After this the personal note becomes predominant, and Miss Bisland ceases, even on paper, to be a formality in Lafcadio Hearn's emotional life.
During the course of the same summer, Hearn went to the West Indies for his three months' midsummer trip. From thence he wrote one or two delightful letters to the Lady of a Myriad Souls. In the same year he was again in New York, but almost immediately accepted an offer made to him by the Harpers to return to the West Indies for two years.
The following letter tells its own tale, and so daintily and pathetically that one does not feel as if one could change a word:--
"Your letter reached me when everything that had seemed solid was breaking up, and Substance had become Shadow. It made me very foolish--made me cry. Your rebuke for the trivial phrase in my letter was very beautiful as well as very richly deserved. But I don't think it is a question of volition. It is necessary to obey the impulses of the Unknown for Art's sake,--or rather, you _must_ obey them. The Spahi's fascination by the invisible forces was purely physical. I think I am right in going; perhaps I am wrong in thinking of making the tropics a home. Probably it will be the same thing over again: impulse and chance compelling another change.
"The carriage--no, the New York hack and hackman (no romance or sentimentality about these!) is waiting to take me to Pier 49 East River. So I must end. But I have written such a ridiculous letter that I shan't put anybody's name to it."[16]
[16] "The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn," Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
In 1889 he again returned to America, and went for his famous visit to George Milbury Gould at Philadelphia.
On November 14th of the same year Miss Bisland received a request to call at the office of the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_. On her arrival at eleven o'clock in the morning, she was asked if she would leave New York for San Francisco the same evening for a seventy-five days' journey round the world. The proposition was that she should "run" in competition with another lady sent by a rival magazine for a wager. Miss Bisland consented.
After her return, under the title of "A Trip Around the World," she published her experiences in the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_. These contributions were afterwards incorporated in a small volume. They are charmingly and brightly written. She, however, did not win her wager, as the other lady completed the task in a slightly shorter period.
