tentious little paper which he had purchased from the printers and tramp journalists who were its original owners—for the Item was started on a coöperative, profit-sharing basis.
"Hearn was really quite lazy about his regular work," Colonel Fairfax insists. "We had to prod him up all the time—stick pins in him, so to speak. But when he would write one of his own little fanciful things, out of his own head—dreams—he was always dreaming—why, then he would work like mad. And people always noticed those little things of his, somehow, for they were truly lovely, wonderful. 'Fantastics' he called them."
It was Colonel Fairfax who deserves the credit of "discovering" Hearn in New Orleans, when he applied, shabby and half-starved, at the Item office for a job, just after he had written to his friend Watkin, June 14, 1878 : "Have been here seven months and never made one cent in the city. No possible prospect of doing anything in this town now or within twenty-five years."
But his next letter (undated) says—and it is evident that the impression he had made had secured him more than he had asked for:
