TŌKYŌ, June, 1899.
DEAR MITCHELL,--Your delightful letter is with me. I did not get through
that examination work till Sunday morning--had about 300 compositions
to look through: then I had nearly a day's work packing and sending
out prizes which I give myself every year--not for the best English
(for that depends upon natural faculty altogether), but for the best
_thinking_, which largely depends upon study and observation.
Lo! I am a "bloated bondholder." I am "astonished" and don't know
what to say--except that I want to hug you! About the semi-annual
meeting, though--fear I shall be far away then. Unless it be absolutely
necessary, I don't think I shall be able to come. Can't I vote by
letter, or telegraph? If you make out a form, I'll vote everything
that you want, just as you want it. (By the way, I _might_ be able to
come--in case I am not more than fifty miles off. Perhaps I can't get
to where I want to go.) We'll take counsel together. Yet, you ought to
know that I hate meetings of all kinds with hatred unspeakable.
So it was a Mrs.----, not a Mr.----. I am afraid of Scotch people.
However, that was a nice letter. Perhaps I ought to send her a copy
of "Ghostly Japan." But one never can tell the exact consequences of
yielding to these impulses of gratitude and sympathy. My friends are
enough for me--they are as rare as they are few; rare like things from
the uttermost coasts,--diamonds, emeralds and opals, amethysts, rubies,
and topazes from the mines of Golconda. What more could a fellow want?
_All_ the rest is useless even when it is not sham--which it generally
is.
Haven't been idle either. Am working on "The Poetry and Beauty
of Japanese Female Names." Got all the common names I want into
alphabetical order, and classified. Aristocratic names remain to be
done,--an awful job; but I think that I shall manage it before I get
away.
Perhaps I shall not finish that dream-work for years,--perhaps I might
finish it in a week. Depends upon the Holy Ghost. By the way, a thing
that I had never been able to finish since I began it six years ago, and
left in a drawer, has suddenly come into my present scheme,--fits the
place to a "T." So it may be with other things. I leave them to develop
themselves; and if I wait long enough, they always do.
I have heard from the Society of Authors. The American public is good to
me. I have only a very small public in England yet. I fancy at present
that I shall do well to become only an _associate_ of the Authors'
Society,--pay the fees,--and wait for fame, in order to take the
publishers privately recommended to me. We shall see.
What a tremendous, square, heavy, settled, immoveable, mountainous thing
is the English reading public! The man who can bore into the basalt of
that mass must have a diamond-drill. I tell you that I feel dreadfully
minute,--microscopic,--when I merely read the names of the roll of the
Authors' Society. Love to you from all of us,