breakdown 0.0.1

data/.gitignore

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+*.gem
+*.rbc
+.bundle
+.config
+.yardoc
+Gemfile.lock
+InstalledFiles
+_yardoc
+coverage
+doc/
+lib/bundler/man
+pkg
+rdoc
+spec/reports
+test/tmp
+test/version_tmp
+tmp

data/Gemfile

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+source 'https://rubygems.org'
+
+# Specify your gem's dependencies in breakdown.gemspec
+gemspec

data/LICENSE.txt

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+Copyright (c) 2013 N.T. Tuddenham
+
+MIT License
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
+a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
+"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
+without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
+distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
+permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
+the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
+included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
+EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
+MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
+NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE
+LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION
+OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
+WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

data/README.md

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+# Breakdown
+
+TODO: Write a gem description
+
+## Installation
+
+Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
+
+    gem 'breakdown'
+
+And then execute:
+
+    $ bundle
+
+Or install it yourself as:
+
+    $ gem install breakdown
+
+## Usage
+
+TODO: Write usage instructions here
+
+## Contributing
+
+1. Fork it
+2. Create your feature branch (`git checkout -b my-new-feature`)
+3. Commit your changes (`git commit -am 'Add some feature'`)
+4. Push to the branch (`git push origin my-new-feature`)
+5. Create new Pull Request

data/Rakefile

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+require "bundler/gem_tasks"

data/breakdown.gemspec

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+# coding: utf-8
+lib = File.expand_path('../lib', __FILE__)
+$LOAD_PATH.unshift(lib) unless $LOAD_PATH.include?(lib)
+require 'breakdown/version'
+
+Gem::Specification.new do |spec|
+  spec.name          = "breakdown"
+  spec.version       = Breakdown::VERSION
+  spec.authors       = ["N.T. Tuddenham"]
+  spec.email         = ["ferrisoxide@gmail.com"]
+  spec.description   = %q{Breaks large text files into many smaller ones using simple markup commands}
+  spec.summary       = %q{Preprocessor for large text files}
+  spec.homepage      = ""
+  spec.license       = "MIT"
+
+  spec.files         = `git ls-files`.split($/)
+  spec.executables   = spec.files.grep(%r{^bin/}) { |f| File.basename(f) }
+  spec.test_files    = spec.files.grep(%r{^(test|spec|features)/})
+  spec.require_paths = ["lib"]
+
+  spec.add_development_dependency "bundler", "~> 1.3"
+  spec.add_development_dependency "rake"
+  spec.add_development_dependency "rspec"
+end

data/lib/breakdown.rb

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+require "breakdown/version"
+
+module Breakdown
+  
+  # Breakdown larger text files into many smaller ones, breaking on a markdown-inspired markup
+  # Valid breakdown signature is any Markdown horizontal rule, followed by a space and then 
+  # text containing break down data and directives, e.g.  
+  #
+  # * * * title # Everything from this h.rule to the next will be split into a file with the id of 'title' 
+  # *** :toc # What follows is to be processed by the :toc processor, though just '*** toc' would work as well 
+  # ***** section :count # There will be a number of 'section' pages, with an id of 'section-1', 'section-2', etc
+  # - - - # All horizontal rules can be used, per http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#hr 
+  # --------------------------------------- # And '#' '//' comments are comments
+  
+  def self.process(filename, output_dir, options={})  
+  
+    # NOTE One idea would be to 'preprocess' the file using grep, e.g.
+    # Kernal::system %{grep -n '^(^\* \* \*|\*\*\*)' filename} do |ok, res|
+    #   if ! ok
+    #     puts "pattern not found (status = #{res.exitstatus})"
+    #   else
+    #     # Do some preprocessing here... split, build up strategy, etc
+    #   end
+    # end
+     
+    # NOTE Naive first cut
+    
+    # Valid markers:
+    #  * * *
+    #  ***  
+    #  *****
+    #  - - -
+    #  ---------------------------------------
+    def self.each_section(file)   
+      title = 'index'
+      text = ''
+      
+      while line = file.gets do
+        marker = line.match(/((^([*]{3}\s)|^([*]\s){3})|^([*]{5}\s)|^([-]\s){3}|^([-]{39}))(?<title>.*)/)
+        #marker = line.match(/^\*\*\* (?<title>.*)/)
+        if marker
+          yield title, text if !text.empty? 
+          # start next section
+          text = ''
+          title = marker[:title].chomp
+        else
+          text += line
+        end    
+      end
+      yield title, text if !text.empty?   
+      
+    end  
+     
+    raise "No such file: #{filename}" unless File.exist?(filename)     
+    raise "Can't read file: #{filename}" unless File.readable?(filename)
+    
+    options = {:extension => 'md'}.merge(options)
+    
+    FileUtils.mkdir_p output_dir # Ensure we have somewhere to put our files
+    
+    f = File.open(filename)
+    begin
+      
+      each_section(f) do |title, text|
+        
+      output_filename = File.join(output_dir, "/#{title}.#{options[:extension]}")
+      File.open(output_filename, 'w') { |file| file.write text }
+      end   
+        
+ #   rescue  
+      f.close # SMELL silent fail
+    end
+    
+  end 
+end  

data/lib/breakdown/version.rb

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+module Breakdown
+  VERSION = "0.0.1"
+end

data/spec/breakdown_spec.rb

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+require './spec/spec_helper'
+require './lib/breakdown'
+
+describe Breakdown do
+  describe "should break down text file" do
+    
+    def filecount(dir)
+      Dir[File.join(dir, '/**/*')].count { |file| File.file?(file) }  
+    end
+    
+    before(:all) do
+      @output_dir = "./spec/tmp/output/."   
+    end  
+      
+    before(:each) do
+       FileUtils.rm_rf(@output_dir, secure: true) # Clean out the output dir
+     end
+     
+    it "on any ***" do
+      filecount(@output_dir).should equal(0)
+      Breakdown::process './spec/examples/star_star_star.md', @output_dir
+      filecount(@output_dir).should equal(2)
+    end  
+    
+    it "on any * * *" do
+      filecount(@output_dir).should equal(0)
+      Breakdown::process './spec/examples/star_space_star_space_star_space.md', @output_dir
+      filecount(@output_dir).should equal(2)
+    end
+
+    it "on any *****" do
+      filecount(@output_dir).should equal(0)
+      Breakdown::process './spec/examples/five_stars.md', @output_dir
+      filecount(@output_dir).should equal(2)
+    end      
+    
+    it "on any - - -" do
+      filecount(@output_dir).should equal(0)
+      Breakdown::process './spec/examples/three_dashes.md', @output_dir
+      filecount(@output_dir).should equal(2)
+    end  
+    
+    it "on any ---------------------------------------" do
+      filecount(@output_dir).should equal(0)
+      Breakdown::process './spec/examples/thirty_nine_dashes.md', @output_dir
+      filecount(@output_dir).should equal(2)
+    end
+  end
+end

