No More Learning

› Copyright 1889, by Harper &
Brothers
THR
HIRTY years ago, Last Island lay steeped in the enormous light
of even such magical days. July was dying: for weeks no
fleck of cloud had broken the heaven's blue dream of eter-
nity; winds held their breath; slow wavelets caressed the bland
brown beach with a sound as of kisses and whispers. To one
who found himself alone, beyond the limits of the village and
beyond the hearing of its voices, the vast silence, the vast light,
seemed full of weirdness. And these hushes, these transparencies,
do not always inspire a causeless apprehension: they are omens
sometimes-omens of coming tempest. Nature,-incomprehensi-
ble Sphinx! -before her mightiest bursts of rage ever puts forth
her divinest witchery, makes more manifest her awful beauty.
But in that forgotten summer the witchery lasted many
long days,- days born in rose-light, buried in gold. It was the


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height of the season. The long myrtle-shadowed village was
thronged with its summer population; the big hotel could hardly
accommodate all its guests; the bathing-houses were too few
for the crowds who flocked to the water morning and evening.
There were diversions for all: hunting and fishing parties, yacht-
ing excursions, rides, music, games, promenades. Carriage wheels
whirled flickering along the beach, seaming its smoothness noise-
lessly, as if muffled. Love wrote its dreams upon the sand.
Then one great noon, when the blue abyss of day seemed to
yawn over the world more deeply than ever before, a sudden
change touched the quicksilver smoothness of the waters— the
swaying shadow of a vast motion. First the whole sea circle
appeared to rise up bodily at the sky; the horizon curve lifted to
a straight line; the line darkened and approached,- a monstrous
wrinkle, an immeasurable fold of green water, moving swift as a
cloud shadow pursued by sunlight. But it had looked formidable
only by startling contrast with the previous placidity of the
open: it was scarcely two feet high; it curled slowly as it neared
the beach, and combed itself out in sheets of woolly foam with a
low, rich roll of whispered thunder. Swift in pursuit another
followed- a third a feebler fourth; then the sea only swayed
a little, and stilled again. Minutes passed, and the immeasur-
able heaving recommenced-one, two, three, four-seven long
swells this time; and the Gulf smoothed itself once more. Irreg-
ularly the phenomenon continued to repeat itself, each time with
heavier billowing and briefer intervals of quiet, until at last the.
whole sea grew restless, and shifted color and flickered green;
the swells became shorter and changed form. Then from horizon
to shore ran one uninterrupted heaving, one vast green swarming
of snaky shapes, rolling in to hiss and flatten upon the sand.
Yet no single cirrus speck revealed itself through all the violet
heights; there was no wind! You might have fancied the sea
had been upheaved from beneath.
And indeed, the fancy of a seismic origin for a windless surge
would not appear in these latitudes to be utterly without founda-
tion. On the fairest days a southeast breeze may bear you an
odor singular enough to startle you from sleep,-a strong, sharp
smell as of fish-oil; and gazing at the sea, you might be still
more startled at the sudden apparition of great oleaginous patches
spreading over the water, sheeting over the swells. That is, if
you had never heard of the mysterious submarine oil wells, the
―――――――
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volcanic fountains, unexplored, that well up with the eternal
pulsing of the Gulf Stream.
But the pleasure-seekers of Last Island knew there must have
been a "great blow" somewhere that day. Still the sea swelled;
and a splendid surf made the evening bath delightful. Then
just at sundown a beautiful cloud bridge grew up and arched
the sky with a single span of cottony pink vapor, that changed
and deepened color with the dying of the iridescent day. And
the cloud bridge approached, stretched, strained, and swung round
at last to make way for the coming of the gale,-even as the
light bridges that traverse the dreamy Têche swing open when
luggermen sound through their conch-shells the long, bellowing
signal of approach.
Then the wind began to blow, with the passing of July. It
blew from the northeast,- clear, cool. It blew in enormous sighs,
dying away at regular intervals, as if pausing to draw breath.
All night it blew; and in each pause could be heard the answer-
ing moan of the rising surf,- as if the rhythm of the sea molded
itself after the rhythm of the air,-as if the waving of the water
responded precisely to the waving of the wind,-a billow for
every puff, a surge for every sigh.
The August morning broke in a bright sky; the breeze still
came cool and clear from the northeast. The waves were run-
ning now at a sharp angle to the shore; they began to carry
fleeces, an innumerable flock of vague green shapes, wind-driven
to be despoiled of their ghostly wool. Far as the eye could fol-
low the line of the beach, all the slope was white with the great
shearing of them. Clouds came, flew as in a panic against the
face of the sun, and passed. All that day and through the night
and into the morning again the breeze continued from the north-
east, blowing like an equinoctial gale.
Then day by day the vast breath freshened steadily, and the
waters heightened. A week later sea-bathing had become peril-
ous; colossal breakers were herding in, like moving leviathan
backs, twice the height of a man. Still the gale grew, and the
billowing waxed mightier, and faster and faster overhead flew the
tatters of torn cloud. The gray morning of the 9th wanly lighted
a surf that appalled the best swimmers: the sea was one wild
agony of foam, the gale was rending off the heads of the waves
and veiling the horizon with a fog of salt spray. Shadowless and
gray the day remained; there were mad bursts of lashing rain.


