DEAR HENDRICK,--I have two unanswered letters from you--delayed in
reaching me because of my change of residence. One is only a glorious
shout of joy and sympathy;--the other describes charmingly the incidents
and sensations of your Nova Scotia days. It struck me while reading it
that the great pleasure each of you had was in watching the display of
the powers and the graces of the other, in the new field,--and from
thinking about that I began to think of my own experiences. I believe
that my happiest glows of sympathetic admiration have been felt under
somewhat like circumstances. If one's friend is a fine keen man, and
one is proud of him, what greater enjoyment than to see him face the
unfamiliar and watch him dealing with it _en maître_,--turning it this
way and that with symmetrical ease,--and winning all he wants with a
smile or a bright jest? The pleasure of watching a play is nothing to
it. And again, what _novel_ (it is always new, you know)--what novel
delight that of seeing a soldier, a man of business, or even a "man of
God," turning into a boy under the mere joyous bath of air and sun and
summer air out of town! It gives one a larger sense of humanity, and a
sort of awe at the omnipotent magic of Nature.
Well, I have a house,--a large, but, I regret to say, not beautiful
house in Tōkyō. There is no garden,--no surprises,--no
delicacies,--no chromatic contrasts: a large bald utilitarian house,
belonging to a man who owns eight hundred Japanese houses, and looks
after them all at seventy-eight years of age. He was a sake-brewer: he
is now good to the poor,--buries free of charge the head of any family
unable to pay the expenses of a Buddhist funeral. He looked at my boy
and played with him and said: "You are too pretty,--you ought to have
been a girl. When you get a little older you will be studying things you
ought not to study,--pulling girls about, and doing mischief." (Because
he used to be an old rascal himself.) But he set me thinking. I don't
think K. will be very handsome; but if he feels like his father about
pretty girls,--what shall I do with him? Marry him at 17 or 19? Or send
him to grim and ferocious Puritans that he may be taught the Way of the
Lord? I am now beginning to think that really much of ecclesiastical
education (bad and cruel as I used to imagine it) is founded upon the
best experience of man under civilization; and I understand lots of
things which I used to think superstitious bosh, and now think solid
wisdom. Don't have children (Punch's advice is the same, you know)
unless you want to discover new Americas....
In haste to give a lecture on _ballad_ literature(!).
Affectionately,
LAFCADIO.