains unbroken. Thou art living, by magic, in the age of Lorenzo di Medici; and is it strange that they should address thee in the Italian tongue?

There is an earthquake of applauding, the Circles of seats are again hidden, and this world of canvas and paint is tumbling about thy ears. The spell is broken for a moment by Beings garbed in the everyday attire of the nineteenth century, who have devoted themselves to the work of destruction and reconstruction--to whom dreamers are an abomination and idlers behind the scenes a vexation of spirit. Va t'en, inseq' de bois de lit!

Aye, thou mayst well start!--thou hast seen her before. Where?--when? In a little French store, not very, very far from the old Creole Opera House. This enchantment of the place has transformed her into a fairy. Ah, thou marvelest that she can be so pretty; nor Shakespeare's Viola nor Gautier's Graciosa were fairer to look upon than this dream of white grace and pliant comeliness in the garb of dead centuries. And yet another and another Creole girl--familiar faces to the dwellers in the Quaint Places of New Orleans. What is the secret of that strange enchantment which teaches us that the modest everyday robe of black merino may be but the chrysalis-shell within which God's own butterflies are hidden?

Suddenly through the motley rout of princes and princesses, of captains and conspirators, of soldiers and priests, of courtiers and dukes, there comes a vision of white fairies; these be the Damosels of the Pirouette. Thou mayest watch them unobserved; for the other beings heed them not; Cophetua-like, the King in his coronation robes is waltzing with a pretty Peasant Girl; and like Christina of Spain, the Queen is tête-à-tête with a soldier. The dancers give the impression of something aerial, ethereal, volatile--something which rests and flies but walks not--some species of splendid fly with wings half-open. The vulgar Idea of Sawdust vanishes before the reality of those slender and pliant limbs. They are preparing for the dance with a series of little exercises which provoke a number of charming images and call out all the supple graces of the figure; it is Atalanta preparing to pursue Hippomenes; it is a butterfly shaking its wings; it is a white bird pluming itself with noiseless skill. But when the Terpsichorean flight is over, and the theatre shakes with applause; while the dancers shrink panting and exhausted into some shadowy hiding-place, breathing more hurriedly than a wrestler after a long bout--thou wilt feel grateful to the humane spirits who break the applause with kindly hisses, and rebuke the ignorance which seeks only its own pleasure in cries of encore.

And the Asmodean Prompter who moves the dramatic strings that agitate all these Puppets of mimic passion, whose sonorous tones penetrate all the recesses of the mysterious scenery without being heard before the footlights, resumes his faithful task; the story of harmony and tragedy is continued by the orchestra and the singers, while a Babel of many tongues is heard among the wooden rocks and the canvas trees and the silent rivers of muslin. But little canst thou reck of the mimic opera. That is for those who sit in the outer circles. The music of the many-toned Opera of Life envelops and absorbs the soul of the stranger--teaching him that the acting behind the Curtain is not all a mimicry of the Real, but in truth a melodrama of visible, tangible, sentient life, which must endure through many thousand scenes until that Shadow, who is stronger than Love, shall put out the lights, and ring down the vast and sable Curtain. And thus dreaming, thou findest thyself again in the streets, whitened by the moon! Lights, fairies, kings, and captains are gone. Ah! thou hast not been dreaming, friend; but the hearts of those who have beheld Fairyland are heavy.

THE STRANGER[6]

The Italian had kept us all spellbound for hours, while a great yellow moon was climbing higher and higher above the leaves of the bananas that nodded weirdly at the windows. Within the great hall a circle of attentive listeners--composed of that motley mixture of the wanderers of all nations, such as can be found only in New Orleans, and perhaps Marseilles--sat in silence about the lamplit table, riveted by the speaker's dark eyes and rich voice. There was a natural music in those tones; the stranger chanted as he spoke like a wizard weaving a spell. And speaking to each one in the tongue of his own land, he told them of the Orient. For he had been a wanderer in many lands; and afar off, touching the farther horn of the moonlight crescent, lay awaiting him a long, graceful vessel with a Greek name, which would unfurl her white wings for flight with the first ruddiness of morning.

"I see that you are a smoker," observed the stranger to his host as he rose to go. "May I have the pleasure of presenting you with a Turkish pipe? I brought it from Constantinople."

It was moulded of blood-red clay after a fashion of Moresque art, and fretted about its edges with gilded work like the ornamentation girdling the minarets of a mosque. And a faint perfume, as of the gardens of Damascus, clung to its gaudy bowl, whereon were deeply stamped mysterious words in the Arabian tongue.

The voice had long ceased to utter its musical syllables. The guests had departed; the lamps were extinguished within. A single ray of moonlight breaking through the shrubbery without fell upon a bouquet of flowers, breathing out their perfumed souls into the night. Only the host remained--dreaming of moons larger than ours, and fiercer summers; minarets white and keen, piercing a cloudless sky, and the many-fountained pleasure-places of the East. And the pipe exhaled its strange and mystical perfume, like the scented breath of a summer's night in the rose-gardens of a Sultan. Above, in deeps of amethyst, glimmered the everlasting lamps of heaven; and from afar, the voice of a muezzin seemed to cry, in tones liquidly sweet as the voice of the stranger--"All ye who are about to sleep, commend your souls to Him who never sleeps."

Y PORQUE[7]?

"Ah, caballero," said the Spanish lady, with a pretty play of fan and eye as she spoke, "you will not return to Mexico, the beautiful city?"

"No, señorita," replied the young man addressed, a handsome boy, about twenty-two years old, olive-skinned and graceful, with black curly hair, that had those bluish lights one sees in the plumage of a raven.

"Y porque?" asked the girl, laying aside her fan for a moment, and concentrating all the deep fire of her eyes upon his face.

The boy did not answer. He made an effort to speak, and turned his head aside. There was a momentary lull in the conversation. Suddenly he burst into tears, and left the room.