TŌKYŌ, February, 1898.
DEAR FRIEND,--Two or three mornings ago I woke up with a vague feeling
of pleasure--a dim notion that something very pleasant had occurred
the day before. Then I remembered that the pleasure had come from your
unanswered letter. I kept putting off writing, nevertheless, day after
day, in consequence partly of the conviction that such a letter should
not be answered in a dull mood, and partly because some of my college
work this past week has been more than usually complicated--involving
a study of subjects that I thoroughly hate, but must try to make
interesting--the literature and spirit of the eighteenth century.
Well, even now, I do not quite know what to say about your letter. To
tell me that I have something of your father's spirit more than pleased
me--not because I could quite believe it, but because you did. Your
father must have been a very fine man, without any pettiness,--and
I have more smallness in me than you can suspect. How could it be
otherwise! If a man lives like a rat for twenty or twenty-five years,
he must have acquired something of the disposition peculiar to
house-rodents,--mustn't he? Anyhow, I could never agree to let you take
all the trouble you propose to take for me merely as a matter of "thank
you." I must contrive ways and means to better your proposal--not to
cancel the obligation, for that could not be done, but at least to make
you quite sure that I appreciate the extreme rarity of such friendship.
I am writing with hesitation to-day (chiefly, indeed, through a sense of
duty to you),--for I fear that you are in trouble, and that my letter is
going to reach you at the worst possible time. However, I hope you have
not lost any very dear friends by that terrible accident at Havana. I
think you told me that you were once on that ship, nevertheless; and I
fear that you must receive some bad news. My sympathies are with you in
any event.
My Boston friend is lost to me, certainly. I got a letter yesterday
from him--showing the serious effect upon friendship of taking to one's
self a wife,--a fashionable wife. It was meant to be exactly like the
old letters;--but it wasn't. Paymaster M. M. must also some day take a
wife, and ... Oh! I know what you are going to say;--they all say that!
They all assure you that they _both_ love you, and that their house
will be always open to you, etc., etc., and then--they forget all about
you--purposely or otherwise. Still, one ought to be grateful,--the
dropping is so gently and softly done.
Affectionately ever,
LAFCADIO HEARN.