HOUSE, Edward H., American author, journalist and musician: b. about 1843; d. Tokio 18 Dec. 1908. Prominent in promoting friendship between Japan and the United States and in interpreting the men of the two civili zations to each other, reaching the English speaking world through his brilliant writings. Educated at the Chauncy Hall private school, Boston. As correspondent of the New York Tribune, he reported to that paper the John Brown episode at Harper's Ferry and was re sponsible for the incident of John Brown's kissing the negro mother's baby, which has been made the theme of Hovenden's painting and Whittier's poem. He accompanied, to re port, the first embassy from Japan in 1860. In 1863, in London, he reported for the London Times the prize fight between Heenan and Tom Sayers. There he collaborated with Dion Boucicault in 'Arrah na Pogue' and 'The Colleen Bawn,> and for his friend Charles Reade wrote a chapter in 'Griffith Gaunt.'
From 1870 he spent most of his life in Japan— in Tokio as teacher of English in the Imperial University; as editor of the Tokio Times (1877-81). He accompanied the Japanese ex pedition to Formosa in 1874 and wrote an extended account of it in a large pamphlet, besides two revelatory chapters of the modern history of Japan, for Count Okuma, in the pamphlets