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Evening brought with it a sinister apparition, looming through a
cloud-rent in the west-a scarlet sun in a green sky.
His san-
guine disk, enormously magnified, seemed barred like the body
of a belted planet. A moment, and the crimson spectre van-
ished, and the moonless night came.
Then the wind grew weird. It ceased being a breath; it
became a voice moaning across the world, hooting, uttering
nightmare sounds,-Whoo! -whoo! -whoo! -and with each stu-
pendous owl-cry the mooing of the waters seemed to deepen,
more and more abysmally, through all the hours of darkness.
From the northwest the breakers of the bay began to roll high
over the sandy slope, into the salines; the village bayou broad-
ened to a bellowing flood. So the tumult swelled and the turmoil
heightened until morning-a morning of gray gloom and whis-
tling rain. Rain of bursting clouds and rain of wind-blown brine
from the great spuming agony of the sea.
The steamer Star was due from St. Mary's that fearful morn-
ing. Could she come? No one really believed it,— no one. And
nevertheless men struggled to the roaring beach to look for her,
because hope is stronger than reason.
Even to-day, in these Creole islands, the advent of the steamer
is the great event of the week. There are no telegraph lines,
no telephones: the mail packet is the only trustworthy medium of
communication with the outer world, bringing friends, news, let-
ters. The magic of steam has placed New Orleans nearer to
New York than to the Timbaliers, nearer to Washington than to
Wine Island, nearer to Chicago than to Barataria Bay. And
even during the deepest sleep of waves and winds, there will
come betimes to sojourners in this unfamiliar archipelago a feel-
ing of lonesomeness that is a fear, a feeling of isolation from the
world of men,- totally unlike that sense of solitude which haunts
one in the silence of mountain heights, or amid the eternal
tumult of lofty granitic coasts: a sense of helpless insecurity.
The land seems but an undulation of the sea-bed; its highest
ridges do not rise more than the height of a man above the
salines on either side; the salines themselves lie almost level with
the level of the flood-tides; the tides are variable, treacherous,
mysterious. But when all around and above these ever-changing
shores the twin vastnesses of heaven and sea begin to utter the
tremendous revelation of themselves as infinite forces in conten-
tion. then indeed this sense of separation from humanity appalls.


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LAFCADIO HEARN
Perhaps it was such a feeling which forced men, on the tenth
day of August, eighteen hundred and fifty-six, to hope against
hope for the coming of the Star, and to strain their eyes towards
far-off Terrebonne. "It was a wind you could lie down on,” said
my friend the pilot.
"Great God! " shrieked a voice above the shouting of the
storm, "she is coming! " It was true. Down the Atchafalaya, and
thence through strange mazes of bayou, lakelet, and pass, by a
rear route familiar only to the best of pilots, the frail river craft
had toiled into Caillou Bay, running close to the main shore;
and now she was heading right for the island, with the wind aft,
over the monstrous sea. On she came, swaying, rocking, plun-
ging, with a great whiteness wrapping her about like a cloud, and
moving with her moving,-a tempest-whirl of spray; ghost-white
and like a ghost she came, for her smoke-stacks exhaled no visi-
ble smoke the wind devoured it!
The excitement on shore became wild; men shouted them-
selves hoarse; women laughed and cried. Every telescope and
opera-glass was directed upon the coming apparition; all won-
dered how the pilot kept his feet; all marveled at the madness.
of the captain.
But Captain Abraham Smith was not mad. A veteran Ameri-
can sailor, he had learned to know the great Gulf as scholars
know deep books by heart; he knew the birthplace of its tem-
pests, the mystery of its tides, the omens of its hurricanes. While.
lying at Brashear City he felt the storm had not yet reached its
highest, vaguely foresaw a mighty peril, and resolved to wait no
longer for a lull. "Boys," he said, "we've got to take her out
in spite of hell! " And they "took her out. " Through all the
peril, his men stayed by him and obeyed him. By mid-morning
the wind had deepened to a roar,-lowering sometimes to a
rumble, sometimes bursting upon the ears like a measureless
and deafening crash. Then the captain knew the Star was run-
ning a race with Death. "She'll win it," he muttered; "she'll
stand it. Perhaps they'll have need of me to-night. "
She won! With a sonorous steam chant of triumph the brave
little vessel rode at last into the bayou, and anchored hard by
her accustomed resting-place, in full view of the hotel, though
not near enough to shore to lower her gang-plank.
But she had sung her swan song. Gathering in from the
northeast, the waters of the bay were already marbling over the


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salines and half across the island; and still the wind increased its
paroxysmal power.
Cottages began to rock. Some slid away from the solid props
upon which they rested. A chimney tumbled. Shutters were
wrenched off; verandas demolished. Light roofs lifted, dropped
again, and flapped into ruin. Trees bent their heads to the
earth. And still the storm grew louder and blacker with every
passing hour.
The Star rose with the rising of the waters, dragging her
anchor. Two more anchors were put out, and still she dragged
-dragged in with the flood, twisting, shuddering, careening in
her agony.
Evening fell; the sand began to move with the
wind, stinging faces like a continuous fire of fine shot; and fren-
zied blasts came to buffet the steamer forward, sideward. Then
one of her hog-chains parted with a clang like the boom of a
big bell.
Then another! - Then the captain bade his men to
cut away all her upper works, clean to the deck. Overboard
into the seething went her stacks, her pilot-house, her cabins -
and whirled away. And the naked hull of the Star, still drag-
ging her three anchors, labored on through the darkness, nearer
and nearer to the immense silhouette of the hotel, whose hundred
windows were now all aflame. The vast timber building seemed
to defy the storm. The wind, roaring round its broad verandas,
hissing through every crevice with the sound and force of steam,
appeared to waste its rage. And in the half-lull between two ter-
rible gusts there came to the captain's ears a sound that seemed
strange in that night of multitudinous terrors - - a sound of music!
ALMOST every evening throughout the season there had been
dancing in the great hall; there was dancing that night also.
The population of the hotel had been augmented by the advent
of families from other parts of the island, who found their sum-
mer cottages insecure places of shelter; there were nearly four
hundred guests assembled. Perhaps it was for this reason that
the entertainment had been prepared upon a grander plan than
usual, that it assumed the form of a fashionable ball. And all
those pleasure-seekers, representing the wealth and beauty of
the Creole parishes,- whether from Ascension or Assumption, St.
Mary's or St. Landry's, Iberville or Terrebonne, whether inhabit-
ants of the multicolored and many-balconied Creole quarter of
the quaint metropolis, or dwellers in the dreamy paradises of the
XII-447


