Wednesday, 2 September

During the last few days I have been reading The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn by Elizabeth Bisland. Ambassador Wen Yuanning told me some time ago that Dr. Wang Chonghui once recommended Hearn to him as the best work to study in English for a Chinese student because his style is simple, and his choice of words and construction of sentences are careful.  When I wrote to General Zhang Qun, I mentioned it to him and I sent him several books of Hearn. Now reading this book again I notice particularly his method of working. He first tried to define sharply his thoughts and emotions, and then quietly wrote them down over and over again so that the ideas and emotions could develop themselves in the process. He said he used to work on a single page for months before the ideas came clearly. As to clothing his thoughts in words, like De Quincey, he took the greatest pain. He would spend a sleepless night in his endeavor to find another word with a short “a” that answered his purpose and crowned his sentence with harmony. He weighed verb against adjective, vowel against consonant that they may a little understand the unique splendor of his prose. Such are the toils and suffering, the continence and self-denial of a great artist of words!

Still very hot today.

The Soviet Government announced yesterday that the working hours in all state offices is to be from nine in the morning until six in the afternoon with one hour for lunch. So, Soviet officials need not have to stay up till mid-night, and diplomats need not have to get up at half past four in the morning to go to the Kremlin, as was the case when I was in Moscow.