data/spec/examples/example.md

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+Foo
+*** section-1
+Bar

data/spec/examples/five_stars.md

@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+Foo
+***** section-1
+Bar

data/spec/examples/star_space_star_space_star_space.md

@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+Foo
+* * * section-1
+Bar

data/spec/examples/star_star_star.md

@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+Foo
+*** section-1
+Bar

data/spec/examples/the-tachypomp-and-other-stories.md

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+*** index
+Title: The Tachypomp and Other Stories
+Author: Edward Page Mitchell
+* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
+eBook No.: 0602521.txt
+Edition: 1
+Language: English
+Character set encoding: Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit
+Date first posted: July 2006
+Date most recently updated: July 2006
+
+This eBook was produced by: Richard Scott
+
+Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
+which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
+is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
+paper edition.
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
+file.
+
+This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
+http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html
+
+
+To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au
+
+The Tachypomp and Other Stories
+Edward Page Mitchell
+EOT
+
+*** table-of-contents
+
+THE TACHYPOMP
+THE SOUL SPECTROSCOPE
+THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY
+THE ABLEST MAN IN THE WORLD
+THE SENATOR'S DAUGHTER
+THE CRYSTAL MAN
+THE CLOCK THAT WENT BACKWARD
+
+*** section-1
+
+THE TACHYPOMP
+
+A Mathematical Demonstration
+
+There was nothing mysterious about Professor Surd's dislike for me. I
+was the only poor mathematician in an exceptionally mathematical
+class. The old gentleman sought the lecture-room every morning with
+eagerness, and left it reluctantly. For was it not a thing of joy to
+find seventy young men who, individually and collectively, preferred x
+to XX; who had rather differentiate than dissipate; and for whom the
+limbs of the heavenly bodies had more attractions than those of
+earthly stars upon the spectacular stage?
+
+So affairs went on swimmingly between the Professor of Mathematics and
+the junior Class at Polyp University. In every man of the seventy the
+sage saw the logarithm of a possible La Place, of a Sturm, or of a
+Newton. It was a delightful task for him to lead them through the
+pleasant valleys of conic sections, and beside the still waters of the
+integral calculus. Figuratively speaking, his problem was not a hard
+one. He had only to manipulate, and eliminate, and to raise to a
+higher power, and the triumphant result of examination day was
+assured.
+
+But I was a disturbing element, a perplexing unknown quantity, which
+had somehow crept into the work, and which seriously threatened to
+impair the accuracy of his calculations. It was a touching sight to
+behold the venerable mathematician as he pleaded with me not so
+utterly to disregard precedent in the use of cotangents; or as he
+urged, with eyes almost tearful, that ordinates were dangerous things
+to trifle with. All in vain. More theorems went on to my cuff than
+into my head. Never did chalk do so much work to so little purpose.
+And, therefore, it came that Furnace Second was reduced to zero in
+Professor Surd's estimation. He looked upon me with all the horror
+which an unalgebraic nature could inspire. I have seen the professor
+walk around an entire square rather than meet the man who had no
+mathematics in his soul.
+
+For Furnace Second were no invitations to Professor Surd's house.
+Seventy of the class supped in delegations around the periphery of the
+professor's tea-table. The seventy-first knew nothing of the charms of
+that perfect ellipse, with its twin bunches of fuchsias and geraniums
+in gorgeous precision at the two foci.
+
+This, unfortunately enough, was no trifling deprivation. Not that I
+longed especially for segments of Mrs. Surd's justly celebrated lemon
+pies; not that the spheroidal damsons of her excellent preserving had
+any marked allurements; not even that I yearned to hear the
+professor's jocose tabletalk about binomials, and chatty illustrations
+of abstruse paradoxes. The explanation is far different. Professor
+Surd had a daughter. Twenty years before, he made a proposition of
+marriage to the present Mrs. S. He added a little corollary to his
+proposition not long after. The corollary was a girl.
+
+Abscissa Surd was as perfectly symmetrical as Giotto's circle, and as
+pure, withal, as the mathematics her father taught. It was just when
+spring was coming to extract the roots of frozen-up vegetation that I
+fell in love with the corollary. That she herself was not indifferent
+I soon had reason to regard as a self-evident truth.
+
+The sagacious reader will already recognize nearly all the elements
+necessary to a well-ordered plot. We have introduced a heroine,
+inferred a hero, and constructed a hostile parent after the most
+approved model. A movement for the story, a Deus ex machina, is alone
+lacking. With considerable satisfaction I can promise a perfect
+novelty in this line, a Deus ex machina never before offered to the
+public.
+
+It would be discounting ordinary intelligence to say that I sought
+with unwearying assiduity to figure my way into the stern father's
+good-will; that never did dullard apply himself to mathematics more
+patiently than I; that never did faithfulness achieve such meagre
+reward. Then I engaged a private tutor. His instructions met with no
+better success.
+
+My tutor's name was Jean Marie Rivarol. He was a unique Alsatian--
+though Gallic in name, thoroughly Teuton in nature; by birth a
+Frenchman, by education a German. His age was thirty; his profession,
+omniscience; the wolf at his door, poverty; the skeleton in his
+closet, a consuming but unrequited passion. The most recondite
+principles of practical science were his toys; the deepest intricacies
+of abstract science his diversions. Problems which were foreordained
+mysteries to me were to him as clear as Tahoe water. Perhaps this very
+fact will explain our lack of success in the relation of tutor and
+pupil; perhaps the failure is alone due to my own unmitigated
+stupidity. Rivarol had hung about the skirts of the University for
+several years; supplying his few wants by writing for scientific
+journals, or by giving assistance to students who, like myself, were
+characterized by a plethora of purse and a paucity of ideas; cooking,
+studying and sleeping in his attic lodgings; and prosecuting queer
+experiments all by himself.
+
+We were not long discovering that even this eccentric genius could not
+transplant brains into my deficient skull. I gave over the struggle in
+despair. An unhappy year dragged its slow length around. A gloomy year
+it was, brightened only by occasional interviews with Abscissa, the
+Abbie of my thoughts and dreams.
+
+Commencement day was coming on apace. I was soon to go forth, with the
+rest of my class, to astonish and delight a waiting world. The
+professor seemed to avoid me more than ever. Nothing but the
+conventionalities, I think kept him from shaping his treatment of me
+on the basis of unconcealed disgust.
+
+At last, in the very recklessness of despair, I resolved to see him,
+plead with him, threaten him if need be, and risk all my fortunes on
+one desperate chance. I wrote him a somewhat defiant letter, stating
+my aspirations, and, as I flattered myself, shrewdly giving him a week
+to get over the first shock of horrified surprise. Then I was to call
+and learn my fate.
+
+During the week of suspense I nearly worried myself into a fever. It
+was first crazy hope, and then saner despair. On Friday evening, when
+I presented myself at the professor's door, I was such a haggard,
+sleepy, dragged-out spectre, that even Miss Jocasta, the harsh-favored
+maiden sister of the Surd's, admitted me with commiserate regard, and
+suggested pennyroyal tea.
+
+Professor Surd was at a faculty meeting. Would I wait?
+
+Yes, till all was blue, if need be. Miss Abbie?
+
+Abscissa had gone to Wheelborough to visit a school friend. The aged
+maiden hoped I would make myself comfortable, and departed to the
+unknown haunts which knew Jocasta's daily walk.
+
+Comfortable! But I settled myself in a great uneasy chair and waited,
+with the contradictory spirit common to such junctures, dreading every
+step lest it should herald the man whom, of all men, I wished to see.
+
+I had been there at least an hour, and was growing right drowsy.
+
+At length Professor Surd came in. He sat down in the dusk opposite me,
+and I thought his eyes glinted with malignant pleasure as he said,
+abruptly:
+
+"So, young man, you think you are a fit husband for my girl?"
+
+I stammered some inanity about making up in affection what I lacked in
+merit; about my expectations, family and the like. He quickly
+interrupted me.
+
+"You misapprehend me, sir. Your nature is destitute of those
+mathematical perceptions and acquirements which are the only sure
+foundations of character. You have no mathematics in you.
+
+You are fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils.--Shakespeare. Your
+narrow intellect cannot understand and appreciate a generous mind.
+There is all the difference between you and a Surd, if I may say it,
+which intervenes between an infinitesimal and an infinite. Why, I will
+even venture to say that you do not comprehend the Problem of the
+Couriers!"
+
+I admitted that the Problem of the Couriers should be classed rather
+without my list of accomplishments than within it. I regretted this
+fault very deeply, and suggested amendment. I faintly hoped that my
+fortune would be such-
+
+"Money!" he impatiently exclaimed. "Do you seek to bribe a Roman
+senator with a penny whistle? Why, boy, do you parade your paltry
+wealth, which, expressed in mills, will not cover ten decimal places,
+before the eyes of a man who measures the planets in their orbits, and
+close crowds infinity itself?"
+
+I hastily disclaimed any intention of obtruding my foolish dollars,
+and he went on:
+
+"Your letter surprised me not a little. I thought you would be the
+last person in the world to presume to an alliance here. But having a
+regard for you personally"--and again I saw malice twinkle in his
+small eyes--"an still more regard for Abscissa's happiness, I have
+decided that you shall have her--upon conditions. Upon conditions," he
+repeated, with a half-smothered sneer."
+
+"What are they?" cried I, eagerly enough. "Only name them."
+
+"Well, sir," he continued, and the deliberation of his speech seemed
+the very refinement of cruelty, "you have only to prove yourself
+worthy an alliance with a mathematical family. You have only to
+accomplish a task which I shall presently give you. Your eyes ask me
+what it is. I will tell you. Distinguish yourself in that noble branch
+of abstract science in which, you cannot but acknowledge, you are at
+present sadly deficient. I will place Abscissa's hand in yours
+whenever you shall come before me and square the circle to my
+satisfaction. No! That is too easy a condition. I should cheat myself.
+Say perpetual motion. How do you like that? Do you think it lies
+within the range of your mental capabilities? You don't smile. Perhaps
+your talents don't run in the way of perpetual motion. Several people
+have found that theirs didn't. I'll give you another chance. We were
+speaking of the Problem of the Couriers, and I think you expressed a
+desire to know more of that ingenious question. You shall have the
+opportunity. Sit down some day, when you have nothing else to do, and
+discover the principle of infinite speed. I mean the law of motion
+which shall accomplish an infinitely great distance in an infinitely
+short time. You may mix in a little practical mechanics, if you
+choose. Invent some method of taking the tardy Courier over his road
+at the rate of sixty miles a minute. Demonstrate me this discovery
+(when you have made itl) mathematically, and approximate it
+practically, and Abscissa is yours. Until you can, I will thank you to
+trouble neither myself nor her."
+
+I could stand his mocking no longer. I stumbled mechanically out of
+the room, and out of the house. I even forgot my hat and gloves. For
+an hour I walked in the moonlight. Gradually I succeeded to a more
+hopeful frame of mind. This was due to my ignorance of mathematics.
+Had I understood the real meaning of what he asked, I should have been
+utterly despondent.
+
+Perhaps this problem of sixty miles a minute was not so impossible
+after all. At any rate I could attempt, though I might not succeed.
+And Rivarol came to my mind. I would ask him. I would enlist his
+knowledge to accompany my own devoted perseverance. I sought his
+lodgings at once.
+
+The man of science lived in the fourth story, back. I had never been
+in his room before. When I entered, he was in the act of filling a
+beer mug from a carboy labelled aqua fortis.
+
+"Seat you," he said. "No, not in that chair. That is my Petty Cash
+Adjuster." But he was a second too late. I had carelessly thrown
+myself into a chair of seductive appearance. To my utter amazement it
+reached out two skeleton arms and clutched me with a grasp against
+which I struggled in vain. Then a skull stretched itself over my
+shoulder and grinned with ghastly familiarity close to my face.
+
+Rivarol came to my aid with many apologies. He touched a spring
+somewhere and the Petty Cash Adjuster relaxed its horrid hold. I
+placed myself gingerly in a plain cane-bottomed rocking-chair, which
+Rivarol assured me was a safe location.
+
+"That seat," he said, "is an arrangement upon which I much felicitate
+myself. I made it at Heidelberg. It has saved me a vast deal of small
+annoyance. I consign to its embraces the friends who bore, and the
+visitors who exasperate, me. But it is never so useful as when
+terrifying some tradesman with an insignificant account. Hence the pet
+name which I have facetiously given it. They are invariably too glad
+to purchase release at the price of a bill receipted. Do you well
+apprehend the idea?"
+
+While the Alsation diluted his glass of aqua fortis, shook into it an
+infusion of bitters, and tossed off the bumper with apparent relish, I
+had time to look around the strange apartment.
+
+The four corners of the room were occupied respectively by a turning
+lathe, a Rhumkorff Coil, a small steam engine and an orrery in stately
+motion. Tables, shelves, chairs and floor supported an odd aggregation
+of tools, retorts, chemicals, gas receivers, philosophical
+instruments, boots, flasks, paper-collar boxes, books diminutive and
+books of preposterous size. There were plaster busts of Aristotle,
+Archimedes, and Comte, while a great drowsy owl was blinking away,
+perched on the benign brow of Martin Farquhar Tupper. "He always
+roosts there when he proposes to slumber," explained my tutor. "You
+are a bird of no ordinary mind. Schlafen Sie wohl."
+
+Through a closet door, half open, I could see a humanlike form covered
+with a sheet. Rivarol caught my glance.
+
+"That," said he, "will be my masterpiece. It is a Microcosm, an
+Android, as yet only partially complete. And why not? Albertus Magnus
+constructed an image perfect to talk metaphysics and confute the
+schools. So did Sylvester II; so did Robertus Greathead. Roger Bacon
+made a brazen head that held discourses. But the first named of these
+came to destruction. Thomas Aquinas got wrathful at some of its
+syllogisms and smashed its head. The idea is reasonable enough. Mental
+action will yet be reduced to laws as definite as those which govern
+the physical. Why should not I accomplish a manikin which shall preach
+as original discourses as the Reverend Dr. Allchin, or talk poetry as
+mechanically as Paul Anapest? My android can already work problems in
+vulgar fractions and compose sonnets. I hope to teach it the Positive
+Philosophy."
+
+Out of the bewildering confusion of his effects Rivarol produced two
+pipes and filled them. He handed one to me.
+
+"And here," he said, "I live and am tolerably comfortable. When my
+coat wears out at the elbows I seek the tailor and am measured for
+another. When I am hungry I promenade myself to the butcher's and
+bring home a pound or so of steak, which I cook very nicely in three
+seconds by this oxy-hydrogen flame. Thirsty, perhaps, I send for a
+carboy of aqua fortis. But I have it charged, all charged. My spirit
