



Produced by KD Weeks, Ted Garvin and the Online Distributed
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Transcriber's Note

Footnotes have been placed at the end of each paragraph in which they
are referenced.

There are several captioned photographs, which are indicated as
[Illustration: Caption]. Hearn also included in his letters small
sketches. Their approximate positions are indicated with [Illustration].
Any handwritten text in those sketches is included here as captions.

Italic text is denoted with underscores as _italic_. There is a small
amount of Greek which is transliterated and enclosed in brackets as
[Larkadie]. The characters 'o', 'a' and 'u' appear with a macron, a
straight bar atop the letter. These use the '=' sign as 'T[=o]ky[=o]'.

The occasional superscript is simply left inline (e.g., 'nth'). The use
of subscripts is limited to a single instance. The underscore character
indicates this: L_3 H_9 NG_4.

The sole instance of the 'oe' ligature is given as is seen here:
'onomatopoeia'.

Some corrections were made where printer's errors were most likely,
as described in the Note at the end of the text. Other than those
corrections, no changes to spelling have been made. Hyphenation of
words at line or page breaks are removed if other instances of the word
warrant it.

This book was published in two volumes, of which this is the first.
The second volume was released as Project Gutenberg ebook #42313,
available at: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42313.




       +--------------------------------------------------------+
       |                  By Lafcadio Hearn                     |
       |                                                        |
       | THE ROMANCE OF THE MILKY WAY, AND OTHER STUDIES AND    |
       |     STORIES. 12mo, gilt top, $1.25 _net._ Postage      |
       |    extra.                                              |
       |                                                        |
       | KWAIDAN: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. With   |
       |    two Japanese Illustrations. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50.  |
       |                                                        |
       | GLEANINGS IN BUDDHA-FIELDS. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.     |
       |                                                        |
       | KOKORO. Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life. 16mo, |
       |     gilt top, $1.25.                                   |
       |                                                        |
       | OUT OF THE EAST. Reveries and Studies in New Japan.    |
       |     16mo, $1.25.                                       |
       |                                                        |
       | GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR JAPAN. 2 vols. crown 8vo, gilt  |
       |    top, $4.00.                                         |
       |                                                        |
       | STRAY LEAVES FROM STRANGE LITERATURE. 16mo, $1.50.     |
       |                                                        |
       |                                                        |
       |               HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.                  |
       |                BOSTON AND NEW YORK.                    |
       +--------------------------------------------------------+




             LIFE AND LETTERS OF LAFCADIO HEARN

                           VOLUME I

[Illustration: Lafcadio Hearn]

                     THE LIFE AND LETTERS

                             OF

                       LAFCADIO HEARN

                             BY

                     ELIZABETH BISLAND

                    _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_

                       IN TWO VOLUMES

                           VOL. I

[Illustration: The Riverside Press]

                    BOSTON AND NEW YORK
                 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
              The Riverside Press Cambridge

        COPYRIGHT 1906 BY ELIZABETH BISLAND WETMORE

                    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

                 _Published December 1906_




PREFACE

In the course of the preparation of these volumes there was gradually
accumulated so great a number of the letters written by Lafcadio Hearn
during twenty-five years of his life, and these letters proved of so
interesting a nature, that eventually the plan of the whole work was
altered. The original intention was that they should serve only to
illuminate the general text of the biography, but as their number and