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LAFCADIO HEARN
Têche, mingled joyously, knowing each other, feeling in some
sort akin; whether affiliated by blood, connaturalized by caste, or
simply interassociated by traditional sympathies of class sentiment
and class interest. Perhaps in the more than ordinary merriment
of that evening something of nervous exaltation might have been
discerned, something like a feverish resolve to oppose apprehen-
sion with gayety, to combat uneasiness by diversion. But the
hours passed in mirthfulness; the first general feeling of depres
sion began to weigh less and less upon the guests: they had
found reason to confide in the solidity of the massive building;
there were no positive terrors, no outspoken fears; and the new
conviction of all had found expression in the words of the host
himself, "Il n'y a rien de mieux à faire que de s'amuser! " Of
what avail to lament the prospective devastation of cane-fields,
to discuss the possible ruin of crops? Better to seek solace in
choregraphic harmonies, in the rhythm of gracious motion and of
perfect melody, than hearken to the discords of the wild orches-
tra of storms; wiser to admire the grace of Parisian toilets, the
eddy of trailing robes with its fairy foam of lace, the ivorine
loveliness of glossy shoulders and jeweled throats, the glimmer-
ing of satin-slippered feet, than to watch the raging of the flood
without, or the flying of the wrack.
་
So the music and the mirth went on: they made joy for them-
selves, those elegant guests; they jested and sipped rich wines;
they pledged, and hoped, and loved, and promised, with never a
thought of the morrow, on the night of the tenth of August,
eighteen hundred and fifty-six. Observant parents were there,
planning for the future bliss of their nearest and dearest; moth-
ers and fathers of handsome lads, lithe and elegant as young
pines, and fresh from the polish of foreign university training;
mothers and fathers of splendid girls whose simplest attitudes
were witcheries. Young cheeks flushed; young hearts fluttered
with an emotion more puissant than the excitement of the dance;
young eyes betrayed the happy secret discreeter lips would have
preserved. Slave-servants circled through the aristocratic press,
bearing dainties and wines, praying permission to pass in terms
at once humble and officious,—always in the excellent French
which well-trained house-servants were taught to use
on such
occasions.
Night wore on: still the shining floor palpitated to the feet
of the dancers; still the pianoforte pealed, and still the violins
-
—


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sang; and the sound of their singing shrilled through the dark-
ness, in gasps of the gale, to the ears of Captain Smith, as he
strove to keep his footing on the spray-drenched deck of the
Star.
"Christ! " he muttered,-" a dance! If that wind whips round
south, there'll be another dance! But I guess the Star will stay. "
Half an hour might have passed; still the lights flamed calmly,
and the violins trilled, and the perfumed whirl went on.
And suddenly the wind veered!
Again the Star reeled, and shuddered, and turned, and began
to drag all her anchors. But she now dragged away from the
great building and its lights,-away from the voluptuous thunder
of the grand piano, even at that moment outpouring the great
joy of Weber's melody orchestrated by Berlioz, 'L'Invitation à
la Valse,' with its marvelous musical swing!
"Waltzing! ” cried the captain. "God help them! God help
us all now! The Wind waltzes to-night, with the Sea for his
partner! »
Oh the stupendous Valse Tourbillon! Oh the mighty Dancer!
One-two-three! From northeast to east, from east to south-
east, from southeast to south; then from the south he came,
whirling the Sea in his arms.
Some one shrieked in the midst of the revels,—some girl who
found her pretty slippers wet. What could it be? Thin streams
of water were spreading over the level planking, curling about
the feet of the dancers. What could it be? All the land had
begun to quake, even as but a moment before the polished floor
was trembling to the pressure of circling steps; all the building
shook now; every beam uttered its groan. What could it be?
There was a clamor, a panic, a rush to the windy night.
Infinite darkness above and beyond; but the lantern beams
danced far out over an unbroken circle of heaving and swirling
black water. Stealthily, swiftly, the measureless sea flood was
rising.
"Messieurs mesdames, ce n'est rien. Nothing serious, ladies,
1 assure you. Mais nous en avons vu bien souvent, les inonda-
*ions comme celle-ci; ça passe vite! The water will go down in
few hours, ladies: it never rises
le moindre danger, je vous dis!
what is that? »
higher than this; il n'y a pas
Allons! il n'y a- My God!


