have resolved to live in it; I could not leave it for that chill and damp Northern life again." From the files of the Item and the Times-Democrat over a score of these "Fantastics" have been gathered, and with them certain other fanciful little sketches that seem worth preserving, though they do not deal so directly with the mystic "twin-idea of Love and Death."
In his sympathetic Introduction to Ream's Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist, Mr. Ferris Greenslet deplores the loss of that collection of these "Fantastics" made by Hearn himself as one section of the book he evidently planned to publish under the title Ephemera, or Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist. Says Mr. Greenslet:—
"Apparently it was Hearn's intention to add to the 'Floridian Reveries' a little collection of 'Fantastics,' with such savory titles as 'Aïda,' 'The Devil's Carbuncle,' 'A Hemisphere in a Woman's Hair,' 'The Fool and Venus,' etc.[1]
- ↑ Among the papers held by Dr. Gould is a memorandum of some of the "Fantastics," thus numbered:—
1. "Aïda."
2. Hiouen-Thsang.
3. El Vomito.
4. The Devil's Carbuncle.
5. A Hemisphere in a Woman's Hair.
6. The Clock.
7. The Fool and Venus.
8. The Stranger. Two of these—"Aida" and "Hiouen-Thsang"—were published under those titles. Some of the others we think we have identified among the pieces entitled sim- ply "Fantastics" at the time of their publication. "The Fool and Venus" may have been meant for what we have called "Aphrodite and the King's Prisoner." "The Clock" we have not found. }}