+is above any small pecuniary transaction. I loathe your dirty
+greenbacks, and never handle what they call scrip."
+
+"But are you never pestered with bills?" I asked. "Don't the creditors
+worry your life out?"
+
+"Creditors!" gasped Rivarol. "I have learned no such word in your very
+admirable language. He who will allow his soul to be vexed by
+creditors is a relic of an imperfect civilization. Of what use is
+science if it cannot avail a man who has accounts current? Listen. The
+moment you or any one else enters the outside door this little
+electric bell sounds me warning. Every successive step on Mrs.
+Grimler's staircase is a spy and informer vigilant for my benefit. The
+first step is trod upon. That trusty first step immediately telegraphs
+your weight. Nothing could be simpler. It is exactly like any platform
+scale. The weight is registered up here upon this dial. The second
+step records the size of my visitor's feet. The third his height, the
+fourth his complexion, and so on. By the time he reaches the top of
+the first flight I have a pretty accurate description of him right
+here at my elbow, and quite a margin of time for deliberation and
+action. Do you follow me? It is plain enough. Only the A B C of my
+science."
+
+"I see all that," I said, "but I don't see how it helps you any. The
+knowledge that a creditor is coming won't pay his bill. You can't
+escape unless you jump out of the window."
+
+Rivarol laughed softly. "I will tell you. You shall see what becomes
+of any poor devil who goes to demand money of me--of a man of science.
+Ha! ha! It pleases me. I was seven weeks perfecting my Dun Suppressor.
+Did you know"--he whispered exultingly--"did you know that there is a
+hole through the earth's center? Physicists have long suspected it; I
+was the first to find it. You have read how Rhuyghens, the Dutch
+navigator, discovered in Kerguellen's Land an abysmal pit which
+fourteen hundred fathoms of plumb-line failed to sound. Herr Tom, that
+hole has no bottom! It runs from one surface of the earth to the
+antipodal surface. It is diametric. But where is the antipodal spot?
+You stand upon it. I learned this by the merest chance. I was deep-
+digging in Mrs. Grimler's cellar, to bury a poor cat I had sacrificed
+in a galvanic experiment, when the earth under my spade crumbled,
+caved in, and wonder-stricken I stood upon the brink of a yawning
+shaft. I dropped a coal-hod in. It went down, down, down, bounding and
+rebounding. In two hours and a quarter that coal-hod came up again. I
+caught it and restored it to the angry Grimler. Just think a minute.
+The coal-hod went down, faster and faster, till it reached the center
+of the earth. There it would stop, were it not for acquired momentum.
+Beyond the center its journey was relatively upward, toward the
+opposite surface of the globe. So, losing velocity, it went slower and
+slower till it reached that surface. Here it came to rest for a second
+and then fell back again, eight thousand odd miles, into my hands. Had
+I not interfered with it, it would have repeated its journey, time
+after time, each trip of shorter extent, like the diminishing
+oscillations of a pendulum, till it finally came to eternal rest at
+the center of the sphere. I am not slow to give a practical
+application to any such grand discovery. My Dun Suppressor was born of
+it. A trap, just outside my chamber door: a spring in here: a creditor
+on the trap: need I say more?"
+
+"But isn't it a trifle inhuman?" I mildly suggested. "Plunging an
+unhappy being into a perpetual journey to and from Kerguellen's Land,
+without a moment's warning."
+
+"I give them a chance. When they come up the first time I wait at the
+mouth of the shaft with a rope in hand. If they are reasonable and
+will come to terms, I fling them the line. If they perish, 'tis their
+own fault. Only," he added, with a melancholy smile, "the center is
+getting so plugged up with creditors that I am afraid there soon will
+be no choice whatever for'em."
+
+By this time I had conceived a high opinion of my tutor's ability. If
+anybody could send me waltzing through space at an infinite speed,
+Rivarol could do it. I filled my pipe and told him the story. He heard
+with grave and patient attention. Then, for full half an hour, he
+whiffed away in silence. Finally he spoke.
+
+"The ancient cipher has overreached himself. He has given you a choice
+of two problems, both of which he deems insoluble. Neither of them is
+insoluble. The only gleam of intelligence Old Cotangent showed was
+when he said that squaring the circle was too easy. He was right. It
+would have given you your Liebchen in five minutes. I squared the
+circle before I discarded pantalets. I will show you the work--but it
+would be a digression, and you are in no mood for digressions. Our
+first chance, therefore, lies in perpetual motion. Now, my good
+friend, I will frankly tell you that, although I have compassed this
+interesting problem, I do not choose to use it in your behalf. I too,
+Herr Tom, have a heart. The loveliest of her sex frowns upon me. Her
+somewhat mature charms are not for Jean Marie Rivarol. She has cruelly
+said that her years demand of me filial rather than connubial regard.
+Is love a matter of years or of eternity? This question did I put to
+the cold, yet lovely Jocasta."
+
+"Jocasta Surd!" I remarked in surprise, "Abscissa's aunt!"
+
+"The same," he said, sadly. "I will not attempt to conceal that upon
+the maiden Jocasta my maiden heart has been bestowed. Give me your
+hand, my nephew in affliction as in affection!"
+
+Rivarol dashed away a not discreditable tear, and resumed:
+
+"My only hope lies in this discovery of perpetual motion. It will give
+me the fame, the wealth. Can Jocasta refuse these? If she can, there
+is only the trap-door and--Kerguellen's Land!"
+
+I bashfully asked to see the perpetual-motion machine. My uncle in
+affliction shook his head.
+
+"At another time," he said. "Suffice it at present to say, that it is
+something upon the principle of a woman's tongue. But you see now why
+we must turn in your case to the alternative condition--infinite
+speed. There are several ways in which this may be accomplished,
+theoretically. By the lever, for instance. Imagine a lever with a very
+long and a very short arm. Apply power to the shorter arm which will
+move it with great velocity. The end of the long arm will move much
+faster. Now keep shortening the short arm and lengthening the long
+one, and as you approach infinity in their difference of length, you
+approach infinity in the speed of the long arm. It would be difficult
+to demonstrate this practically to the professor. We must seek another
+solution. Jean Marie will meditate. Come to me in a fortnight. Good-
+night. But stop! Have you the money--das Geld?"
+
+"Much more than I need."
+
+"Good! Let us strike hands. Gold and Knowledge; Science and Love. What
+may not such a partnership achieve? We go to conquer thee, Abscissa.
+Vorwärts!"
+
+When, at the end of a fortnight; I sought Rivarol's chamber, I passed
+with some little trepidation over the terminus of the Air Line to
+Kerguellen's Land, and evaded the extended arms of the Petty Cash
+Adjuster. Rivarol drew a mug of ale for me, and filled himself a
+retort of his own peculiar beverage.
+
+"Come," he said at length. "Let us drink success to the TACHYPOMP."
+
+"The TACHYPOMP?"
+
+"Yes. Why not? Tachu, quickly, and pempo, pepompa, to send. May it
+send you quickly to your wedding-day. Abscissa is yours. It is done.
+When shall we start for the prairies?"
+
+"Where is it?" I asked, looking in vain around the room for any
+contrivance which might seem calculated to advance matrimonial
+prospects.
+
+"It is here," and he gave his forehead a significant tap. Then he held
+forth didactically.
+
+"There is force enough in existence to yield us a speed of sixty miles
+a minute, or even more. All we need is the knowledge how to combine
+and apply it. The wise man will not attempt to make some great force
+yield some great speed. He will keep adding the little force to the
+little force, making each little force yield its little speed, until
+an aggregate of little forces shall be a great force, yielding an
+aggregate of little speeds, a great speed. The difficulty is not in
+aggregating the forces; it lies in the corresponding aggregation of
+the speeds. One musket ball will go, say a mile. It is not hard to
+increase the force of muskets to a thousand, yet the thousand musket
+balls will go no farther, and no faster, than the one. You see, then,
+where our trouble lies. We cannot readily add speed to speed, as we
+add force to force. My discovery is simply the utilization of a
+principle which extorts an increment of speed from each increment of
+power. But this is the metaphysics of physics. Let us be practical or
+nothing.
+
+"When you have walked forward, on a moving train, from the rear car,
+toward the engine, did you ever think what you were really doing?"
+
+"Why, yes, I have generally been going to the smoking car to have a
+cigar."
+
+"Tut, tut--not that! I mean, did it ever occur to you on such an
+occasion, that absolutely you were moving faster than the train? The
+train passes the telegraph poles at the rate of thirty miles an hour,
+say. You walk toward the smoking car at the rate of four miles an
+hour. Then you pass the telegraph poles at the rate of thirty-four
+miles. Your absolute speed is the speed of the engine, plus the speed
+of your own locomotion. Do you follow me?"
+
+I began to get an inkling of his meaning, and told him so.
+
+"Very well. Let us advance a step. Your addition to the speed of the
+engine is trivial, and the space in which you can exercise it,
+limited. Now suppose two stations, A and B, two miles distant by the
+track. Imagine a train of platform cars, the last car resting at
+station A. The train is a mile long, say. The engine is therefore
+within a mile of station B. Say the train can move a mile in ten
+minutes. The last car, having two miles to go, would reach B in twenty
+minutes, but the engine, a mile ahead, would get there in ten. You
+jump on the last car, at A, in a prodigious hurry to reach Abscissa,
+who is at B. If you stay on the last car it will be twenty long
+minutes before you see her. But the engine reaches B and the fair lady
+in ten. You will be a stupid reasoner, and an indifferent lover, if
+you don't put for the engine over those platform cars, as fast as your
+legs will carry you. You can run a mile, the length of the train, in
+ten minutes. Therefore, you reach Abscissa when the engine does, or in
+ten minutes--ten minutes sooner than if you had lazily sat down upon
+the rear car and talked politics with the brakeman. You have
+diminished the time by one half. You have added your speed to that of
+the locomotive to some purpose. Nicht wahr?"
+
+I saw it perfectly; much plainer, perhaps, for his putting in the
+clause about Abscissa.
+
+He continued, "This illustration, though a slow one, leads up to a
+principle which may be carried to any extent. Our first anxiety will
+be to spare your legs and wind. Let us suppose that the two miles of
+track are perfectly straight, and make our train one platform car, a
+mile long, with parallel rails laid upon its top. Put a little dummy
+engine on these rails, and let it run to and fro along the platform
+car, while the platform car is pulled along the ground track. Catch
+the idea? The dummy takes your place. But it can run its mile much
+faster. Fancy that our locomotive is strong enough to pull the
+platform car over the two miles in two minutes. The dummy can attain
+the same speed. When the engine reaches B in one minute, the dummy,
+having gone a mile a-top the platform car, reaches B also. We have so
+combined the speeds of those two engines as to accomplish two miles in
+one minute. Is this all we can do? Prepare to exercise your
+imagination."
+
+I lit my pipe.
+
+"Still two miles of straight track, between A and B. On the track a
+long platform car, reaching from A to within a quarter of a mile of B.
+We will now discard ordinary locomotives and adopt as our motive power
+a series of compact magnetic engines, distributed underneath the
+platform car, all along its length."
+
+"I don't understand those magnetic engines."
+
+"Well, each of them consists of a great iron horseshoe, rendered
+alternately a magnet and not a magnet by an intermittent current of
+electricity from a battery, this current in its turn regulated by
+clock-work. When the horseshoe is in the circuit, it is a magnet, and
+it pulls its clapper toward it with enormous power. When it is out of
+the circuit, the next second, it is not a magnet, and it lets the
+clapper go. The clapper, oscillating to and fro, imparts a rotatory
+motion to a fly wheel, which transmits it to the drivers on the rails.
+Such are our motors. They are no novelty, for trial has proved them
+practicable.
+
+"With a magnetic engine for every truck of wheels, we can reasonably
+expect to move our immense car, and to drive it along at a speed, say,
+of a mile a minute.
+
+"The forward end, having but a quarter of a mile to go, will reach B
+in fifteen seconds. We will call this platform car number 1. On top of
+number 1 are laid rails on which another platform car, number 2, a
+quarter of a mile shorter than number 1, is moved in precisely the
+same way. Number 2, in its turn, is surmounted by number 3, moving
+independently of the tiers beneath, and a quarter of a mile shorter
+than number 2. Number 2 is a mile and a half long; number 3 a mile and
+a quarter. Above, on successive levels, are number 4, a mile long;
+number 5, three quarters of a mile; number 6, half a mile; number 7, a
+quarter of a mile, and number 8, a short passenger car, on top of
+all."
+
+"Each car moves upon the car beneath it, independently of all the
+others, at the rate of a mile a minute. Each car has its own magnetic
+engines. Well, the train being drawn up with the latter end of each
+car resting against a lofty bumping-post at A, Tom Furnace, the
+gentlemanly conductor, and Jean Marie Rivarol, engineer, mount by a
+long ladder to the exalted number 8. The complicated mechanism is set
+in motion. What happens?"
+
+"Number 8 runs a quarter of a mile in fifteen seconds and reaches the
+end of number 7. Meanwhile number 7 has run a quarter of a mile in the
+same time and reached the end of number 6; number 6, a quarter of a
+mile in fifteen seconds, and reached the end of number 5; number 5,
+the end of number 4; number 4, of number 3; number 3, of number 2;
+number 2, of number 1. And number 1, in fifteen seconds, has gone its
+quarter of a mile along the ground track, and has reached station B.
+All this has been done in fifteen seconds. Wherefore, numbers 1, 2, 3,
+4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 come to rest against the bumping-post at B, at
+precisely the same second. We, in number 8, reach B just when number 1
+reaches it. In other words, we accomplish two miles in fifteen
+seconds. Each of the eight cars, moving at the rate of a mile a
+minute, has contributed a quarter of a mile to our journey, and has
+done its work in fifteen seconds. All the eight did their work at
+once, during the same fifteen seconds. Consequently we have been
+whizzed through the air at the somewhat startling speed of seven and a
+half seconds to the mile. This is the Tachypomp. Does it justify the
+name?"
+
+Although a little bewildered by the complexity of cars, I apprehended
+the general principle of the machine. I made a diagram, and understood
+it much better. "You have merely improved on the idea of my moving
+faster than the train when I was going to the smoking car?"
+
+"Precisely. So far we have kept within the bounds of the practicable.
+To satisfy the professor, you can theorize in something after this
+fashion: If we double the number of cars, thus decreasing by one half
+the distance which each has to go, we shall attain twice the speed.
+Each of the sixteen cars will have but one eighth of a mile to go. At
+the uniform rate we have adopted, the two miles can be done in seven
+and a half instead of fifteen seconds. With thirty-two cars, and a
+sixteenth of a mile, or twenty rods difference in their length, we
+arrive at the speed of a mile in less than two seconds; with sixty-
+four cars, each travelling but ten rods, a mile under the second. More
+than sixty miles a minute! If this isn't rapid enough for the
+professor, tell him to go on, increasing the number of his cars and
+diminishing the distance each one has to run. If sixty-four cars yield