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7140
LAFCADIO HEARN
For a moment there was a ghastly hush of voices. And
through that hush there burst upon the ears of all a fearful and
unfamilar sound, as of a colossal cannonade-rolling up from the
south with volleying lightnings. Vastly and swiftly, nearer and
nearer it came, a ponderous and unbroken thunder roll, terrible as
the long muttering of an earthquake.
The nearest mainland, across mad Caillou Bay to the sea
marshes, lay twelve miles north; west, by the Gulf, the nearest
solid ground was twenty miles distant. There were boats, yes!
but the stoutest swimmer might never reach them now!
Then rose a frightful cry: the hoarse, hideous, indescribable
cry of hopeless fear; the despairing animal cry man utters when
suddenly brought face to face with Nothingness, without prepara-
tion, without consolation, without possibility of respite.
« Sauve
qui peut! " Some wrenched down the doors; some clung to the
heavy banquet tables, to the sofas, to the billiard tables; during
one terrible instant, against fruitless heroisms, against futile gen-
erosities, raged all the frenzy of selfishness, all the brutalities of
panic. And then-then came, thundering through the blackness,
the giant swells, boom on boom! One crash! the huge frame
building rocks like a cradle, seesaws, crackles. What are human
shrieks now? the tornado is shrieking! Another! chandeliers
splinter; lights are dashed out; a sweeping cataract hurls in; the
immense hall rises, oscillates, twirls as upon a pivot, crepitates,
crumbles into ruin. Crash again! the swirling wreck dissolves
into the wallowing of another monster billow; and a hundred
cottages overturn, spin in sudden eddies, quiver, disjoint, and
melt into the seething.
So the hurricane passed, tearing off the heads of the pro-
digious waves to hurl them a hundred feet in air, heaping up
the ocean against the land, upturning the woods.
Bays and
passes were swollen to abysses; rivers regorged; the sea marshes
were changed to raging wastes of water. Before New Orleans
the flood of the mile-broad Mississippi rose six feet above high-
est water-mark. One hundred and ten miles away, Donaldson-
ville trembled at the towering tide of the Lafourche. Lakes
strove to burst their boundaries. Far-off river steamers tugged
wildly at their cables, shivering like tethered creatures that hear
by night the approaching howl of destroyers. Smoke-stacks were
hurled overboard, pilot-houses torn away, cabins blown to frag-
ments.


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And over roaring Kaimbuck Pass, over the agony of Caillou
Bay, the billowing tide rushed unresisted from the Gulf, tear-
ing and swallowing the land in its course, plowing out deep-sea
channels where sleek herds had been grazing but a few hours
before, rending islands in twain, and ever bearing with it,
through the night, enormous vortex of wreck and vast wan drift
of corpses.
But the Star remained. And Captain Abraham Smith, with
a long, good rope about his waist, dashed again and again into
that awful surging to snatch victims from death,-clutching at
passing hands, heads, garments, in the cataract-sweep of the seas;
saving, aiding, cheering, though blinded by spray and battered by
drifting wreck, until his strength failed in the unequal struggle
at last, and his men drew him aboard senseless, with some beau-
tiful half-drowned girl safe in his arms. But well-nigh twoscore
souls had been rescued by him; and the Star stayed on through
it all.
Long years after, the weed-grown ribs of her graceful skele-
ton could still be seen, curving up from the sand-dunes of Last
Island, in valiant witness of how well she stayed.
DAY breaks through the flying wrack, over the infinite heav-
ing of the sea, over the low land made vast with desolation. It
is a spectral dawn; a wan light, like the light of a dying sun.
The wind has waned and veered; the flood sinks slowly
back to its abysses, abandoning its plunder, scattering its pit-
eous waifs over bar and dune, over shoal and marsh, among
the silences of the mango swamps, over the long low reaches of
sand grasses and drowned weeds, for more than a hundred miles.
From the shell reefs of Pointe-au-Fer to the shallows of Pelto
Bay the dead lie mingled with the high-heaped drift; from their
cypress groves the vultures rise to dispute a share of the feast
with the shrieking frigate-birds and squeaking gulls.
And as the
tremendous tide withdraws its plunging waters, all the pirates of
air follow the great white-gleaming retreat-a storm of billowing
wings and screaming throats.
And swift in the wake of gull and frigate-bird the Wreckers
come, the Spoilers of the dead,- savage skimmers of the sea,
hurricane-riders wont to spread their canvas pinions in the face
of storms; Sicilian and Corsican outlaws, Manila men from the


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marshes, deserters from many navies, Lascars, marooners, refu-
gees of a hundred nationalities, fishers and shrimpers by name,
smugglers by opportunity, wild channel-finders from obscure bay-
ous and unfamiliar chénières, all skilled in the mysteries of
these mysterious waters beyond the comprehension of the oldest
licensed pilot.
There is plunder for all, birds and men. There are drowned
sheep in multitude, heaped carcasses of kine. There are casks of
claret and kegs of brandy and legions of bottles bobbing in the
surf. There are billiard tables overturned upon the sand; there
are sofas, pianos, footstools and music-stools, luxurious chairs,
lounges of bamboo. There are chests of cedar, and toilet tables
of rosewood, and trunks of fine stamped leather stored with pre-
cious apparel. There are objets de luxe innumerable. There
are children's playthings: French dolls in marvelous toilets, and
toy carts, and wooden horses, and wooden spades, and brave little
wooden ships that rode out the gale in which the great Nautilus
went down. There is money in notes and in coin-in purses, in
pocket-books, and in pockets; plenty of it! There are silks, sat-
ins, laces, and fine linen to be stripped from the bodies of the
drowned, and necklaces, bracelets, watches, finger-rings and fine
chains, brooches and trinkets. "Chi bidizza! Oh! chi bedda
mughieri! Eccu, la bidizza! " That ball-dress was made in Paris.
by - But you never heard of him, Sicilian Vicenzu.
"Che bella sposina! " Her betrothal ring will not come off,
Giuseppe: but the delicate bone snaps easily; your oyster-knife
can sever the tendon. "Guardate! chi bedda picciota! " Over
her heart you will find it, Valentino-the locket held by that
fine Swiss chain of woven hair-"Caya manan! " And it is not
your quadroon bondsmaid, sweet lady, who now disrobes you
so roughly: those Malay hands are less deft than hers; but she
slumbers very far away from you, and may not be aroused from
her sleep. "Na quita mo! dalaga! -na quita maganda! " Juan,
the fastenings of those diamond ear-drops are much too com-
plicated for your peon fingers: tear them out! -"Dispense, chu-
lita! "
Suddenly a long, mighty silver trilling fills the ears of all;
there is a wild hurrying and scurrying; swiftly, one after another,
the overburdened luggers spread wings and flutter away.
Thrice the great cry rings rippling through the gray air, and
over the green sea, and over the far-flooded shell reefs, where the


