About this ebook
Into this great western metropolis came young Lafcadio Hearn, who after several tentative starts became a newspaper reporter first for the Enquirer and then for the Commercial. Drawn to the Ohio River by his interest in the unusual, Hearn found beneath the rough surface of levee life a kind of cosmopolitan tolerance which emphasized the essential humanity of the community.
Hearn's twelve sketches—here reprinted as a unit for the first time—are perceptive and sympathetic, yet not highly subjective and romanticized. Collectively they form an important comprehensive picture of African American life in a border city just after the Civil War. Among the earliest of his writings, they also foreshadow the course Hearn's life was to take in New Orleans, the West Indies, and finally Japan.
About the author
O. W. Frost, who collected and edited these sketches, is the author of Young Heam. A graduate of the University of Illinois, he also holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from that institution. John Ball, who wrote the introduction, is professor of English at his alma mater, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. The Ph.D. degree was awarded him by the University of Cincinnati.
