Letters from the Raven; being the correspondence of Lafcadio Hearn with Henry Watkin, with introd and critical comment by the editor, Milton Bronner . is ahuge snail which is leaving New Orleans and islabelled the Thompson Dean. One of the finest of all the letters he wrote toMr. Watkin was from Memphis. It is dated Oc-tober 31, 1877. In this he made a predictionwhich afterwards came literally true. He seemedto foresee that, while in his loneliness he wouldwrite often to Mr. Watkin, once he became en-grossed in his work and saw new sights and newfaces, his letters would be written at greater i
Letters from the Raven; being the correspondence of Lafcadio Hearn with Henry Watkin, with introd and critical comment by the editor, Milton Bronner . is ahuge snail which is leaving New Orleans and islabelled the Thompson Dean. One of the finest of all the letters he wrote toMr. Watkin was from Memphis. It is dated Oc-tober 31, 1877. In this he made a predictionwhich afterwards came literally true. He seemedto foresee that, while in his loneliness he wouldwrite often to Mr. Watkin, once he became en-grossed in his work and saw new sights and newfaces, his letters would be written at greater inter-vals. Dear Old Dad : I am writing in a great big,dreary room of this great, dreary house. It over-looks the Mississippi. I hear the puffing and thepanting of the cotton boats and the deep callsof the river traffic; but I neither hear nor see theThompson Dean. She will not be here this week,I am afraid, as she only left New Orleans to-day. My room is carpetless and much larger thanyour office. Old blocked-up stairways come uphere and there through the floor or down through 11 > o mo •vo H> n > D en W 25H ?1 ?3O fo!J*r. Letters from The Raven 37 the ceiling, and they suddenly disappear. Thereis a great red daub on one wall as though madeby a bloody hand when somebody was stagger-ing down the stairway. There are only a few panesof glass in the windows. I am the first tenant ofthe room for fifteen years. Spiders are busy spin-ning their dusty tapestries in every corner, andbetween the bannisters of the old stairways. Theplanks of the floor are sprung, and when I walkalong the room at night it sounds as thoughSomething or Somebody was following me in thedark. And then being in the third story makesit much more ghostly. I had hard work to get awashstand and towelput in this great, dreary room; for the landlordhad not washed his face for more than a quarterof a century, and regarded washing as an expen-sive luxury. At last I succeeded with the assist-ance of the barkee
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