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7143
sheet-lightning of breakers,- and over
huge white flashes are,
the weird wash of corpses coming in.
It is the steam-call of the relief boat, hastening to rescue the
living, to gather in the dead.
The tremendous tragedy is over!
MY FIRST DAY IN THE ORIENT
From Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. Copyright 1894, by Lafcadio Hearn.
Reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers, Boston
"TERA
ERA? " queries Cha, with his immense white hat in his hand,
as I resume my seat in the jinrikisha at the foot of the
steps. Which no doubt means, Do I want to see any more
temples? Most certainly I do: I have not yet seen Buddha.
"Yes, tera, Cha. "
And again begins the long panorama of mysterious shops and
tilted eaves, and fantastic riddles written over everything. I have
no idea in what direction Cha is running. I only know that the
streets seem to become always narrower as we go, and that some
of the houses look like great wicker-work pigeon cages only, and
that we pass over several bridges before we halt again at the
foot of another hill. There is a lofty flight of steps here also,
and before them a structure which I know is both a gate and a
symbol; imposing, yet in no manner resembling the great Bud-
dhist gateway seen before. Astonishingly simple all the lines of
it are: it has no carving, no coloring, no lettering upon it; yet it
has a weird solemnity, an enigmatic beauty. It is a torii.
"Miya," observes Cha. Not a tera this time, but a shrine of
the gods of the more ancient faith of the land,—a miya.
I am standing before a Shinto symbol; I see for the first
time-out of a picture at least―a torii. How describe a torii
to those who have never looked at one even in a photograph or
engraving? Two lofty columns, like gate pillars, supporting hori-
zontally two cross-beams, the lower and lighter beam having its
ends fitted into the columns a little distance below their summits;
the uppermost and larger beam supported upon the tops of the
columns, and projecting well beyond them to right and left.
That is a torii: the construction varying little in design, whether
made of stone, wood, or metal. But this description can give no
correct idea of the appearance of a torii, of its majestic aspect, of


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7144
LAFCADIO HEARN
its mystical suggestiveness as a gateway. The first time you see
a noble one, you will imagine perhaps that you see the colossal
model of some beautiful Chinese letter towering against the sky;
for all the lines of the thing have the grace of an animated ideo-
graph,- have the bold angles and curves of characters made with
four sweeps of a master brush.
Passing the torii, I ascend a flight of perhaps one hundred
stone steps, and find at their summit a second torii, from whose
lower cross-beam hangs festooned the mystic shimenawa. It is
in this case a hempen rope of perhaps two inches in diameter
through its greater length, but tapering off at either end like a
snake. Sometimes the shimenawa is made of bronze, when the
torii itself is of bronze; but according to tradition it should be
made of straw, and most commonly is. For it represents the
straw rope which the deity Futo-tama-no-mikoto stretched behind
the Sun goddess, Ama-terasu-oho-mi-Kami, after Ame-no-ta-jikara-
wo-no-Kami the Heavenly-hand-strength god had pulled her out,
as is told in that ancient myth of Shinto which Professor Cham-
berlain has translated. And the shimenawa, in its commoner and
simpler form, has pendent tufts of straw along its entire length
at regular intervals, because originally made, tradition declares,
of grass pulled up by the roots, which protruded from the twist
of it.
Advancing beyond this torii, I find myself in a sort of park
or pleasure ground on the summit of the hill. There is a small
temple on the right: it is all closed up; and I have read so much
about the disappointing vacuity of Shinto temples that I do not
regret the absence of its guardian. And I see before me what
is infinitely more interesting: a grove of cherry-trees covered
with something unutterably beautiful,- a dazzling mist of snowy
blossoms clinging like summer cloud fleece about every branch
and twig; and the ground beneath them and the path before me
are white with the soft, thick, odorous snow of fallen petals.
Beyond this loveliness are flower-pots surrounding tiny shrines;
and marvelous grotto-work, full of monsters,—dragons and myth-
ologic beings chiseled in the rock; and miniature landscape work
with tiny groves of dwarf trees, and liliputian lakes, and micro-
scopic brooks and bridges and cascades. Here also are swings
for children. And here are belvederes, perched on the verge of
the hill, where from the whole fair city, and the whole smooth
bay speckled with fishing-sails no bigger than pin-heads, and the