+a speed of a mile inside the second, let him fancy a Tachypomp of six
+hundred and forty cars, and amuse himself calculating the rate of car
+number 640. Just whisper to him that when he has an infinite number of
+cars with an infinitesimal difference in their lengths, he will have
+obtained that infinite speed for which he seems to yearn. Then demand
+Abscissa."
+
+I wrung my friend's hand in silent and grateful admiration. I could
+say nothing.
+
+"You have listened to the man of theory," he said proudly. "You shall
+now behold the practical engineer. We will go to the west of the
+Mississippi and find some suitably level locality. We will erect
+thereon a model Tachypomp. We will summon thereunto the professor, his
+daughter, and why not his fair sister Jocasta, as well? We will take
+them a journey which shall much astonish the venerable Surd. He shall
+place Abscissa's digits in yours and bless you both with an algebraic
+formula. Jocasta shall contemplate with wonder the genius of Rivarol.
+But we have much to do. We must ship to St. Joseph the vast amount of
+material to be employed in the construction of the Tachypomp. We must
+engage a small army of workmen to effect that construction, for we are
+to annihilate time and space. Perhaps you had better see your
+bankers."
+
+I rushed impetuously to the door. There should be no delay. "Stop!
+stop! Um Gottes Willen, stop!" shrieked Rivarol. "I launched my
+butcher this morning and I haven't bolted the-"
+
+But it was too late. I was upon the trap. It swung open with a crash,
+and I was plunged down, down, down! I felt as if I were falling
+through illimitable space. I remember wondering, as I rushed through
+the darkness, whether I should reach Kerguellen's Land or stop at the
+center. It seemed an eternity. Then my course was suddenly and
+painfully arrested.
+
+I opened my eyes. Around me were the walls of Professor Surd's study.
+Under me was a hard, unyielding plane which I knew too well was
+Professor Surd's study floor. Behind me was the black, slippery,
+haircloth chair which had belched me forth, much as the whale served
+Jonah. In front of me stood Professor Surd himself, looking down with
+a not unpleasant smile.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Furnace. Let me help you up. You look tired, sir.
+No wonder you fell asleep when I kept you so long waiting. Shall I get
+you a glass of wine? No? By the way, since receiving your letter I
+find that you are a son of my old friend, Judge Furnace. I have made
+inquiries, and see no reason why you should not make Abscissa a good
+husband."
+
+Still I can see no reason why the Tachypomp should not have succeeded.
+Can you?
+
+*** section-2
+
+THE SOUL SPECTROSCOPE
+
+The Singular Materialism of a Progressive Thinker
+
+
+PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S VIEWS MORE THAN JUSTIFIED BY THE EXPERIMENTS
+OF THE CELEBRATED PROFESSOR DUMMKOPT OF BOSTON, MASS.
+
+BOSTON, December 13--Professor Dummkopf, a German gentleman of
+education and ingenuity, at present residing in this city, is engaged
+on experiments which, if successful, will work a great change both in
+metaphysical science and in the practical relationships of life.
+
+The professor is firm in the conviction that modern science has
+narrowed down to almost nothing the border territory between the
+material and the immaterial. It may be some time, he admits, before
+any man shall be able to point his finger and say with authority,
+"Here mind begins; here matter ends." It may be found that the
+boundary line between mina and matter is as purely imaginary as the
+equator that divides the northern from the southern hemisphere. It may
+be found that mind is essentially objective as is matter, or that
+matter is as entirely Subjective as is mind. It may be that there is
+no matter except as conditioned in mind. It may be that there is no
+mind except as conditioned in matter. Professor Dummkopf's views upon
+this broad topic are interesting, although somewhat bewildering. I can
+cordially recommend the great work in nine volumes,
+Koerperliehegelswissenschaft, to any reader who may be inclined to
+follow up the subject. The work can undoubtedly be obtained in the
+original Leipzig edition through any responsible importer of foreign
+books.
+
+Great as is the problem suggested above, Professor Dummkopf has no
+doubt whatever that it will be solved, and at no distant day. He
+himself has taken a masterly stride toward a solution by the brilliant
+series of experiments I am about to describe. He not only believes
+with Tyndall that matter contains the promise and potency of all life,
+but he believes that every force, physical, intellectual, and moral,
+may be resolved into matter, formulated in terms of matter, and
+analyzed into its constituent forms of matter; that motion is matter,
+mind is matter, law is matter, and even that abstract relations of
+mathematical abstractions are purely material.
+
+PHOTOGRAPHING SMELL
+
+In accordance with an invitation extended to me at the last meeting of
+the Radical Club--an organization, by the way, which is doing a noble
+work in extending our knowledge of the Unknowable--I dallied yesterday
+at Professor Dummkopf's rooms in Joy Street, at the West End. I found
+the professor in his apartment on the upper floor, busily engaged in
+an attempt to photograph smell.
+
+"You see," he said, as he stirred up a beaker from which strongly
+marked fumes of sulphuretied hydrogen were arising and filling the
+room, "you see that, having demonstrated the objectiveness of
+sensation, it has now become my privilege and easy task to show that
+the phenomena of sensation are equally material. Hence I am attempting
+to photograph smell."
+
+The professor then darted behind a camera which was leveled upon the
+vessel in which the suffocating fumes were generated and busied
+himself awhile with the plate.
+
+A disappointed look stole over his face as he brought the negative to
+the light and examined it anxiously. "Not yet, not yet!" he said
+sadly, "but patience and improved appliances will finally bring it.
+The trouble is in my tools, you see, and not in my theory. I did fancy
+the other day that I obtained a distinctly marked negative from the
+odor of a hot onion stew, and the thought has cheered me ever since.
+But it's bound to come. I tell you, my worthy friend, the actinic ray
+wasn't made for nothing. Could you accommodate me with a dollar and a
+quarter to buy some more collodion?"
+
+THE BOTTLE THEORY OF SOUND
+
+I expressed my cheerful readiness to be banker to genius.
+
+"Thanks," said the professor, pocketing the scrip and resuming his
+position at the camera. "When I have pictorially captured smell, the
+most palpable of the senses, the next thing will be to imprison
+sound--vulgarly speaking, to bottle it. Just think a moment. Force is
+as imperishable as matter; indeed, as I have been somewhat successful
+in showing, it is matter. Now, when a sound wave is once started, it
+is only lost through an indefinite extension of its circumference.
+Catch that sound wave, sir! Catch it in a bottle, then its
+circumference cannot extend. You may keep the sound wave forever if
+you will only keep it corked up tight. The only difficulty is in
+bottling it in the first place. I shall attend to the details of that
+operation just as soon as I have managed to photograph the confounded
+rotten-egg smell of sulphydric acid."
+
+The professor stirred up the offensive mixture with a glass rod, and
+continued:
+
+"While my object in bottling sound is mainly scientific, I must
+confess that I see in success in that direction a prospect of
+considerable pecuniary profit. I shall be prepared at no distant day
+to put operas in quart bottles, labeled and assorted, and contemplate
+a series of light and popular airs in ounce vials at prices to suit
+the times. You know very well that it costs a ten-dollar bill now to
+take a lady to hear Martha or Mignon, rendered in first-class style.
+By the bottle system, the same notes may be heard in one's own parlor
+at a comparatively trifling expense. I could put the operas into the
+market at from eighty cents to a dollar a bottle. For oratorios and
+symphonies I should use demijohns, and the cost would of course be
+greater. I don't think that ordinary bottles would hold Wagner's
+music. It might be necessary to employ carboys. Sir, if I were of the
+sanguine habit of you Americans, I should say that there were millions
+in it. Being a phlegmatic Teuton, accustomed to the precision and
+moderation of scientific language, I will merely say that in the
+success of my experiments with sound I see a comfortable income, as
+well as great renown.
+
+A SCIENTIFIC MARVEL
+
+By this time the professor had another negative, but an eager
+examination of it yielded nothing more satisfactory than before. He
+sighed and continued:
+
+"Having photographed smell and bottled sound, I shall proceed to a
+project as much higher than this as the reflective faculties are
+higher than the perceptive, as the brain is more exalted than the ear
+or nose.
+
+"I am perfectly satisfied that elements of mind are just as
+susceptible of detection and analysis as elements of matter. Why, mind
+is matter.
+
+"The soul spectroscope, or, as it will better be known, Dummkopf's
+duplex self-registering soul spectroscope, is based on the broad fact
+that whatever is material may be analyzed and determined by the
+position of the Frauenhofer lines upon the spectrum. If soul is
+matter, soul may thus be analyzed and determined. Place a subject
+under the light, and the minute exhalations or emanations proceeding
+from his soul--and these exhalations or emanations are, of course,
+matter--will be represented by their appropriate symbols upon the face
+of a properly arranged spectroscope.
+
+"This, in short, is my discovery. How I shall arrange the
+spectroscope, and how I shall locate the subject with reference to the
+light is of course my secret. I have applied for a patent. I shall
+exploit the instrument and its practical workings at the Centennial.
+Till then I must decline to enter into any more explicit description
+of the invention."
+
+THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DISCOVERY
+
+"What will be the bearing of your great discovery in its practical
+workings?"
+
+"I can go so far as to give you some idea of what those practical
+workings are. The effect of the soul spectroscope upon everyday
+affairs will be prodigious, simply prodigious. All lying, deceit,
+double dealing, hypocrisy, will be abrogated under its operation. It
+will bring about a millennium of truth and sincerity.
+
+"A few practical illustrations. No more bell punches on the horse
+railroad. The superintendent, with a smattering of scientific
+knowledge and one of my soul spectroscopes in his office, will examine
+with the eye of infallible science every applicant for the position of
+conductor and will determine by the markings on his spectrum whether
+there is dishonesty in his soul, and this as readily as the chemist
+decides whether there is iron in a meteorolite or hydrogen in Saturn's
+ring.
+
+"No more courts, judges, or juries. Hereafter justice will be
+represented with both eyes wide open and with one of my duplex self-
+registering soul spectroscopes in her right hand. The inmost nature of
+the accused will be read at a glance and he will be acquitted,
+imprisoned for thirty days, or hung, just as the Frauenhofer lines
+which lay bare his soul may determine.
+
+"No more official corruption or politicians' lies. The important
+element in every campaign will be one of my soul spectroscopes, and it
+will effect the most radical, and, at the same time, the most
+practicable of civil service reforms.
+
+"No more young stool pigeons in tall towers. No man will subscribe for
+a daily newspaper until a personal inspection of its editor's soul by
+means of one of my spectroscopes has convinced him that he is paying
+for truth, honest conviction, and uncompromising independence, rather
+than for the false utterances of a hired conscience and a bought
+judgment.
+
+"No more unhappy marriages. The maiden will bring her glibly promising
+lover to me before she accepts or rejects his proposal, and I shall
+tell her whether his spectrum exhibits the markings of pure love,
+constancy, and tenderness, or of sordid avarice, vacillating
+affections, and post-nuptial cruelty. I shall be the angel with
+shining sword (or rather spectroscope] who shall attend Hymen and
+guard the entrance to his paradise.
+
+"No more shame. If anything be wanting in the character of a mean, no
+amount of brazen pretension on his part can place the missing line in
+his spectrum. If anything is lacking in him, it will be lacking there.
+I found by a long series of experiments upon the imperfectly
+constituted minds of the patients in the lunatic asylum at Taunton-"
+
+"Then you have been at Taunton?"
+
+"Yes. For two years I pursued my studies among the unfortunate inmates
+of that institution. Not exactly as a patient myself, you understand,
+but as a student of the phenomena of morbid intellectual developments.
+But I see I am wearying you, and I must resume my photography before
+this stuff stops smelling. Come again."
+
+Having bid the professor farewell and wished him abundant success in
+his very interesting experiments, I went home and read again for the
+thirty-ninth time Professor Tyndall's address at Belfast.
+
+*** section-3
+
+THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY
+
+On a shelf in the old Arsenal Museum, in the Central Park, in the
+midst of stuffed hummingbirds, ermines, silver foxes, and bright-
+colored parakeets, there is a ghastly row of human heads. I pass by
+the mummied Peruvian, the Maori chief, and the Flathead Indian to
+speak of a Caucasian head which has had a fascinating interest to me
+ever since it was added to the grim collection a little more than a
+year ago.
+
+I was struck with the Head when I first saw it. The pensive
+intelligence of the features won me. The face is remarkable, although
+the nose is gone, and the nasal fossae are somewhat the worse for
+wear. The eyes are likewise wanting, but the empty orbs have an
+expression of their own. The parchmenty skin is so shriveled that the
+teeth show to their roots in the jaws. The mouth has been much
+affected by the ravages of decay, but what mouth there is displays
+character. It seems to say: "Barring certain deficiencies in my
+anatomy, you behold a man of parts!" The features of the Head are of
+the Teutonic cast, and the skull is the skull of a philosopher. What
+particularly attracted my attention, however, was the vague
+resemblance which this dilapidated countenance bore to some face which
+had at some time been familiar to me--some face which lingered in my
+memory, but which I could not place.
+
+After all, I was not greatly surprised, when I had known the Head for
+nearly a year, to see it acknowledge our acquaintance and express its
+appreciation of friendly interest on my part by deliberately winking
+at me as I stood before its glass case.
+
+This was on a Trustees' Day, and I was the only visitor in the hall.
+The faithful attendant had gone to enjoy a can of beer with his
+friend, the superintendent of the monkeys.
+
+The Head winked a second time, and even more cordially than before. I
+gazed upon its efforts with the critical delight of an anatomist. I
+saw the masseter muscle flex beneath the leathery skin. I saw the play
+of the glutinators, and the beautiful lateral movement of the internal
+playtsyma. I knew the Head was trying to speak to me. I noted the
+convulsive twitchings of the risorius and the zygomatie major, and
+knew that it was endeavoring to smile.
+
+"Here," I thought, "is either a case of vitality long after
+decapitation, or, an instance of reflex action where there is no
+diastaltic or excitor-motory system. In either case the phenomenon is
+unprecedented, and should be carefully observed. Besides, the Head is
+evidently well disposed toward me." I found a key on my bunch which
+opened the glass door.
+
+"Thanks," said the Head. "A breath of fresh air is quite a treat."
+
+"How do you feel?" I asked politely. "How does it seem without a
+body?"
+
+The Head shook itself sadly and sighed. "I would give," it said,
+speaking through its ruined nose, and for obvious reasons using chest
+tones sparingly, "I would give both ears for a single leg. My ambition
+is principally ambulatory, and yet I cannot walk. I cannot even hop or
+waddle. I would fain travel, roam, promenade, circulate in the busy
+paths of men, but I am chained to this accursed shelf. I am no better
