To [James] the brother he never saw he wrote, when he was a man, “And you do not remember that dark and beautiful face—with large, brown eyes like a wild deer’s—that used to bend above your cradle? You do not remember the voice which told you each night to cross your fingers after the old Greek orthodox fashion, and utter the words—. . . ‘In the names of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost’? She made, or had made, three little wounds upon you when a baby—to place you, according to her childish faith, under the protection of those three powers, but especially that of Him. . . . We were all very dark as children, very passionate, very odd-looking, and wore gold rings in our ears. . . .

“Whatever there is of good in me came from that dark race-soul of which we know so little. My love of right, my hate of wrong;—my admiration for what is beautiful or true;—my capacity for faith in man or woman;—my sensitiveness to artistic things which gives me whatever little success I have,—even that language-power whose physical sign is in the large eyes of both of us,—came from Her. . . . [ellipsis in the original] It is the mother who makes us,—makes at least all that makes the nobler man: not his strength or powers of calculation, but his heart and power to love. And I would rather have her portrait than a fortune.”

Mrs. Brenane, into whose hands the child [Lafcadio Hearn] thus passed, was the widow of a wealthy Irishman, by whom she had been converted to Romanism, and like all converts she was “more loyal than the King.” The divorce and remarriage of her nephew [Charles Hearn] incurred her bitterest resentment; she not only insisted upon a complete separation from the child, but did not hesitate to speak her mind fully to the boy, who always retained the impressions thus early instilled. . . .

Of the next twelve years of Lafcadio Hearn’s life there exists but meagre record. The little dark-eyed, dark-faced, passionate boy with the wound in his heart and the gold rings in his ears—speaking English but stammeringly, mingled with Italian and Romaic—seems to have been removed at about his seventh year to Wales, and from this time to have visited Ireland but occasionally. Of his surroundings during the most impressionable period of his life it is impossible to reconstruct other than shadowy outlines. Mrs. Brenane was old; was wealthy; and lived surrounded by eager priests and passionate converts.

. . . .