## p. 7145 (#543) ###########################################

LAFCADIO HEARN
7145
far, faint, high promontories reaching into the sea, are all visible
in one delicious view, blue-penciled in a beauty of ghostly haze
indescribable.
Why should the trees be so lovely in Japan? With us, a plum
or cherry tree in flower is not an astonishing sight; but here it
is a miracle of beauty so bewildering that, however much you
may have previously read about it, the real spectacle strikes you
dumb. You see no leaves,-only one great filmy mist of petals.
Is it that the trees have been so long domesticated and caressed
by man in this land of the gods that they have acquired souls,
and strive to show their gratitude, like women loved, by making
themselves more beautiful for man's sake? Assuredly they have
mastered men's hearts by their loveliness, like beautiful slaves; -
that is to say, Japanese hearts: apparently there have been some
foreign tourists of the brutal class in this place, since it has been
deemed necessary to set up inscriptions in English announcing
that "It is forbidden to injure the trees. "
"Tera?
"Yes, Cha, tera. "
But only for a brief while do I traverse Japanese streets.
The houses separate, become scattered along the feet of the hills;
the city thins away through little valleys, and vanishes at last
behind; and we follow a curving road overlooking the sea.
Green hills slope steeply down to the edge of the way on the
right; on the left, far below, spreads a vast stretch of dun sand
and salty pools to a line of surf so distant that it is discernible
only as a moving white thread. The tide is out; and thou-
sands of cockle-gatherers are scattered over the sands, at such
distances that their stooping figures, dotting the glimmering sea-
bed, appear no larger than gnats. And some are coming along
the road before us, returning from their search with well-filled
baskets, girls with faces almost as rosy as the faces of English
girls.
―
As the jinrikisha rattles on, the hills dominating the road
grow higher. All at once Cha halts again before the steepest
and loftiest flight of steps I have yet seen.
I climb and climb and climb, halting perforce, betimes, to
ease the violent aching of my quadriceps muscles; reach the top
completely out of breath; and find myself between two lions of
stone, one showing his fangs, the other with jaws closed. Before
me stands the temple, at the farther end of a small bare plateau


## p. 7146 (#544) ###########################################

7146
LAFCADIO HEARN
surrounded on three sides by low cliffs- a small temple, looking
very old and gray. From a rocky height to the left of the build-
ing a little cataract tumbles down into a pool, ringed in by a
palisade. The voice of the water drowns all other sounds. A
sharp wind is blowing from the ocean; the place is chill even
in the sun, and bleak, and desolate, as if no prayer had been
uttered in it for a hundred years.
Cha taps and calls, while I take off my shoes upon the worn
wooden steps of the temple, and after a minute of waiting we
hear a muffled step approaching and a hollow cough behind the
paper screens. They slide open, and an old white-robed priest
appears, and motions me with a low bow to enter. He has a
kindly face, and his smile of welcome seems to me one of the
most exquisite I have ever been greeted with. Then he coughs
again, so badly that I think if I ever come here another time I
shall ask for him in vain.
I go in, feeling that soft, spotless, cushioned matting beneath
my feet with which the floors of all Japanese buildings are cov
ered. I pass the indispensable bell and lacquered reading-desk;
and before me I see other screens only, stretching from floor to
ceiling. The old man, still coughing, slides back one of these
upon the right and waves me into the dimness of an inner sanc-
tuary, haunted by faint odors of incense. A colossal bronze lamp,
with snarling gilded dragons coiled about its columnar stem, is
the first object I discern; and in passing it, my shoulder sets
ringing a festoon of little bells suspended from the lotus-shaped
summit of it. Then I reach the altar, gropingly, unable yet to
distinguish forms clearly. But the priest, sliding back screen
after screen, pours in light upon the gilded brasses and the
inscriptions: and I look for the image of the deity or presiding
spirit between the altar groups of convoluted candelabra. And
I see only a mirror, a round pale disk of polished metal, and
my own face therein; and behind this mockery of me a phantom
of the far sea.
Only a mirror! Symbolizing what? illusion? or that the uni-
verse existed for us solely as the reflection of our own souls?
or the old Chinese teaching that we must seek the Buddha only
in our own hearts? Perhaps some day I shall be able to find
out all these things.
As I sit on the temple steps, putting on my shoes preparatory
to going, the kind old priest approaches me again, and bowing,


## p. 7147 (#545) ###########################################

LAFCADIO HEARN
7147
presents a bowl. I hastily drop some coins in it, imagining it
to be a Buddhist alms-bowl, before discovering it to be full of
hot water. But the old man's beautiful courtesy saves me from
feeling all the grossness of my mistake. Without a word, and
still preserving his kindly smile, he takes the bowl away, and
returning presently with another bowl, empty, fills it with hot
water from a little kettle, and makes a sign to me to drink.
Tea is most usually offered to visitors at temples; but this
little shrine is very, very poor; and I have a suspicion that the
old priest suffers betimes for want of what no fellow-creature
should be permitted to need. As I descend the windy steps to
the roadway I see him still looking after me, and I hear once
more his hollow cough.
Then the mockery of the mirror recurs to me. I am begin-
ning to wonder whether I shall ever be able to discover that
which I seek-outside of myself! That is, outside of my own.
imagination.
The sun is gone; the topaz light is gone: and Cha stops to
light his lantern of paper, and we hurry on again, between two
long lines of painted paper lanterns suspended before the shops;
so closely set, so level those lines are, that they seem two
interminable strings of pearls of fire. And suddenly a sound-
solemn, profound, mighty-peals to my ears over the roofs of
the town: the voice of the tsurigane, the great temple bell of
Nungiyama.
-
All too short the day seemed. Yet my eyes have been
so long dazzled by the great white light, and so confused by
the sorcery of that interminable maze of mysterious signs which
made each street vista seem a glimpse into some enormous
grimoire, that they are now weary even of the soft glowing of
all these paper lanterns, likewise covered with characters that
look like texts from a book of magic. And I feel at last the
coming of that drowsiness which always follows enchantment.


