TŌKYŌ, May, 1899.
DEAR MITCHELL,--I am still, o' nights, holding imaginary conversations
with you from the windows of a waiting train,--or listening to
wonderful stories from a delightful phantom-consul. In other words, the
impressions of my last days in Yokohama are still haunting me, and--I
fear--creating too much desire after the flesh-pots of Egypt. But in
spite of these moral and intellectual debaucheries, I have been doing
fair work,--and have in hand a ghost-story of a new and pathetically
penetrating kind.
Speaking of ghosts, the design for the cover is to be plum-blossoms
against a grey-blue sky. Can't say this is appropriate--the plum-blossom
being the moral emblem of female virtue. A lotus in a golden lake,--a
willow in rainy darkness,--would be better. But so long as I am not
consulted, exact appropriateness cannot be expected; besides, it would
be lost upon the public.
I've been thinking over all your plans and hopes for me, and I am going
to blast them unmercifully. I am quite convinced that you can do nothing
at all, until the day when I make a hit on my own spontaneous account.
_Then_ you can do anything. For the interval, I must be very careful
not to seem anxious to want attention of any sort, and do better work
than I ever did before. You will only be able to find me a literary
agent--or something of that sort,--and to talk nicely about me to
personal friends.
Give my most grateful, most sincere, most unchangeable regards to Dr.
Bedloe. I think more on his subject than I am going to put on paper just
now.
Affectionately,
LAFCADIO.
[Illustration: Beauties of the landscape--scenery between Tōkyō
and Yokohama.]