TŌKYŌ, June, 1898.
DEAR McDONALD,--I wonder if you are perfectly disgusted with my silence
and general invisibility. But perhaps you have been far too busy to
think enough about me even to say, "D--n his lying little soul!"
(which is what I would have said under like circumstances); for I have
been reading about you,--and know that you have had some sad and very
important duties to perform, of an unexpected character.
I got by the last steamer only two notices for you; they are amusing,
because they represent two entirely different religious points of view
in Methodist criticism. Perhaps you will think the favourable notice
very kindly under the circumstances.
What to say about the Manila matter I don't know. My notion is that you
will not be likely to get the furlough so soon. Events are thickening,
and looking very dark as well as strange. What most delights me
is the prospect of an Anglo-American alliance. Then will come the
world-struggle of races--British and Yankee against the Slav and his
allies. Hope we shall not see that--it will be a very awful thing,--a
vast earthquake in all the world's markets. And the Latins, curiously
enough, are being drawn together by the same sense of their future
peril. Their existence is in danger. Loti offers his services to Spain,
after having been dropt from the French navy,--not because the moral
justice of the question is understood by him, or even felt by him; but
because his blood and ancestral feelings naturally attract him to Spain
rather than to America. I should be sorry to see the best writer of
prose of any country in this world blown to pieces for his chivalrous
whim; but he is very likely to get killed if he goes into this mess. All
men of letters will feel then very sorry; and a marvellous genius will
have been thrown away for nothing--since there is no ghost of a hope for
Spain.
I shall get down to Yokohama unexpectedly, I suppose, very soon--if I
feel well enough: the weather has been so atrocious that I had fire in
my room up to last week. I hope you have not felt any the worse for
these abominable changes of temperature. Another such "spring" would
drive me wild! In spite of it I have nearly completed a sixth chapter or
essay for book Number Six. I am full of projects and suggestions; but
cannot yet decide which among the multitude are strong enough to survive
and bear development.
Ever affectionately, with faint hopes of forgiveness,