+off than these barbarian heads--I, a man of science! I am compelled to
+sit here on my neck and see sandpipers and storks all around me, with
+legs and to spare. Look at that infernal little Oedieneninus longpipes
+over there. Look at that miserable gray-headed porphyric. They have no
+brains, no ambition, no yearnings. Yet they have legs, legs, legs, in
+profusion." He cast an envious glance across the alcove at the
+tantalizing limbs of the birds in question and added gloomily, "There
+isn't even enough of me to make a hero for one of Wilkie Collins's
+novels."
+
+I did not exactly know how to console him in so delicate a manner, but
+ventured to hint that perhaps his condition had its compensations in
+immunity from corns and the gout.
+
+"And as to arms," he went on, "there's another misfortune for you! I
+am unable to brush away the flies that get in here--Lord knows how--in
+the summertime. I cannot reach over and cuff that confounded Chinook
+mummy that sits there grinning at me like a jack-in-the-box. I cannot
+scratch my head or even blow my nose (his nose!) decently when I get
+cold in this thundering draft. As to eating and drinking, I don't
+care. My soul is wrapped up in science. Science is my bride, my
+divinity. I worship her footsteps in the past and hail the prophecy of
+her future progress. I-"
+
+I had heard these sentiments before. In a flash I had accounted for
+the familiar look which had haunted me ever since I first saw the
+Head. "Pardon me," I said, "you are the celebrated Professor
+Dummkopf?"
+
+"That is, or was, my name," he replied, with dignity.
+
+"And you formerly lived in Boston, where you carried on scientific
+experiments of startling originality. It was you who first discovered
+how to photograph smell, how to bottle music, how to freeze the aurora
+borealis. It was you who first applied spectrW analysis to Mind."
+
+"Those were some of my minor achievements," said the Head, sadly
+nodding itself--"small when compared with my final invention, the
+grand discovery which was at the same time my greatest triumph and my
+ruin. I lost my Body in an experiment."
+
+"How was that?" I asked. "I had not heard."
+
+"No," said the Head. "I being alone and friendless, my disappearance
+was hardly noticed. I will tell you."
+
+There was a sound upon the stairway. "Hush!" cried the Head. "Here
+comes somebody. We must not be discovered. You must dissemble."
+
+I hastily closed the door of the glass case, locking it just in time
+to evade the vigilance of the returning keeper, and dissembled by
+pretending to examine, with great interest, a nearby exhibit.
+
+On the next Trustees' Day I revisited the museum and gave the keeper
+of the Head a dollar on the pretense of purchasing information in
+regard to the curiosities in his charge. He made the circuit of the
+hall with me, talking volubly all the while.
+
+"That there," he said, as we stood before the Head, "is a relic of
+morality presented to the museum fifteen months ago. The head of a
+notorious murderer guillotined at Paris in the last century, sir."
+
+I fancied that I saw a slight twitching about the corners of Professor
+Dummkopf's mouth and an almost imperceptible depression of what was
+once his left eyelid, but he kept his face remarkably well under the
+circumstances. I dismissed my guide with many thanks for his
+intelligent services, and, as I had anticipated, he departed forthwith
+to invest his easily earned dollar in beer, leaving me to pursue my
+conversation with the Head.
+
+"Think of putting a wooden-headed idiot like that," said the
+professor, after I had opened his glass prison, "in charge of a
+portion, however small, of a man of science--of the inventor of the
+Telepomp! Paris! Murderer! Last century, indeed!" and the Head shook
+with laughter until I feared that it would tumble off the shelf.
+
+"You spoke of your invention, the Telepomp," I suggested.
+
+"Ah, yes," said the Head, simultaneously recovering its gravity and
+its center of gravity; "I promised to tell you how I happen to be a
+Man without a Body. You see that some three or four years ago I
+discovered the principle of the transmission of sound by electricity.
+My telephone, as I called it, would have been an invention of great
+practical utility if I had been spared to introduce it to the public.
+But, alas-"
+
+"Excuse the interruption," I said, "but I must inform you that
+somebody else has recently accomplished the same thing. The telephone
+is a realized fact."
+
+"Have they gone any further?" he eagerly asked. "Have they discovered
+the great secret of the transmission of atoms? In other words, have
+they accomplished the Telepomp?"
+
+"I have heard nothing of the kind," I hastened to assure him, "but
+what do you mean?"
+
+"Listen," he said. "In the course of my experiments with the telephone
+I became convinced that the same principle was capable of indefinite
+expansion. Matter is made up of molecules, and molecules, in their
+turn, are made up of atoms. The atom, you know, is the unit of being.
+The molecules differ according to the number and the arrangement of
+their constituent atoms. Chemical changes are effected by the
+dissolution of the atoms in the molecules and their rearrangements
+into molecules of another kind. This dissolution may be accomplished
+by chemical affinity or by a sufficiently strong electric current. Do
+you follow me?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Well, then, following out this line of thought, I conceived a great
+idea. There was no reason why matter could not be telegraphed, or, to
+be etymologically accurate, 'telepomped.' It was only necessary to
+effect at one end of the line the disintegration of the molecules into
+atoms and to convey the vibrations of the chemical dissolution by
+electricity to the other pole, where a corresponding reconstruction
+could be effected from other atoms. As all atoms are alike, their
+arrangement into molecules of the same order, and the arrangement of
+those molecules into an organization similar to the original
+organization, would be practically a reproduction of the original. It
+would be a materialization--not in the sense of the spiritualists'
+cant, but in all the truth and logic of stern science. Do you still
+follow me?"
+
+"It is a little misty," I said, "but I think I get the point. You
+would telegraph the Idea of the matter, to use the word Idea in
+Plato's sense."
+
+"Precisely. A candle flame is the same candle flame although the
+burning gas is continually changing. A wave on the surface of water is
+the same wave, although the water composing it is shifting as it
+moves. A man is the same man although there is not an atom in his body
+which was there five years before. It is the form, the shape, the
+Idea, that is essential. The vibrations that give individuality to
+matter may be transmitted to a distance by wire just as readily as the
+vibrations that give individuality to sound. So I constructed an
+instrument by which I could pull down matter, so to speak, at the
+anode and build it up again on the same plan at the cathode. This was
+my Telepomp."
+
+"But in practice--how did the Telepomp work?"
+
+"To perfection! In my rooms on joy Street, in Boston, I had about five
+miles of wire. I had no difficulty in sending simple compounds, such
+as quartz, starch, and water, from one room to another over this five-
+mile coil. I shall never forget the joy with which I disintegrated a
+three-cent postage stamp in one room and found it immediately
+reproduced at the receiving instrument in another. This success with
+inorganic matter emboldened me to attempt the same thing with a living
+organism. I caught a cat--a black and yellow cat--and I submitted him
+to a terrible current from my two-hundred-cup battery. The cat
+disappeared in a twinkling. I hastened to the next room and, to my
+immense satisfaction, found Thomas there, alive and purring, although
+somewhat astonished. It worked like a charm."
+
+"This is certainly very remarkable."
+
+"Isn't it? After my experiment with the cat, a gigantic idea took
+possession of me. If I could send a feline being, why not send a human
+being? If I could transmit a cat five miles by wire in an instant by
+electricity, why not transmit a man to London by Atlantic cable and
+with equal dispatch? I resolved to strengthen my already powerful
+battery and try the experiment. Like a thorough votary of science, I
+resolved to try the experiment on myself.
+
+"I do not like to dwell upon this chapter of my experience," continued
+the Head, winking at a tear which had trickled down on to his cheek
+and which I gently wiped away for him with my own pocket handkerchief.
+"Suffice it that I trebled the cups in my battery, stretched my wire
+over housetops to my lodgings in Phillips Street, made everything
+ready, and with a solemn calmness born of my confidence in the theory,
+placed myself in the receiving instrument of the Telepomp at my Joy
+Street office. I was as sure that when I made the connection with the
+battery I would find myself in my rooms in Phillips Street as I was
+sure of my existence. Then I touched the key that let on the
+electricity. Alas!"
+
+For some moments my friend was unable to speak. At last, with an
+effort, he resumed his narrative.
+
+"I began to disintegrate at my feet and slowly disappeared under my
+own eyes. My legs melted away, and then my trunk and arms. That
+something was wrong, I knew from the exceeding slowness of my
+dissolution, but I was helpless. Then my head went and I lost all
+consciousness. According to my theory, my head, having been the last
+to disappear, should have been the first to materialize at the other
+end of the wire. The theory was confirmed in fact. I recovered
+consciousness. I opened my eyes in my Phillips Street apartments. My
+chin was materializing, and with great satisfaction I saw my neck
+slowly taking shape. Suddenly, and about at the third cervical
+vertebra, the process stopped. In a flash I knew the reason. I had
+forgotten to replenish the cups of my battery with fresh sulphuric
+acid, and there was not electricity enough to materialize the rest of
+me. I was a Head, but my body was Lord knows where."
+
+I did not attempt to offer consolation. Words would have been mockery
+in the presence of Professor Dummkopf's grief.
+
+"What matters it about the rest?" he sadly continued. "The house in
+Phillips Street was full of medical students. I suppose that some of
+them found my head, and knowing nothing of me or of the Telepomp,
+appropriated it for purposes of anatomical study. I suppose that they
+attempted to preserve it by means of some arsenical preparation. How
+badly the work was done is shown by my defective nose. I suppose that
+I drifted from medical student to medical student and from anatomical
+cabinet to anatomical cabinet until some would-be humorist presented
+me to this collection as a French murderer of the last century. For
+some months I knew nothing, and when I recovered consciousness I found
+myself here.
+
+"Such," added the Head, with a dry, harsh laugh, "is the irony of
+fate!"
+
+"Is there nothing I can do for you?" I asked, after a pause.
+
+"Thank you," the Head replied; "I am tolerably cheerful and resigned.
+I have lost pretty much all interest in experimental science. I sit
+here day after day and watch the objects of zoological,
+ichthyological, ethnological, and conchological interest with which
+this admirable museum abounds. I don't know of anything you can do for
+me.
+
+"Stay," he added, as his gaze fell once more upon the exasperating
+legs of the Oedienenius longpipes opposite him. "If there is anything
+I do feel the need of, it is outdoor exercise. Couldn't you manage in
+some way to take me out for a walk?"
+
+I confess that I was somewhat staggered by this request, but promised
+to do what I could. After some deliberation, I formed a plan, which
+was carried out in the following manner:
+
+I returned to the museum that afternoon just before the closing hour,
+and hid myself behind the mammoth sea cow, or Manatus Americanus. The
+attendant, after a cursory glance through the hall, locked up the
+building and departed. Then I came boldly forth and removed my friend
+from his shelf. With a piece of stout twine, I lashed his one or two
+vertebrae to the headless vertebrae of a skeleton moa. This gigantic
+and extinct bird of New Zealand is heavy-legged, full-breasted, tall
+as a man, and has huge, sprawling feet. My friend, thus provided with
+legs and arms, manifested extraordinary glee. He walked about, stamped
+his big feet, swung his wings, and occasionally broke forth into a
+hilarious shuffle. I was obliged to remind him that he must support
+the dignity of the venerable bird whose skeleton he had borrowed. I
+despoiled the African lion of his glass eyes, and inserted them in the
+empty orbits of the Head. I gave Professor Dummkopf a Fiji war lance
+for a walking stick, covered him with a Sioux blanket, and then we
+issued forth from the old arsenal into the fresh night air and the
+moonlight, and wandered arm in arm along the shores of the quiet lake
+and through the mazy paths of the Ramble.
+
+*** section-4
+
+THE ABLEST MAN IN THE WORLD
+
+I
+
+It may or may not be remembered that in 1878 General Ignatieff spent
+several weeks of July at the Badischer Hof in Baden. The public
+journals gave out that he visited the watering-place for the benefit
+of his health, said to be much broken by protracted anxiety and
+responsibility in the service of the Czar. But everybody knew that
+Ignatieff was just then out of favor at St. Petersburg, and that his
+absence from the centers of active statecraft at a time when the peace
+of Europe fluttered like a shuttlecock in the air, between Salisbury
+and Shouvaloff, was nothing more or less than politely disguised
+exile.
+
+I am indebted for the following facts to my friend Fisher, of New
+York, who arrived at Baden on the day after Ignatieff, and was duly
+announced in the official list of strangers as "Herr Doctor Professor
+Fischer, mit Frau Gattin and Bed. Nordamerika."
+
+The scarcity of titles among the traveling aristocracy of North
+America is a standing grievance with the ingenious person who compiles
+the official list. Professional pride and the instincts of hospitality
+alike impel him to supply the lack whenever he can. He distributes
+governor, major-general, and doctor professor with tolerable
+impartiality, according as the arriving Americans wear a
+distinguished, a martial, or a studious air. Fisher owed his title to
+his spectacles.
+
+It was still early in the season. The theatre had not yet opened. The
+hotels were hardly half full, the concerts in the kiosk at the
+Conversationshaus were heard by scattering audiences, and the
+shopkeepers of the bazaar had no better business than to spend their
+time in bewailing the degeneracy of Baden Baden since an end was put
+to the play. Few excursionists disturbed the meditations of the
+shriveled old custodian of the tower on the Mercuriusberg. Fisher
+found the place very stupid--as stupid as Saratoga in June or Long
+Branch in September. He was impatient to get to Switzerland, but his
+wife had contracted a table d'hôte intimacy with a Polish countess,
+and she positively refused to take any step that would sever so
+advantageous a connection.
+
+One afternoon Fisher was standing on one of the little bridges that
+span the gutter-wide Oosbach, idly gazing into the water and wondering
+whether a good sized Rangely trout could swim the stream without
+personal inconvenience, when the porter of the Badischer Hof came to
+him on the run.
+
+"Herr Doctor Professorl" cried the porter, touching his cap. "I pray
+you pardon, but the highborn the Baron Savitch out of Moscow, of the
+General Ignatieff's suite, suffers himself in a terrible fit, and
+appears to die."
+
+In vain Fisher assured the porter that it was a mistake to consider
+him a medical expert; that he professed no science save that of draw
+poker; that if a false impression prevailed in the hotel it was
+through a blunder for which he was in no way responsible; and that,
+much as he regretted the unfortunate condition of the highborn the
+baron out of Moscow, he did not feel that his presence in the chamber
+of sickness would be of the slightest benefit. It was impossible to
+eradicate the idea that possessed the porter's mind. Finding himself
+fairly dragged toward the hotel, Fisher at length concluded to make a
+virtue of necessity and to render his explanations to the baron's
+friends.
+
+The Russian's apartments were upon the second floor, not far from
