Letter from Lafcadio Hearn to Horace Elisha Scudder

Kumamoto, Kyushu; Japan Aug. 12th, 1893 Dear Mr. Scudder, - Thanks for kind letter. I have returned all the proofs, after doing the best I could with them. The papers printed in the Atlantic needed only a few very light touches; - the earlier papers gave me more anxiety, and I made several erasures of what had once seemed to me very fine. I feel that it has been of the greatest importance to give me the privilege

of seeing the proofs. The later papers will give me no anxiety, but they will certainly need touches, - those that keep all of a book in one tone. - As for your advice and wishes I will try to follow both. I did send a paper the other day, - but I feel it is not what you want, and must be put aside. I have also, nearly finished, a sort of reverie, - "The Dream

of a Summer Day." I hope to send it this month, but fear it will not suit you. However, later, I may do better. Studies of real Japanese life I can make only at long intervals: they are just what I want to do, but very hard to do. Fancy a magazine editor asking me to write a novel of Japanese life on "good terms"! The man does not live who can do it, - at least, that is my

opinion. It would be much easier to write a novel of Assyrian life in the cuneiform dialect. But I am trying to write some pages of the life of a Japanese child, - Ever very truly yours Lafcadio Hearn Tsuboi, Nishihoribata 35 Kumamoto