Lafcadio Hearn

by Nina H. Kennard

Overview

The circumstances surrounding Lafcadio Hearn's life and work impart a particular interest and charm to his correspondence. He was, as he himself imagined, unfitted by personal defects from being looked upon with favor in general society. This idea, combined with innate sensitive shyness, caused him, especially towards the latter years of his life, to become more or less of a recluse, and induced him to seek an outlet in intellectual commune with literary comrades on paper.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783985313099
Publisher:	Otbebookpublishing
Publication date:	08/30/2021
Series:	Classics To Go
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	293
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Annie "Nina" née Homan-Mulock Kennard (1844 - 1926) was an author. She wrote Mrs. Siddons about Shakespearean actress Sarah Siddons. She also wrote a book about journalist and author Lafcadio Hearn.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER III TRAMORE "If you, O reader, chance to be a child of the sea; if in early childhood, you listened each morning and evening to that most ancient and mystic hymn-chant of the waves, ... if you have ever watched wonderingly, the far sails of the fishing vessels turn rosy in the blush of sunset, or once breathed as your native air the divine breath of the ocean, and learned the swimmer's art from the hoary breakers. . . . When the long, burning summer comes, and the city roars dustily around you, and your ears are filled with the droning hum of machinery, and your heart full of the bitterness of the struggle for life, does not there visit you at long intervals in the dingy office or the crowded street some memory of white breakers and vast stretches of wrinkled sand and far-fluttering breezes that seem to whisper, 'Come!'! "So that when the silent night descends, you find yourself revisiting in dreams those ocean shores thousands of miles away. The wrinkled sand, ever shifting yet ever the same, has the same old familiar patches of vari-coloured weeds and shining rocks along its level expanse: and the thunder-chant of the sea which echoes round' the world, eternal yet ever new, is rolling up to heaven. The glad waves leap up to embrace you; the free winds shout welcome in your ears; white sails are shining in the west; white sea-birds are flying over the gleaming swells. And from the infinite expanse of eternal sky and everlasting sea, there comes to you, with the heavenly ocean- breeze, a thrilling sense of unbounded freedom, a delicious feeling as of life renewed, and ecstasy as of life restored. And so you start into wakefulness with the thunder of the sea-dream inyour cars and tears of regret in your eyes, to find about you only heat and dust and toil; the awaken...