+those occupied by Fisher. A French valet, almost beside himself with
+terror, came hurrying out of the room to meet the porter and the
+doctor professor. Fisher again attempted to explain, but to no
+purpose. The valet also had explanations to make, and the superior
+fluency of his French enabled him to monopolize the conversation. No,
+there was nobody there--nobody but himself, the faithful Auguste of
+the baron. His Excellency, the General Ignatieff, His Highness, the
+Prince Koloff, Dr. Rapperschwyll, all the suite, all the world, had
+driven out that morning to Gernsbach. The baron, meanwhile, had been
+seized by an effraying malady, and he, Auguste, was desolate with
+apprehension. He entreated Monsieur to lose no time in parley, but to
+hasten to the bedside of the baron, who was already in the agonies of
+dissolution.
+
+Fisher followed Auguste into the inner room. The Baron, in his boots,
+lay upon the bed, his body bent almost double by the unrelenting gripe
+of a distressful pain. His teeth were tightly clenched, and the rigid
+muscles around the mouth distorted the natural expression of his face.
+Every few seconds a prolonged groan escaped him. His fine eyes rolled
+piteously. Anon, he would press both hands upon his abdomen and shiver
+in every limb in the intensity of his suffering.
+
+Fisher forgot his explanations. Had he been a doctor professor in
+fact, he could not have watched the symptoms of the baron's malady
+with greater interest.
+
+"Can Monsieur preserve him?" whispered the terrified Auguste.
+
+"Perhaps," said Monsieur, dryly.
+
+Fisher scribbled a note to his wife on the back of a card and
+dispatched it in the care of the hotel porter. That functionary
+returned with great promptness, bringing a black bottle and a glass.
+The bottle had come in Fisher's trunk to Baden all the way from
+Liverpool, had crossed the sea to Liverpool from New York, and had
+journeyed to New York direct from Bourbon County, Kentucky. Fisher
+seized it eagerly but reverently, and held it up against the light.
+There were still three inches or three inches and a half in the
+bottom. He uttered a grunt of pleasure.
+
+"There is some hope of saving the Baron," he remarked to Auguste.
+
+Fully one half of the precious liquid was poured into the glass and
+administered without delay to the groaning, writhing patient. In a few
+minutes Fisher had the satisfaction of seeing the baron sit up in bed.
+The muscles around his mouth relaxed, and the agonized expression was
+superseded by a look of placid contentment.
+
+Fisher now had an opportunity to observe the personal characteristics
+of the Russian baron. He was a young man of about thirty-five, with
+exceedingly handsome and clear-cut features, but a peculiar head. The
+peculiarity of his head was that it seemed to be perfectly round on
+top-that is, its diameter from ear to ear appeared quite equal to its
+anterior and posterior diameter. The curious effect of this unusual
+conformation was rendered more striking by the absence of all hair.
+There was nothing on the baron's head but a tightly fitting skullcap
+of black silk. A very deceptive wig hung upon one of the bed posts.
+
+Being sufficiently recovered to recognize the presence of a stranger,
+Savitch made a courteous bow.
+
+"How do you find yourself now?" inquired Fisher, in bad French.
+
+"Very much better, thanks to Monsieur," replied the baron, in
+excellent English, spoken in a charming voice. "Very much better,
+though I feel a certain dizziness here." And he pressed his hand to
+his forehead.
+
+The valet withdrew at a sign from his master, and was followed by the
+porter. Fisher advanced to the bedside and took the baron's wrist.
+Even his unpractised touch told him that the pulse was alarmingly
+high. He was much puzzled, and not a little uneasy at the turn which
+the affair had taken. "Have I got myself and the Russian into an
+infernal scrape?" he thought. "But no--he's well out of his teens, and
+half a tumbler of such whiskey as that ought not to go to a baby's
+head."
+
+Nevertheless, the new symptoms developed themselves with a rapidity
+and poignancy that made Fisher feel uncommonly anxious. Savitch's face
+became as white as marble--its paleness rendered startling by the
+sharp contrast of the black skull cap. His form reeled as he sat on
+the bed, and he clasped his head convulsively with both hands, as if
+in terror lest it burst.
+
+"I had better call your valet," said Fisher, nervously.
+
+"No, no!" gasped the baron. "You are a medical man, and I shall have
+to trust you. There is something-wrong-here." With a spasmodic gesture
+he vaguely indicated the top of his head.
+
+"But I am not-" stammered Fisher.
+
+"No words!" exclaimed the Russian, imperiously. "Act at once--there
+must be no delay. Unscrew the top of my headl"
+
+Savitch tore off his skullcap and flung it aside. Fisher has no words
+to describe the bewilderment with which he beheld the actual fabric of
+the baron's cranium. The skullcap had concealed the fact that the
+entire top of Savitch's head was a dome of polished silver.
+
+"Unscrew it!" said Savitch again.
+
+Fisher reluctantly placed both hands upon the silver skull and exerted
+a gentle pressure toward the left. The top yielded, turning easily and
+truly in its threads.
+
+"Faster!" said the baron, faintly. "I tell you no time must be lost."
+Then he swooned.
+
+At this instant there was a sound of voices in the outer room, and the
+door leading into the baron's bed-chamber was violently flung open and
+as violently closed. The newcomer was a short, spare man, of middle
+age, with a keen visage and piercing, deepset little gray eyes. He
+stood for a few seconds scrutinizing Fisher with a sharp, almost
+fiercely jealous regard.
+
+The baron recovered his consciousness and opened his eyes.
+
+"Dr. Rapperschwyll!" he exclaimed.
+
+Dr. Rapperschwyll, with a few rapid strides, approached the bed and
+confronted Fisher and Fisher's patient. "What is all this?" he angrily
+demanded.
+
+Without waiting for a reply he laid his hand rudely upon Fisher's arm
+and pulled him away from the baron. Fisher, more and more astonished,
+made no resistance, but suffered himself to be led, or pushed, toward
+the door. Dr. Rapperschwyll opened the door wide enough to give the
+American exit, and then closed it with a vicious slam. A quick click
+informed Fisher that the key had been turned in the lock.
+
+II
+
+The next morning Fisher met Savitch coming from the Trinkhalle. The
+baron bowed with cold politeness and passed on. Later in the day a
+valet de place handed to Fisher a small parcel, with the message: "Dr.
+Rapperschwyll supposes that this will be sufficient" The parcel
+contained two gold pieces of twenty marks.
+
+Fisher gritted his teeth. "He shall have back his forty marks," he
+muttered to himself, "but I will have his confounded secret in
+return."
+
+Then Fisher discovered that even a Polish countess has her uses in the
+social economy.
+
+Mrs. Fisher's table d'hôte friend was amiability itself, when
+approached by Fisher (through Fisher's wife) on the subject of the
+Baron Savitch of Moscow. Know anything about the Baron Savitch? Of
+course she did, and about everybody else worth knowing in Europe.
+Would she kindly communicate her knowledge? Of course she would, and
+be enchanted to gratify in the slightest degree the charming curiosity
+of her Americaine. It was quite refreshing for a blasée old woman, who
+had long since ceased to feel much interest in contemporary men,
+women, things and events, to encounter one so recently from the
+boundless prairies of the new world as to cherish a piquant
+inquisitiveness about the affairs of the grand monde. Ah! yes, she
+would very willingly communicate the history of the Baron Savitch of
+Moscow, if that would amuse her dear Americaine.
+
+The Polish countess abundantly redeemed her promise, throwing in for
+good measure many choice bits of gossip and scandalous anecdotes about
+the Russian nobility, which are not relevant to the present narrative.
+Her story, as summarized by Fisher, was this:
+
+The Baron Savitch was not of an old creation. There was a mystery
+about his origin that had never been satisfactorily solved in St.
+Petersburg or in Moscow. It was said by some that he was a foundling
+from the Vospitatelnoi Dom. Others believed him to be the
+unacknowledged son of a certain illustrious personage nearly related
+to the House of Romanoff. The latter theory was the more probable,
+since it accounted in a measure for the unexampled success of his
+career from the day that he was graduated at the University of Dorpat.
+
+Rapid and brilliant beyond precedent this career had been. He entered
+the diplomatic service of the Czar, and for several years was attached
+to the legations at Vienna, London, and Paris. Created a Baron before
+his twenty-fifth birthday for the wonderful ability displayed in the
+conduct of negotiations of supreme importance and delicacy with the
+House of Hapsburg, he became a pet of Gortchakoff's, and was given
+every opportunity for the exercise of his genius in diplomacy. It was
+even said in wellinformed circles at St. Petersburg that the guiding
+mind which directed Russia's course throughout the entire Eastern
+complication, which planned the campaign on the Danube, effected the
+combinations that gave victory to the Czar's soldiers, and which
+meanwhile held Austria aloof, neutralized the immense power of
+Germany, and exasperated England only to the point where wrath expends
+itself in harmless threats, was the brain of the young Baron Savitch.
+It was certain that he had been with Ignatieff at Constantinople when
+the trouble was first fomented, with Shouvaloff in England at the time
+of the secret conference agreement, with the Grand Duke Nicholas at
+Adrianople when the protocol of an armistice was signed, and would
+soon be in Berlin behind the scenes of the Congress, where it was
+expected that he would outwit the statesmen of all Europe, and play
+with Bismarck and Disraeli as a strong man plays with two kicking
+babies.
+
+But the countess had concerned herself very little with this handsome
+young man's achievements in politics. She had been more particularly
+interested in his social career. His success in that field had been
+not less remarkable. Although no one knew with positive certainty his
+father's name, he had conquered an absolute supremacy in the most
+exclusive circles surrounding the imperial court. His influence with
+the Czar himself was supposed to be unbounded. Birth apart, he was
+considered the best parti in Russia. From poverty and by the sheer
+force of intellect he had won for himself a colossal fortune. Report
+gave him forty million roubles, and doubtless report did not exceed
+the fact. Every speculative enterprise which he undertook, and they
+were many and various, was carried to sure success by the same
+qualities of cool, unerring judgment, far-reaching sagacity, and
+apparently superhuman power of organizing, combining, and controlling,
+which had made him in politics the phenomenon of the age.
+
+About Dr. Rapperschwyll? Yes, the countess knew him by reputation and
+by sight. He was the medical man in constant attendance upon the Baron
+Savitch, whose high-strung mental organization rendered him
+susceptible to sudden and alarming attacks of illness. Dr.
+Rapperschwyll was a Swiss-had originally been a watchmaker or artisan
+of some kind, she had heard. For the rest, he was a commonplace little
+old man, devoted to his profession and to the baron, and evidently
+devoid of ambition, since he wholly neglected to turn the
+opportunities of his position and connections to the advancement of
+his personal fortunes.
+
+Fortified with this information, Fisher felt better prepared to
+grapple with Rapperschwyll for the possession of the secret. For five
+days he lay in wait for the Swiss physician. On the sixth day the
+desired opportunity unexpectedly presented itself.
+
+Half way up the Mercuriusberg, late in the afternoon, he encountered
+the custodian of the ruined tower, coming down. "No, the tower was not
+closed. A gentleman was up there, making observations of the country,
+and he, the custodian, would be back in an hour or two." So Fisher
+kept on his way.
+
+The upper part of this tower is in a dilapidated condition. The lack
+of a stairway to the summit is supplied by a temporary wooden ladder.
+Fisher's head and shoulders were hardly through the trap that opens to
+the platform, before he discovered that the man already there was the
+man whom he sought. Dr. Rapperschwyll was studying the topography of
+the Black Forest through a pair of field glasses.
+
+Fisher announced his arrival by an opportune stumble and a noisy
+effort to recover himself, at the same instant aiming a stealthy kick
+at the topmost round of the ladder, and scrambling ostentatiously over
+the edge of the trap. The ladder went down thirty or forty feet with a
+racket, clattering and banging against the walls of the tower.
+
+Dr. Rapperschwyll at once appreciated the situation. He turned sharply
+around, and remarked with a sneer, "Monsieur is unaccountably
+awkward." Then he scowled and showed his teeth, for he recognized
+Fisher.
+
+"It is rather unfortunate," said the New Yorker, with imperturbable
+coolness. "We shall be imprisoned here a couple of hours at the
+shortest. Let us congratulate ourselves that we each have intelligent
+company, besides a charming landscape to contemplate."
+
+The Swiss coldly bowed, and resumed his topographical studies. Fisher
+lighted a cigar.
+
+"I also desire," continued Fisher, puffing clouds of smoke in the
+direction of the Teufelmfihle, "to avail myself of this opportunity to
+return forty marks of yours, which reached me, I presume, by a
+mistake."
+
+"If Monsieur the American physician was not satisfied with his fee,"
+rejoined Rapperschwyll, venomously, "he can without doubt have the
+affair adjusted by applying to the baron's valet."
+
+Fisher paid no attention to this thrust, but calmly laid the gold
+pieces upon the parapet, directly under the nose of the Swiss.
+
+"I could not think of accepting any fee," he said, with deliberate
+emphasis. "I was abundantly rewarded for my trifling services by the
+novelty and interest of the case."
+
+The Swiss scanned the American's countenance long and steadily with
+his sharp little gray eyes. At length he said, carelessly:
+
+"Monsieur is a man of science?"
+
+"Yes," replied Fisher, with a mental reservation in favor of all
+sciences save that which illuminates and dignifies our national game.
+
+"Then," continued Dr. Rapperschwyll, "Monsieur will perhaps
+acknowledge that a more beautiful or more extensive case of trephining
+has rarely come under his observation."
+
+Fisher slightly raised his eyebrows.
+
+"And Monsieur will also understand, being a physician," continued Dr.
+Rapperschwyll, "the sensitiveness of the baron himself, and of his
+friends upon the subject. He will therefore pardon my seeming rudeness
+at the time of his discovery."
+
+"He is smarter than I supposed," thought Fisher. "He holds all the
+cards, while I have nothing--nothing, except a tolerably strong nerve
+when it comes to a game of bluff."
+
+"I deeply regret that sensitiveness," he continued, aloud, "for it had
+occurred to me that an accurate account of what I saw, published in
+one of the scientific journals of England or America, would excite
+wide attention, and no doubt be received with interest on the
+Continent."
+
+"What you saw?" cried the Swiss, sharply. "It is false. You saw
+nothing--when I entered you had not even removed the-"
+
+Here he stopped short and muttered to himself, as if cursing his own
+impetuosity. Fisher celebrated his advantage by tossing away his half-
+burned cigar and lighting a fresh one.
+
+"Since you compel me to be frank," Dr. Rapperschwyll went on, with
+visibly increasing nervousness, "I will inform you that the baron has
+assured me that you saw nothing. I interrupted you in the act of
+removing the silver cap."
+
+"I will be equally frank," replied Fisher, stiffening his face for a
+final effort. "On that point, the baron is not a competent witness. He
+was in a state of unconsciousness for some time before you entered.
+Perhaps I was removing the silver cap when you interrupted me-"
+
+Dr. Rapperschwyll turned pale.
+
+"And, perhaps," said Fisher, coolly, "I was replacing it."
+
+The suggestion of this possibility seemed to strike Rapperschwyll like
+a sudden thunderbolt from the clouds. His knees parted, and he almost
+sank to the floor. He put his hands before his eyes, and wept like a