## p. 7148 (#546) ###########################################

7148
LAFCADIO HEARN
IMPRESSIONS AND MEMORIES
From Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. ' Copyright 1894, by Lafcadio Hearn.
Reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers, Boston
"A
ND this," the reader may say, "this is all that you went forth
to see: a torii, some shells, a small damask snake, some
stones? "
It is true. And nevertheless I know that I am bewitched.
There is a charm indefinable about the place; that sort of charm
which comes with a little ghostly thrill, never to be forgotten.
Not of strange sights alone is this charm made, but of num-
berless subtle sensations and ideas interwoven and interblended:
the sweet sharp scents of grove and sea; the blood-brightening,
vivifying touch of the free wind; the dumb appeal of ancient,
mystic, mossy things; vague reverence evoked by knowledge of
treading soil called holy for a thousand years; and a sense of
sympathy, as a human duty, compelled by the vision of steps of
rock worn down into shapelessness by the pilgrim feet of vanished
generations.
And other memories ineffaceable: the first sight of the sea-girt
City of Pearl through a fairy veil of haze; the windy approach
to the lovely island over the velvety soundless brown stretch of
sand; the weird majesty of the giant gate of bronze; the queer,
high-sloping, fantastic, quaintly gabled street, flinging down sharp
shadows of aerial balconies; the flutter of colored draperies in the
sea wind, and of flags with their riddles of lettering; the pearly
glimmering of the astonishing shops.
And impressions of the enormous day, the day of the Land of
the Gods, a loftier day than ever our summers know; and the
glory of the view from those green sacred silent heights between
sea and sun; and the remembrance of the sky, a sky spiritual
as holiness, a sky with clouds ghost-pure and white as the light
itself, seeming indeed not clouds but dreams, or souls of Bodhi-
sattvas about to melt forever into some blue Nirvana.
And the romance of Benten, too,-the deity of Beauty, the
divinity of Love, the goddess of Eloquence. Rightly is she like-
wise named goddess of the sea. For is not the sea most ancient
and most excellent of speakers,-the eternal poet, chanter of that
mystic hymn whose rhythm shakes the world, whose mighty syl-
lables no man may learn?


## p. 7149 (#547) ###########################################

LAFCADIO HEARN
7149
THE TEMPLE OF KWANNON
From Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. Copyright 1894, by Lafcadio Hearn.
Reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers, Boston
A
ND we arrive before the far-famed Kamakura temple of Kwan-
non,- Kwannon, who yielded up her right to the Eternal
Peace that she might save the souls of men, and renounced
Nirvana to suffer with humanity for other myriad million ages;
Kwannon, the goddess of Pity and of Mercy.
I climb three flights of steps leading to the temple, and a
young girl seated at the threshold rises to greet us. Then she
disappears within the temple to summon the guardian priest, a
venerable man, white-robed, who makes me a sign to enter.
The temple is large as any that I have yet seen, and like
the others, gray with the wearing of six hundred years. From
the roof there hang down votive offerings, inscriptions, and lan-
terns in multitude, painted with various pleasing colors. Almost
opposite to the entrance is a singular statue, a seated figure of
human dimensions and most human aspect, looking upon us with
small weird eyes set in a wondrously wrinkled face. This face
was originally painted flesh tint, and the robes of the image pale
blue; but now the whole is uniformly gray with age and dust,
and its colorlessness harmonizes so well with the senility of the
figure that one is almost ready to believe one's self gazing at
a living mendicant pilgrim. It is Benzuru, the same personage
whose famous image at Asakusa has been made featureless by the
wearing touch of countless pilgrim fingers. To left and right of
the entrance are the Ni-O, enormously muscled, furious of aspect;
their crimson bodies are speckled with a white scum of paper
pellets spat at them by worshipers. Above the altar is a small
but very pleasing image of Kwannon, with her entire figure
relieved against an oblong halo of gold, imitating the flickering
of flame.
But this is not the image for which the temple is famed;
there is another to be seen, upon certain conditions. The old
priest presents me with a petition, written in excellent and elo-
quent English, praying visitors to contribute something to the
maintenance of the temple and its pontiff, and appealing to those
of another faith to remember that "Any belief which can make
men kindly and good is worthy of respect. " I contribute my
mite, and I ask to see the great Kwannon.


