Volume I Part 25 (1/2)

(GIRLS) ”Kardang garro”--Young-brother again

(OLD WOMEN) ”Mana broo”--Hereafter I shall see never

And it is also odd to find in Jeannest that in certain Congo tribes there is a superstition precisely like the Scandinavian superstition about the hell-shoon”--a strange coincidence in view of the fact that these negroes do not allow any save the king and the dead to wear shoes

I aambia--home of the Griots; and I expect it contains soe volu to think it would be a pity to hurry our project The subject is so vast, and soI believe we can pick up a great deal of queer African et speciination ro physiology You reestion about the possible differentia in the vocal chords of the two races I feel more than ever convinced there _is_ a reroher child's name--a name of two syllables--Ella;--the first syllable was a low but very loud note, the second a very high sharp one, with a fractional note tied to its tail; and I don't believe any white throat could have uttered that extraordinary sound with such rapidity and flexibility The Australian _Coo-eee_ was nothing to it! Well, I have been since studying Flower's ”Hunterian Lectures on the Comparative Anatomy of Man;” and I find that the science of comparative anatomy is scarcely yet well defined--what, then, can be said about the Coy of Man? Nevertheless Flower is astonishi+ng He indicates extraordinary race-differences in the pelvic index--(the shape of the pelvis)--the length and proportion of the li to him on the subject Tell me,--do you approve of the idea?

I have also sent to Europe for some works on Oriental music

Your affectionate friend, LH

Charley Johnson spent a ith me He is the same old Charley We had lots of fun and talk about old tihted with my library; nearly every volume of which is unfamiliar to ordinary readers

I have now nearly five hundred voluyptian, assyrian, Indian, Chinese, japanese, African, etc, etc Johnson seems to have become a rich man The fact embarrassed me a little bit Somehow or other, wealth makes a sort of Chinese wall between friends One is afraid to be one's self, or even to be as friendly as one would like toward somebody who is much better off You knohat I s; for Charley was just the same to me as in the old days

TO W D O'CONNOR

NEW ORLEANS, MARCH, 1884

MY DEAR O'CONNOR,--What a delicious writer you are!--you do not knohat pleasure your letter gave me, and how ement of the _Musee Secret_; and yetI do not find it possible to persuade ed in by mankind It is _ireat thoughts and great deeds of es I felt somewhat startled when I first read the earliest Aryan literature to find how little the hued in so reat Indian epics and lyrics are not less lovable than the ideal beauties of reat poems of the world are but so many necklaces of word-jewelry for the throat of the _Venus Urania_; and all history is illuminated by the _Eternal Fey is irradiated by Neith, curving her luminous woman's body from horizon to horizon And has not this ”ood purpose?

I like that legend of nificent prostitution in Perron's ”Fe to which a battle on and a vast nomad people saved from extinction by the action of the beauties of the tribe, who showed the warriors and promised their embraces to the survivors,--of whom not over-many were left Neither do I think that passion necessarily tends to enervate a people There is an intith, Health, and Beauty; they are ethnologically interlinked in one embrace,--like the _Charities_ I fancy the stout soldiers who followed Xenophon were far better judges of physical beauty than the voluptuaries of Corinth;--the greatest of the exploits of Heracles was surely an amorous one I don't like Bacon's ideas about love: they should be adopted only by statesmen or others to whom it is a duty to remain passionless, lest some woman entice them to destruction Has it not sometimes occurred to you that it is only in the senescent epoch of a nation's life that love disappears?--there were no grand loves during the enory interrupted by the lightning of Mosleain, after all, what else do we live for--epheht between two darknesses”? ”Ye know not,” saith Krishna, in the Bhagavad-Gita, ”either the : only the middleonly the pleasure of a golden looion? I doubt if ate; but I fancy the era _ences will ask themselves of what avail are the noblest heroisms and self-denials, since even the constellations are surely burning out, and all forms are destined to melt back into that infinite darkness of death and of life which is called by so many different naolden swarer day, whose movements of attraction are due to soave you of De Nerval's suicide is precisely like the details of M de Beaulieu's picture exposed in 1859--and, I _think_, destroyed by the police for some unaccountable reason It is described in Gautier's ”Histoire du Rolad you notice my hand once in a while, and that you liked my De Nerval sketch and the ”Woazine-work

I think the azines are si ”Very good, very scholarly--_but not the kind_ ant;”--”Highly interesting--sorry we have no rooret to say we cannot use it, but would advise you to send it to X--;”

”Deserves to be published; but unfortunately our rules exclude”--etc I have an article noith the _Atlantic_--an essay upon the _Adzan_, or chant of the muezzin; its romantic history, etc This has already been rejected by other leading azines Another horrible fact is that after your article is accepted, the editor rewrites it in his oay,--and then prints your name at the end of the so-created abomination This is the plan of ---- I would like to see the ideal newspaper started we used to talk about: then we could write--eh?

So you think Dore's Raven a failure! I hope you are not altogether right I thought so when I first looked at the plates; but the longer I exahostly power in several What do you think of ”The Night's Plutonian Shore;”

and the ”Honette with its Sphinx-death is one of the h its force er treatment I would like to see it taken up by that French artist who painted that beautiful ”Flight into Egypt,” where we see the Virgin and Child (in likeness of an Arab wanderer with her baby), sluranite limbs of the monster

Your Gautier has just arrived If you had sent me a little fortune you could not have pleased me so much I never saw the photo before: it not only pleased, it excelled anticipation You know our preconceived ideas of places we should like to visit and people we should like to know, usually excel the reality; but the head of Gautier seeined One can alan-toned voice of his which Bergerat described; and I like that barbaric luxury of his attire,--there is soe about it, worthy some Khan of the Golden Horde I really feel quite enthusiastic about lad to hear you dislike Matthew Arnold He sees of the century: a fifth-rate poet and unutterably dreary essayist;--a sort of philosophical heryne, because there is neither enough of positivisive real character to it Don't you think Edwin Arnold far the nobler man and writer? I love that beautiful enthusiase faiths and exotic creeds This is the spirit that, in soion in perfect harmony with the truths of science and the better nature of humanity

You ask about this climate One who has lived by the sea and on the mountain-tops, as I have, must spend several years here to understand how this intertropical swamp-life affects the unacclimated The first year one becomes very sick--fevers of unfamiliar character attack hiies become enfeebled The second summer one feels even worse The third summer one can just endure without absolute sickness The fourth, one begins to gain flesh and strength

But the blood has coed, the least breath of really cool air y never becomes quite restored After a few years in Louisiana, hard work becomes impossible We are all lazy, enervated, compared with you Northerners When my Northwestern friends cos and Berserkers; they are so full of life and blood and vital electricity! But when it is cold to htfully warether as reporters with the thermometer 20 below zero

Sorry to say that Leloir died before co the illustrations; and I suppose the subscribers to the edition will be the losers It was to be issued in parts Perhaps ten nus were printed I based my error upon the critique of Leloir's work in _Le Livre_ It is dangerous to anticipate!

I believe I have the very latest edition of W W [Walt Whitman]--1882 (Rees, Welsh & Co), which I like very much You did not quite understand my allusion to the Bible I wished to imply that it hen W W's verses approached that biblical ree with all you say about slang,--especially nautical slang; also about the grand irregularity of the wave-chant

Still I'll have to write some examples of what I refer to, and will do so later

Yours very warratefully, L HEARN

TO H E KREHBIEL