+child, or, rather, like a broken old man.
+
+"He will publish it! He will publish it to the court and to the
+world!" he cried, hysterically. "And at this crisis-"
+
+Then, by a desperate effort, the Swiss appeared to recover to some
+extent his self-control. He paced the diameter of the platform for
+several minutes, with his head bent and his arms folded across the
+breast. Turning again to his companion, he said:
+
+"If any sum you may name will-"
+
+Fisher cut the proposition short with a laugh.
+
+"Then," said Rapperschwyll, "if-if I throw myself on your generosity--
+"
+
+"Well?" demanded Fisher.
+
+"And ask a promise, on your honor, of absolute silence concerning what
+you have seen?"
+
+"Silence until such time as the Baron Savitch shall have ceased to
+exist?"
+
+"That will suffice," said Rapperschwyll. "For when he ceases to exist
+I die. And your conditions?"
+
+"The whole story, here and now, and without reservation."
+
+"It is a terrible price to ask me," said Rapperschwyll, "but larger
+interests than my pride are at stake. You shall hear the story.
+
+"I was bred a watchmaker," he continued, after a long pause, "in the
+Canton of Zurich. It is not a matter of vanity when I say that I
+achieved a marvellous degree of skill in the craft. I developed a
+faculty of invention that led me into a series of experiments
+regarding the capabilities of purely mechanical combinations. I
+studied and improved upon the best automata ever constructed by human
+ingenuity. Babbage's calculating machine especially interested me. I
+saw in Babbage's idea the germ of something infinitely more important
+to the world.
+
+"Then I threw up my business and went to Paris to study physiology. I
+spent three years at the Sorbonne and perfected myself in that branch
+of knowledge. Meanwhile, my pursuits had extended far beyond the
+purely physical sciences. Psychology engaged me for a time; and then I
+ascended into the domain of sociology, which, when adequately
+understood, is the summary and final application of all knowledge.
+
+"It was after years of preparation, and as the outcome of all my
+studies, that the great idea of my life, which had vaguely haunted me
+ever since the Zurich days, assumed at last a well-defined and perfect
+form."
+
+The manner of Dr. Rapperschwyll had changed from distrustful
+reluctance to frank enthusiasm. The man himself seemed transformed.
+Fisher listened attentively and without interrupting the relation. He
+could not help fancying that the necessity of yielding the secret, so
+long and so jealously guarded by the physician, was not entirely
+distasteful to the enthusiast.
+
+"Now, attend, Monsieur," continued Dr. Rapperschwyll, "to several
+separate propositions which may seem at first to have no direct
+bearing on each other.
+
+"My endeavors in mechanism had resulted in a machine which went far
+beyond Babbage's in its powers of calculation. Given the data, there
+was no limit to the possibilities in this direction. Babbage's
+cogwheels and pinions calculated logarithms, calculated an eclipse. It
+was fed with figures, and produced results in figures. Now, the
+relations of cause and effect are as fixed and unalterable as the laws
+of arithmetic. Logic is, or should be, as exact a science as
+mathematics. My new machine was fed with facts, and produced
+conclusions. In short, it reasoned; and the results of its reasoning
+were always true, while the results of human reasoning are often, if
+not always, false. The source of error in human logic is what the
+philosophers call the `personal equation.' My machine eliminated the
+personal equation; it proceeded from cause to effect, from premise to
+conclusion, with steady precision. The human intellect is fallible; my
+machine was, and is, infallible in its processes.
+
+"Again, physiology and anatomy had taught me the fallacy of the
+medical superstition which holds the gray matter of the brain and the
+vital principle to be inseparable. I had seen men living with pistol
+balls imbedded in the medulla oblongata. I had seen the hemispheres
+and the cerebellum removed from the crania of birds and small animals,
+and yet they did not die. I believed that, though the brain were to be
+removed from a human skull, the subject would not die, although he
+would certainly be divested of the intelligence which governed all
+save the purely involuntary actions of his body.
+
+"Once more: a profound study of history from the sociological point of
+view, and a not inconsiderable practical experience of human nature,
+had convinced me that the greatest geniuses that ever existed were on
+a plane not so very far removed above the level of average intellect.
+The grandest peaks in my native country, those which all the world
+knows by name, tower only a few hundred feet above the countless
+unnamed peaks that surround them. Napoleon Bonaparte towered only a
+little over the ablest men around him. Yet that little was everything,
+and he overran Europe. A man who surpassed Napoleon, as Napoleon
+surpassed Murat, in the mental qualities which transmute thought into
+fact, would have made himself master of the whole world.
+
+"Now, to fuse these three propositions into one: suppose that I take a
+man, and, by removing the brain that enshrines all the errors and
+failures of his ancestors away back to the origin of the race, remove
+all sources of weakness in his future career. Suppose, that in place
+of the fallible intellect which I have removed, I endow him with an
+artificial intellect that operates with the certainty of universal
+laws. Suppose that I launch this superior being, who reasons truly,
+into the burly burly of his inferiors, who reason falsely, and await
+the inevitable result with the tranquillity of a philosopher.
+
+"Monsieur, you have my secret. That is precisely what I have done. In
+Moscow, where my friend Dr. Duchat had charge of the new institution
+of St. Vasili for hopeless idiots, I found a boy of eleven whom they
+called Stépan Borovitch. Since he was born, he had not seen, heard,
+spoken or thought. Nature had granted him, it was believed, a fraction
+of the sense of smell, and perhaps a fraction of the sense of taste,
+but of even this there was no positive ascertainment. Nature had
+walled in his soul most effectually. Occasional inarticulate
+murmurings, and an incessant knitting and kneading of the fingers were
+his only manifestations of energy. On bright days they would place him
+in a little rocking-chair, in some spot where the sun fell warm, and
+he would rock to and fro for hours, working his slender fingers and
+mumbling forth his satisfaction at the warmth in the plaintive and
+unvarying refrain of idiocy. The boy was thus situated when I first
+saw him.
+
+"I begged Stépan Borovitch of my good friend Dr. Duchat. If that
+excellent man had not long since died he should have shared in my
+triumph. I took Stépan to my home and plied the saw and the knife. I
+could operate on that poor, worthless, useless, hopeless travesty of
+humanity as fearlessly and as recklessly as upon a dog bought or
+caught for vivisection. That was a little more than twenty years ago.
+To-day Stépan Borovitch wields more power than any other man on the
+face of the earth. In ten years he will be the autocrat of Europe, the
+master of the world. He never errs; for the machine that reasons
+beneath his silver skull never makes a mistake."
+
+Fisher pointed downward at the old custodian of the tower, who was
+seen toiling up the hill.
+
+"Dreamers," continued Dr. Rapperschwyll, "have speculated on the
+possibility of finding among the ruins of the older civilizations some
+brief inscription which shall change the foundations of human
+knowledge. Wiser men deride the dream, and laugh at the idea of
+scientific kabbala. The wiser men are fools. Suppose that Aristotle
+had discovered on a cuneiform-covered tablet at Nineveh the few words,
+'Survival of the Fittest' Philosophy would have gained twenty-two
+hundred years. I will give you, in almost as few words, a truth
+equally pregnant. The ultimate evolution of the creature is into the
+creator. Perhaps it will be twenty-two hundred years before the truth
+finds general acceptance, yet it is not the less a truth. The Baron
+Savitch is my creature, and I am his creator--creator of the ablest
+man in Europe, the ablest man in the world.
+
+"Here is our ladder, Monsieur. I have fulfilled my part of the
+agreement. Remember yours."
+
+III
+
+After a two months' tour of Switzerland and the Italian lakes, the
+Fishers found themselves at the Hotel Splendide in Paris, surrounded
+by people from the States. It was a relief to Fisher, after his
+somewhat bewildering experience at Baden, followed by a surfeit of
+stupendous and ghostly snow peaks, to be once more among those who
+discriminated between a straight flush and a crooked straight, and
+whose bosoms thrilled responsive to his own at the sight of the star-
+spangled banner. It was particularly agreeable for him to find at the
+Hotel Splendide, in a party of Easterners who had come over to see the
+Exposition, Miss Bella Ward, of Portland, a pretty and bright girl,
+affianced to his best friend in New York.
+
+With much less pleasure, Fisher learned that the Baron Savitch was in
+Paris, fresh from the Berlin Congress, and that he was the lion of the
+hour with the select few who read between the written lines of
+politics and knew the dummies of diplomacy from the real players in
+the tremendous game. Dr. Rapperschwyll was not with the baron. He was
+detained in Switzerland, at the death-bed of his aged mother.
+
+This last piece of information was welcome to Fisher. The more he
+reflected upon the interview on the Mercuriusberg, the more strongly
+he felt it to be his intellectual duty to persuade himself that the
+whole affair was an illusion, not a reality. He would have been glad,
+even at the sacrifice of his confidence in his own astuteness, to
+believe that the Swiss doctor had been amusing himself at the expense
+of his credulity. But the remembrance of the scene in the baron's
+bedroom at the Badischer Hof was too vivid to leave the slightest
+ground for this theory. He was obliged to be content with the thought
+that he should soon place the broad Atlantic between himself and a
+creature so unnatural, so dangerous, so monstrously impossible as the
+Baron Savitch.
+
+Hardly a week had passed before he was thrown again into the society
+of that impossible person.
+
+The ladies of the American party met the Russian baron at a ball in
+the New Continental Hotel. They were charmed with his handsome face,
+his refinement of manner, his intelligence and wit. They met him again
+at the American Minister's, and, to Fisher's unspeakable
+consternation, the acquaintance thus established began to make rapid
+progress in the direction of intimacy. Baron Savitch became a frequent
+visitor at the Hotel Splendide.
+
+Fisher does not like to dwell upon this period. For a month his peace
+of mind was rent alternately by apprehension and disgust. He is
+compelled to admit that the baron's demeanor toward himself was most
+friendly, although no allusion was made on either side to the incident
+at Baden. But the knowledge that no good could come to his friends
+from this association with a being in whom the moral principle had no
+doubt been supplanted by a system of cog-gear, kept him continually in
+a state of distraction. He would gladly have explained to his American
+friends the true character of the Russian, that he was not a man of
+healthy mental organization, but merely a marvel of mechanical
+ingenuity, constructed upon a principle subversive of all society as
+at present constituted--in short, a monster whose very existence must
+ever be revolting to right-minded persons with brains of honest gray
+and white. But the solemn promise to Dr. Rapperschwyll sealed his
+lips.
+
+A trifling incident suddenly opened his eyes to the alarming character
+of the situation, and filled his heart with a new horror.
+
+One evening, a few days before the date designated for the departure
+of the American party from Havre for home, Fisher happened to enter
+the private parlor which was, by common consent, the headquarters of
+his set. At first he thought that the room was unoccupied. Soon he
+perceived, in the recess of a window, and partly obscured by the
+drapery of the curtain, the forms of the Baron Savitch and Miss Ward
+of Portland. They did not observe his entrance. Miss Ward's hand was
+in the baron's hand, and she was looking up into his handsome face
+with an expression which Fisher could not misinterpret.
+
+Fisher coughed, and going to another window, pretended to be
+interested in affairs on the Boulevard. The couple emerged from the
+recess. Miss Ward's face was ruddy with confusion, and she immediately
+withdrew. Not a sign of embarrassment was visible on the baron's
+countenance. He greeted Fisher with perfect self-possession, and began
+to talk of the great balloon in the Place du Carrousel.
+
+Fisher pitied but could not blame the young lady. He believed her
+still loyal at heart to her New York engagement. He knew that her
+loyalty could not be shaken by the blandishments of any man on earth.
+He recognized the fact that she was under the spell of a power more
+than human. Yet what would be the outcome? He could not tell her all;
+his promise bound him. It would be useless to appeal to the generosity
+of the baron; no human sentiments governed his exorable purposes. Must
+the affair drift on while he stood tied and helpless? Must this
+charming and innocent girl be sacrificed to the transient whim of an
+automaton? Allowing that the baron's intentions were of the most
+honorable character, was the situation any less horrible? Marry a
+Machine! His own loyalty to his friend in New York, his regard for
+Miss Ward, alike loudly called on him to act with promptness.
+
+And, apart from all private interest, did he not owe a plain duty to
+society, to the liberties of the world? Was Savitch to be permitted to
+proceed in the career laid out for him by his creator, Dr.
+Rapperschwyll? He (Fisher) was the only man in the world in a position
+to thwart the ambitious programme. Was there ever greater need of a
+Brutus?
+
+Between doubts and fears, the last days of Fisher's stay in Paris were
+wretched beyond description. On the morning of the steamer day he had
+almost made up his mind to act.
+
+The train for Havre departed at noon, and at eleven o'clock the Baron
+Savitch made his appearance at the Hotel Splendide to bid farewell to
+his American friends. Fisher watched Miss Ward closely. There was a
+constraint in her manner which fortified his resolution. The baron
+incidentally remarked that he should make it his duty and pleasure to
+visit America within a very few months, and that he hoped then to
+renew the acquaintances now interrupted. As Savitch spoke, Fisher
+observed that his eyes met Miss Ward's, while the slightest possible
+blush colored her cheeks. Fisher knew that the case was desperate, and
+demanded a desperate remedy.
+
+He now joined the ladies of the party in urging the baron to join them
+in the hasty lunch that was to precede the drive to the station.
+Saviteh gladly accepted the cordial invitation. Wine he politely but
+firmly declined, pleading the absolute prohibition of his physician.
+Fisher left the room for an instant, and returned with the black
+bottle which had figured in the Baden episode.
+
+"The Baron," he said, "has already expressed his approval of the
+noblest of our American products, and he knows that this beverage has
+good medical endorsement." So saying, he poured the remaining contents
+of the Kentucky bottle into a glass, and presented it to the Russian.
+
+Saviteh hesitated. His previous experience with the nectar was at the
+same time a temptation and a warning, yet he did not wish to seem
+discourteous. A chance remark from Miss Ward decided him.
+
+"The baron," she said, with a smile, "will certainly not refuse to
+wish us bon voyage in the American fashion."
+
+Savitch drained the glass and the conversation turned to other
+matters. The carriages were already below. The parting comphments were
+being made, when Savitch suddenly pressed his hands to his forehead
+and clutched at the back of a chair. The ladies gathered around him in
+alarm.
+
+"It is nothing," he said faintly; "a temporary dizziness."
+
+"There is no time to be lost," said Fisher, pressing forward. "The
+train leaves in twenty minutes. Get ready at once, and I will
+meanwhile attend to our friend."
+
+Fisher hurriedly led the baron to his own bedroom. Savitch fell back