## p. 7150 (#548) ###########################################

7150
LAFCADIO HEARN
Then the old priest lights a lantern, and leads the way through
a low doorway on the left of the altar, into the interior of the
temple, into some very lofty darkness. I follow him cautiously
a while, discerning nothing whatever but the flicker of the lantern;
then we halt before something which gleams. A moment, and
my eyes, becoming more accustomed to the darkness, begin to
distinguish outlines; the gleaming object defines itself gradually
as a foot, an immense golden foot, and I perceive the hem of a
golden robe undulating over the instep. Now the other foot
appears; the figure is certainly standing. I can perceive that we
are in a narrow but also very lofty chamber, and that out of
some mysterious blackness overhead, ropes are dangling down
into the circle of lantern light illuminating the golden feet. The
priest lights two more lanterns, and suspends them upon hooks
attached to a pair of pendent ropes about a yard apart; then he
pulls up both together slowly. More of the golden robe is re-
vealed as the lanterns ascend, swinging on their way; then the
outlines of two mighty knees; then the curving of columnar thighs
under chiseled drapery, and as with the still waving ascent of the
lanterns the golden Vision towers ever higher through the gloom,
expectation intensifies. There is no sound but the sound of the
invisible pulleys overhead, which squeak like bats. Now above
the golden girdle, the suggestion of a bosom. Then the glowing
of a golden hand uplifted in benediction. Then another golden
hand holding a lotus. And at last a face, golden, smiling with
eternal youth and infinite tenderness,-the face of Kwannon.
So revealed out of the consecrated darkness, this ideal of
Divine femininity, creation of a forgotten art and time, is more
than impressive. I can scarcely call the emotion which it pro-
duces admiration; it is rather reverence.
But the lanterns, which paused awhile at the level of the
beautiful face, now ascend still higher, with a fresh squeaking of
pulleys. And lo! the tiara of the divinity appears, with strangest
symbolism. It is a pyramid of heads, of faces,- charming faces
of maidens, miniature faces of Kwannon herself.
For this is the Kwannon of the Eleven Faces,-Jiu-ichi-men-
Kwannon.


## p. 7151 (#549) ###########################################

LAFCADIO HEARN
7151
THE SHINTÖ FAITH
From Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. Copyright 1894, by Lafcadio Hearn.
Reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers, Boston
Ο
NCE more we are journeying through the silence of this holy
land of mists and of legends; wending our way between
green leagues of ripening rice, white-sprinkled with arrows.
of prayer, between the far processions of blue and verdant peaks
whose names are the names of gods. We have left Kitzuki far
behind. But as in a dream I still see the mighty avenue, the
――
ong succession of torii with their colossal shimenawa, the ma-
jestic face of the Guji, the kindly smile of the priest Sasa, and
the girl priestess in her snowy robes dancing her beautiful
ghostly dance. It seems to me that I can still hear the sound
of the clapping of hands, like the crashing of a torrent. I can-
not suppress some slight exultation at the thought that I have
been allowed to see what no other foreigner has been privileged
to see, the interior of Japan's most ancient shrine, and those
sacred utensils and quaint rites of primitive worship so well
worthy the study of the anthropologist and the evolutionist.
But to have seen Kitzuki as I saw it is also to have seen
something much more than a single wonderful temple. To see
Kitzuki is to see the living centre of Shintō, and to feel the life
pulse of the ancient faith, throbbing as mightily in this nine-
teenth century as ever in that unknown past whereof the Kojiki
itself, though written in a tongue no longer spoken, is but a
modern record. Buddhism, changing form or slowly decaying
through the centuries, might seem doomed to pass away at last
from this Japan to which it came only as an alien faith; but
Shinto, unchanging and vitally unchanged, still remains all-dom-
inant in the land of its birth, and only seems to gain in power
and dignity with time. Buddhism has a voluminous theology, a
profound philosophy, a literature vast as the sea. Shinto has no
philosophy, nc code of ethics, no metaphysics; and yet by its
very immateriality it can resist the invasion of Occidental reli-
gious thought as no other Orient faith can. Shinto extends a
welcome to Western science, but remains the irresistible oppo-
nent of Western religion; and the foreign zealots who would
strive against it are astounded to find the power that foils their
uttermost efforts indefinable as magnetism and invulnerable as
air. Indeed, the best of our scholars have never been able to


## p. 7152 (#550) ###########################################

7152
LAFCADIO HEARN
tell us what Shintō is. To some it appears to be merely ances-
tor worship, to others ancestor worship combined with nature
worship; to others again it seems to be no religion at all; to
the missionary of the more ignorant class it is the worst form
of heathenism. Doubtless the difficulty of explaining Shintō has
been due simply to the fact that the sinologists have sought for
the source of it in books: in the Kojiki and the Nihongi, which
are its histories; in the Norito, which are its prayers; in the
commentaries of Motowori and Hirata, who were its greatest
scholars. But the reality of Shintō lives not in books, nor in
rites, nor in commandments, but in the national heart, of which
it is the highest emotional religious expression, immortal and ever
young. Far underlying all the surface crop of quaint super-
stitions, and artless myths, and fantastic magic, there thrills a
mighty spiritual force, the whole soul of a race, with all its
impulses and powers and intuitions. He who would know what
Shintō is must learn to know that mysterious soul in which the
sense of beauty, and the power of art, and the fire of heroism
and magnetism of loyalty, and the emotion of faith, have become
inherent, immanent, unconscious, instinctive.
Trusting to know something of that Oriental soul in whose
joyous love of nature and of life even the unlearned may discern
a strange likeness to the soul of the old Greek race, I trust also
that I may presume some day to speak of the great living power
of that faith now called Shintō, but more anciently Kami-no-michi,
or The Way of the Gods. "
((


## p. 7153 (#551) ###########################################

7153
XII-448
REGINALD HEBER
(1783-1826)
ON EARLIER generation of cultivated readers knew Heber by
heart, and the present one is inclined to rank him among
the best of the hymn-writers. His father was a country
gentleman of excellent Yorkshire family, incumbent of a double liv-
ing when double livings were legal and proper, and rector of Malpas
in Cheshire when his second son, Reginald, was born. Sent to Ox-
ford at seventeen, the boy began at once a brilliant university career.