MIONOSEKI, IZUMO, July, 1896.
DEAR HENDRICK,--I have just had a most delightful letter from you. Your
letters are full of witty flashes and curious observation. As they
contain personal portraits, I make it a duty to burn them; but I regret
it--like a destruction of the artistic. The rapid sketches they give
of the most extraordinary bits of character, in the midst of the most
extraordinary and complicated life of the century, are such as only one
having your own most peculiar opportunities could make.
Do you ever reflect how much more of life you are able to see in one
month than the ordinary mortal in twenty-five years? You belong to a
purely modern school of travelling observers. Fifty years ago such
experiences were not possible--at least upon any scale to speak of.
But why is it that the most extraordinary experiences of business men
are never written? Is it because, like the scholarly specialist who
knows too much about literature to make any literature, they see too
much of the wonderful to feel it? The astounding for others is for them
the commonplace,--perhaps. Or perhaps they are not sympathetic like your
friend Macy,--have no inclination to apply the philosophy of relations
to what they see and study?
I have been sick--eyes and lungs;--and now I am in an Izumo
fishing-village to recruit. I swim in the harbour every day for about
five hours, and am burnt all over in all colours, and getting thinner
and stronger. There are no tables here, and I have to write on the floor.
With best love and felicitations,
LAFCADIO HEARN.