Letter from Lafcadio Hearn to Horace Elisha Scudder

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This is a scanned version of the original document in the Abernethy Manuscripts Collection at Middlebury College.

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Notice change of address: permanent, this time, I hope. Shino yamate-dori Rokuchome 26 Kobe Dear Mr. Scudder: - I don't quite understand your letter about keeping what may not appear in the Atlantic for the next book. This would not mean, I suppose, that the papers appearing in the Atlantic would be excluded from the next book. Before October, the book will be finished. Whether Messrs. Houghton & Co. will approve it, or not, of course I don't know. I have sent you nine papers, and have three more in course of preparation. I can only say this, - that if Messrs. H. & Co., should not wish to publish the book before spring, the arrangement would be all right, - only as I hope to

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make a journey south, during the winter - to Manila or Riu Kiu, probably, - I should like to see the proof before going. This would not prevent you from using the sketches you might wish for in this meanwhile. As to sending some of the article elsewhere, I don't know what to say. Some editors mutilate outrageously, and some magazines illustrate absurdly. (Of course the Harpers I cannot bear to hear even mentioned.) Then it seems to me no small imposition to ask you to place anything for me - you must be a very busy man. Still if you think the publication

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of an accepted book would not be delayed beyond next spring, I think I might venture later on to accept your former offer on the subject - providing you can place an article or two where it will not be mutilated or fantastically illustrated, and where it will be well paid (though not to the Harpers, even for a thousand dollars a page.) My present situation may be no particular affair of yours; I mention it merely to explain circumstances. I have a number of people to support, no chance of employment - in Japan (except such as would render literary

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work impossible); and I am obliged to become a Japanese citizen in order to do what is right by my own people. I can live, at the present rate of exchange, by self-denial of a sort not stimulating to my profession, on about $600 to $700 a year. This I cannot get from the Atlantic. Therefore, to make ends meet I think it advisable that I should accept the newspaper syndicates' offer of $1,200 for the letters from the tropics south of here. With time and patience I suppose I

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shall be able to do better; but I must try now to do just what I can, and the voyage may pay. There has been a strong effort by the "unco guid" to run me out of the country; but it has not so far been successful. I wrote you a decidedly ugly letter the other day, because I felt and still feel ugly. I have never had any money to spend in big researches; it has been one constant struggle with sickness and bad sight and calumny here; - and that I should

Last edit over 2 years ago by shashathree
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