Page:Creole Sketches.djvu/28

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
xxiv
HEARN'S CARTOONS

the letter-writers objected to, as hostile to civic welfare or private comfort.

Some of these "letters" may have been contributed, though the drawings which illustrated them were Hearn's. Others must have been written by Hearn himself, for they are in his most extravagant style.

Colonel Fairfax says that it is possible some of the drawings may have been made by others, but he has no recollection of any one else but Hearn doing this: and he does remember him very distinctly, at work "with a penknife that had two blades, using first the large one and then the small one, to get the effect he wanted on the block."

The woodcuts we have chosen, out of the nearly two hundred which appeared between May 24 and December 10, 1880, have been selected because they illustrate the Creole life which fascinated Hearn in all its features — the "ultra-Canal" life