Volume I Part 3 (1/2)

”To-morrow, after they have been fed, I also shall be fed--by kindly stealth;--and I shall not have earned the feeding, in spite of the fact that I know there are hundreds ofthe year 1869--the exact date cannot be ascertained--Lafcadio Hearn, nineteen years old, penniless, delicate, half-blind, and without a friend, found himself in the streets of New York

CHAPTER II

THE ARTIST'S APPRENTICEshi+P

It isin the streets of New York in 1869 and 1870 ever noticed with interest--though many of them must have seen--the shy, shabby boy, Lafcadio Hearn He was thin to attenuation, for his meals were scant and uncertain; his dress was threadbare, for in all the two years he never possessed enough , and his shabbiness reater part of that period no home other than a carpenter's shop, where a friendly Irish works and cook his h book-keeping and running of errands Yet a few le profile of the e that this was one--few in each generation--of those who have dreamed the Dream, and seen the Vision, that here was one of those whom Socrates termed ”daemonic” One who had looked in secret places, face to face, upon the ic countenance of the Muse, and was thereafter vowed to the quest of the Holy Cup wherein glows the essential blood of beauty One whountouched on either hand the goods for which his fellows strove; falling at times into the mire, torn by the thorns that others evade, lost often, and often overtaken by the night of discourageain fros to follow the vision to the end It is hard for those who have never laboured wearily after the gli feet of the bearer of the Cup, who have never touched even the hearment, to understand the spiritual _possession_ of one under the vow To them in such a career will be visible only the fantastic or squalid episodes of the quest

What were the boy's thoughts at this period; what his hopes, his aims, or his intentions it is now impossible to know Merely to keep life in his body taxed his powers, and while e of the public libraries he was often so faint froht

The fourth fragraphy appears to refer to this unhappy period

INTUITION

I was nineteen years old, and a stranger in the great strange world of Arim realities As I did not kno to face those realities, I tried to forget them as much as possible; and romantic dreaet Next to this unpaid luxury of reading, my chief pleasure was to wander about the streets of the town, trying to find in passing faces--faces of girls--some realization of certain ideals

And I found an alraphs placed on display at the doors of photographers' shops,--called, in that place and tialleries they were indeed formany, many penniless months

One day, in a by-street, I discovered a new photographer's shop; and in a glass case, at the entrance, I beheld a face the first sight of which left ht,--a face inco all , for head-dress, so that looked like an eht have been devised for the purpose of displaying, to artistic advantage, the singular beauty of the features The gaze of the large dark eyes was piercing and calm; the aquiline curve of the nose was clear as the curve of a sword; the mouth was fine, but firm;--and, in spite of the sensitive delicacy of this face, there was a so sinister and superb, thatti at it, and the row--like a fascination I thought that I would sufferthe real woallery;” and I could not think of any otherout

I had one friend in those days,--the only fellow countryman whom I knew in that American town,--a man who had preceded me into exile by nearly forty years,--and to him I went With all of my boyish enthusiasms he used to feel an amused sympathy; and when I told hio with raph-shop

For several rey broith a puzzled expression Then he exclaimed emphatically,--

”That is not an American”

”What do you think of the face?” I queried, anxiously

”It is a wonderful face,” he answered,--”a very wonderful face But it is not an Aested ”Or Italian?”

”No, no,” he returned, very positively ”It is not a European face at all”

”Perhaps a Jewess?”--I ventured

”No; there are very beautiful Jewish faces,--but none like that”

”Then what can it be?”

”I do not know;--there is soe blood there”