Lafcadio Hearn

y way, due to his having heard that while Hearn was writing to him in love and trust he was speaking of him " with bitterness and malevolent injustice," Dr. Gould says that except in " the pursuit of literary excellence, Hearn had no character. His was the most unresisting, most echo-like mind I have ever known. He was a perfect chameleon ; he took for the time the colour of his surroundings." 1 This probably means little more than that Hearn was abashed before Dr. Gould, and was dimly 1 G. M. G. chapter{Section 4aware of what the doctor thought of him. It was to Dr. Gould that Hearn said: " You have given me a soul" : it was of Dr. Gould that Hearn inquired, eagerly humbling himself: " If a man lives like a rat for twenty or twenty-five years he must have acquired something of the disposition peculiar to rodents, mustn't he" ? Yet even Dr. Gould, sadly compelled to accuse Hearn of having had " no romance, no love, no happiness, no interesting personal data upon which he could draw to give his imagination play, vividness, actuality, or even the semblance of reality," even Dr. Gould who lamented : " How often is the pathos of life sadly exaggerated by giving way to foolish, needless and degrading inherited instincts at the expense of the higher life and usefulness," even Dr. Gould calls Hearn an " affectionate and sweet-natured man." This is the natural man in Dr. Gould confessing that Hearn had got character. Along with this confession should be used Miss Bisl...