+upon the bed. The Baden symptoms repeated themselves. In two minutes
+the Russian was unconscious.
+
+Fisher looked at his watch. He had three minutes to spare. He turned
+the key in the lock of the door and touched the knob of the electric
+annunciator.
+
+Then, gaining the mastery of his nerves by one supreme effort for
+self-control, Fisher pulled the deceptive wig and the black skullcap
+from the baron's head. "Heaven forgive me if I am making a fearful
+mistake!" he thought. But I believe it to be best for ourselves and
+for the world." Rapidly, but with a steady hand, he unscrewed the
+silver dome. The Mechanism lay exposed before his eyes. The baron
+groaned. Ruthlessly Fisher tore out the wondrous machine. He had no
+time and no inclination to examine it. He caught up a newspaper and
+hastily enfolded it. He thrust the bundle into his open traveling bag.
+Then he screwed the silver top firmly upon the baron's head, and
+replaced the skullcap and the wig.
+
+All this was done before the servant answered the bell. "The Baron
+Savitch is ill," said Fisher to the attendant, when he came. "There is
+no cause for alarm. Send at once to the Hotel de l'Athénée for his
+valet, Auguste." In twenty seconds Fisher was in a cab, whirling
+toward the Station St. Lazare.
+
+When the steamship Pereire was well out at sea, with Ushant five
+hundred miles in her wake, and countless fathoms of water beneath her
+keel, Fisher took a newspaper parcel from his traveling bag. His teeth
+were firm set and his lips rigid. He carried the heavy parcel to the
+side of the ship and dropped it into the Atlantic. It made a little
+eddy in the smooth water, and sank out of sight. Fisher fancied that
+he heard a wild, despairing cry, and put his hands to his ears to shut
+out the sound. A gull came circling over the steamer--the cry may have
+been the gull's.
+
+Fisher felt a light touch upon his arm. He turned quickly around. Miss
+Ward was standing at his side, close to the rail.
+
+"Bless me, how white you are!" she said. "What in the world have you
+been doing?"
+
+"I have been preserving the liberties of two continents," slowly
+replied Fisher, "and perhaps saving your own peace of mind."
+
+"Indeed!" said she; "and how have you done that?"
+
+"I have done it," was Fisher's grave answer, "by throwing overboard
+the Baron Savitch."
+
+Miss Ward burst into a ringing laugh. "You are sometimes too droll,
+Mr. Fisher," she said.
+
+*** section-5
+
+THE SENATOR'S DAUGHTER
+
+I  THE SMALL GOLD BOX
+
+On the evening of the fourth of March, year of grace nineteen hundred
+and thirty-seven, Mr. Daniel Webster Wanlee devoted several hours to
+the consummation of a rather elaborate toilet. That accomplished, he
+placed himself before a mirror and critically surveyed the results of
+his patient art.
+
+The effect appeared to give him satisfaction. In the glass he beheld a
+comely young man of thirty, something under the medium stature,
+faultlessly attired in evening dress. The face was a perfect oval, the
+complexion delicate, the features refined. The high cheekbones and a
+slight elevation of the outer corners of the eyes, the short upper
+lip, from which drooped a slender but aristocratic mustache, the
+tapered fingers of the hand, and the remarkably small feet, confined
+tonight in dancing pumps of polished red morocco, were all
+unmistakable heirlooms of a pure Mongolian ancestry. The long, stiff,
+black hair, brushed straight back from the forehead, fell in profusion
+over the neck and shoulders. Several rich decorations shone on the
+breast of the black broadcloth coat. The knickerbocker breeches were
+tied at the knees with scarlet ribbons. The stockings were of a
+flowered silk. Mr. Wanlee's face sparked with intelligent good sense;
+his figure poised itself before the glass with easy grace.
+
+A soft, distinct utterance, filling the room yet appearing to proceed
+from no particular quarter, now attracted Mr. Wanlee's attention. He
+at once recognized the voice of his friend, Mr. Walsingham Brown.
+
+"How are we off for time, old fellow?"
+
+"It's getting late," replied Mr. Wanlee, without turning his face from
+the mirror. "You had better come over directly."
+
+In a very few minutes the curtains at the entrance to Mr. Wanlee's
+apartments were unceremoniously pulled open, and Mr. Walsingham Brown
+strode in. The two friends cordially shook hands.
+
+"How is the honorable member from the Los Angeles district?" inquired
+the newcomer gaily. "And what is there new in Washington society?
+Prepared to conquer tonight, I see. What's all this? Red ribbons and
+flowered silk hose! Ah, Wanlee. I thought you had outgrown these
+frivolities!"
+
+The faintest possible blush appeared on Mr. Daniel Webster Wanlee's
+cheeks. "It is cool tonight?" he asked, changing the subject.
+
+"Infernally cold," replied his friend. "I wonder you have no snow
+here. It is snowing hard in New York. There were at least three inches
+on the ground just now when I took the Pneumatic."
+
+"Pull an easy chair up to the thermo-electrode," said the Mongolian.
+"You must get the New York climate thawed out of your joints if you
+expect to waltz creditably. The Washington women are critical in that
+respect."
+
+Mr. Walsingham Brown pushed a comfortable chair toward a sphere of
+shining platinum that stood on a crystal pedestal in the center of the
+room. He pressed a silver button at the base, and the metal globe
+began to glow incandescently. A genial warmth diffused itself through
+the apartment. "That feels good," said Mr. Walsingham Brown, extending
+both hands to catch the heat from the thermo-electrode.
+
+"By the way," he continued, "you haven't accounted to me yet for the
+scarlet bows. What would your constituents say if they saw you thus--
+you, the impassioned young orator of the Pacific slope; the thoughtful
+student of progressive statesmanship; the mainstay and hope of the
+Extreme Left; the thorn in the side of conservative Vegetarianism; the
+bete noire of the whole Indo-European gang--you, in knee ribbons and
+florid extensions, like a club man at a fashionable Harlem hop, or a-"
+
+Mr. Brown interrupted himself with a hearty but goodnatured laugh.
+
+Mr. Wanlee seemed ill at ease. He did not reply to his friend's
+raillery. He cast a stealthy glance at his knees in the mirror, and
+then went to one side of the room, where an endless strip of printed
+paper, about three feet wide, was slowly issuing from between
+noiseless rollers and falling in neat folds into a willow basket
+placed on the floor to receive it. Mr. Wanlee bent his head over the
+broad strip of paper and began to read attentively.
+
+"You take the Contemporaneous News, I suppose," said the other.
+
+"No, I prefer the Interminable Intelligencer," replied Mr. Wanlee.
+"The Contemporaneous is too much of my own way of thinking. Why should
+a sensible man ever read the organ of his own party? How much wiser it
+is to keep posted on what your political opponents think and say."
+
+"Do you find anything about the event of the evening?"
+
+"The ball has opened," said Mr. Wanlee, "and the floor of the Capitol
+is already crowded. Let me see," he continued, beginning to read
+aloud: "'The wealth, the beauty, the chivalry, and the brains of the
+nation combine to lend unprecedented luster to the Inauguration Ball,
+and the brilliant success of the new Administration is assured beyond
+all question.'"
+
+"That is encouraging logic," Mr. Brown remarked.
+
+"'President Trimbelly has just entered the rotunda, escorting his
+beautiful and stately wife, and accompanied by ex-President Riley,
+Mrs. Riley, and Miss Norah Riley. The illustrious group is of course
+the cynosure of all eyes. The utmost cordiality prevails among
+statesmen of all shades of opinion. For once, bitter political
+animosities seem to have been laid aside with the ordinary habiliments
+of everyday wear. Conspicuous among the guests are some of the most
+distinguished radicals of the opposition. Even General Quong, the
+defeated Mongol-Vegetarian candidate, is now proceeding across the
+rotunda, leaning on the arm of the Chinese ambassador, with the
+evident intention of paying his compliments to his successful rival.
+Not the slightest trace of resentment or hostility is visible upon his
+strongly marked Asiatic features.'
+
+"The hero of the Battle of Cheyenne can afford to be magnanimous,"
+remarked Mr. Wanlee, looking up from the paper.
+
+"True," said Mr. Walsingham Brown, warmly. "The noble old hoodlum
+fighter has settled forever the question of the equality of your race.
+The presidency could have added nothing to his fame."
+
+Mr. Wanlee went on reading: "'The toilets of the ladies are charming.
+Notable among those which attract the reportorial eye are the peacock
+feather train of the Princess Hushyida; the mauve-'"
+
+"Cut that," suggested Mr. Brown. "We shall see for ourselves
+presently. And give me a dinner, like a good fellow. It occurs to me
+that I have eaten nothing for fifteen days."
+
+The Honorable Mr. Wanlee drew from his waistcoat pocket a small gold
+box, oval in form. He pressed a spring and the lid flew open. Then he
+handed the box to his friend. It contained a number of little gray
+pastilles, hardly larger than peas. Mr. Brown took one between his
+thumb and forefinger and put it into his mouth. "Thus do I satisfy
+mine hunger," he said, "or, to borrow the language of the opposition
+orators, thus do I lend myself to the vile and degrading practice,
+subversive of society as at present constituted, and outraging the
+very laws of nature."
+
+Mr. Wanlee was paying no attention. With eager gaze he was again
+scanning the columns of the Interminable Intelligencer. As if
+involuntarily, he read aloud: "'-Secretary Quimby and Mrs. Quimby,
+Count Schneeke, the Austrian ambassador, Mrs. Hoyette and the Misses
+Hoyette of New York, Senator Newton of Massachusetts, whose arrival
+with his lovely daughter is causing no small sensation-'"
+
+He paused, stammering, for he became aware that his friend was
+regarding him earnestly. Coloring to the roots of his hair, he
+affected indifference and began to read again: "'Senator Newton of
+Massachusetts, whose arrival with his lovely-"'
+
+"I think, my dear boy," said Mr. Walsingham Brown, with a smile, "that
+it is high time for us to proceed to the Capitol."
+
+II  THE BALL AT THE CAPITOL
+
+Through a brilliant throng of happy men and charming women, Mr. Wanlee
+and his friend made their way into the rotunda of the Capitol.
+Accustomed as they both were to the spectacular efforts which society
+arranged for its own delectation, the young men were startled by the
+enchantment of the scene before them. The dingy historical panorama
+that girds the rotunda was hidden behind a wall of flowers. The
+heights of the dome were not visible, for beneath that was a temporary
+interior dome of red roses and white lilies, which poured down from
+the concavity a continual and almost oppressive shower of fragrance.
+From the center of the floor ascended to the height of forty or fifty
+feet a single jet of water, rendered intensely luminous by the newly
+discovered hydrolectric process, and flooding the room with a light
+ten times brighter than daylight, yet soft and grateful as the light
+of the moon. The air pulsated with music, for every flower in the dome
+overhead gave utterance to the notes which Ratibolial, in the
+conservatoire at Paris, was sending across the Atlantic from the
+vibrant tip of his baton.
+
+The friends had hardly reached the center of the rotunda, where the
+hydrolectric fountain threw aloft its jet of blazing water, and where
+two opposite streams of promenaders from the north and the south wings
+of the Capitol met and mingled in an eddy of polite humanity, before
+Mr. Walsingham Brown was seized and led off captive by some of his
+Washington acquaintances.
+
+Wanlee pushed on, scarcely noticing his friend's defection. He
+directed his steps wherever the crowd seemed thickest, casting ahead
+and on either side of him quick glances of inquiry, now and then
+exchanging bows with people whom he recognized, but pausing only once
+to enter into conversation. That was when he was accosted by General
+Quong, the leader of the MongolVegetarian party and the defeated
+candidate for President in the campaign of 1936. The veteran spoke
+familiarly to the young congressman and detained him only a moment.
+"You are looking for somebody, Wanlee," said General Quong, kindly. "I
+see it in your eyes. I grant you leave of absence."
+
+Mr. Wanlee proceeded down the long corridor that leads to the Senate
+chamber, and continued there his eager search. Disappointed, he turned
+back, retraced his steps to the rotunda, and went to the other
+extremity of the Capitol. The Hall of Representatives was reserved for
+the dancers. From the great clock above the Speaker's desk issued the
+music of a waltz, to the rhythm of which several hundred couples were
+whirling over the polished floor.
+
+Wanlee stood at the door, watching the couples as they moved before
+him in making the circuit of the hall. Presently his eyes began to
+sparkle. They were resting upon the beautiful face and supple figure
+of a girl in white satin, who waltzed in perfect form with a young
+man, apparently an Italian. Wanlee advanced a step or two, and at the
+same instant the lady became aware of his presence. She said a word to
+her partner, who immediately relinquished her waist.
+
+"I have been expecting you this age," said the girl, holding out her
+hand to Wanlee. "I am delighted that you have come."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Newton," said Wanlee.
+
+"You may retire, Francesco," she continued, turning to the young man
+who had just been her partner. "I shall not need you again."
+
+The young man addressed as Francesco bowed respectfully and departed
+without a word.
+
+"Let us not lose this lovely waltz," said Miss Newton, putting her
+hand upon Wanlee's shoulder. "It will be my first this evening."
+
+"Then you have not danced?" asked Wanlee, as they glided off together.
+
+"No, Daniel," said Miss Newton, "I haven't danced with any gentlemen."
+
+The Mongolian thanked her with a smile.
+
+"I have made good use of Francesco, however," she went on. "What a
+blessing a competent protectional partner is! Only think, our
+grandmothers, and even our mothers, were obliged to sit dismally
+around the walls waiting the pleasure of their high and mighty-"
+
+She paused suddenly, for a shade of annoyance had fallen upon her
+partner's face. "Forgive me," she whispered, her head almost upon his
+shoulder. "Forgive me if I have wounded you. You know, love, that I
+would not-"
+
+"I know it," he interrupted. "You are too good and too noble to let
+that weigh a feather's weight in your estimation of the Man. You never
+pause to think that my mother and my grandmother were not accustomed
+to meet your mother and your grandmother in society--for the very
+excellent reason," he continued, with a little bitterness in his tone,
+"that my mother had her hands full in my father's laundry in San
+Francisco, while my grandmother's social ideas hardly extended beyond
+the cabin of our ancestral san-pan on the Yangtze Kiang. You do not
+care for that. But there are others-'
+
+They waltzed on for some time in silence, he, thoughtful and moody,
+and she, sympathetically concerned.
+
+"And the senator; where is he tonight?" asked Wanlee at last.
+
+"Papa!" said the girl, with a frightened little glance over her
+shoulder. "Oh! Papa merely made his appearance here to bring me and
+because it was expected of him. He has gone home to work on his
+tiresome speech against the vegetables."
+
+"Do you think," asked Wanlee, after a few minutes, whispering the
+words very slowly and very low, "that the senator has any suspicion?"
+
+It was her turn now to manifest embarrassment. "I am very sure," she
+replied, "that Papa has not the least idea in the world of it all. And
+that is what worries me. I constantly feel that we are walking
+together on a volcano. I know that we are right, and that heaven means
+it to be just as it is; yet, I cannot help trembling in my happiness.
+You know as well as I do the antiquated and absurd notions that still
+prevail in Massachusetts, and that Papa is a conservative among the
+conservatives. He respects your ability, that I discovered long ago.
+Whenever you speak in the House, he reads your remarks with great
+attention. I think," she continued with a forced laugh, "that your
+arguments bother him a good deal."
+
+"This must have an end, Clara," said the Chinaman, as the music ceased
+and the waltzers stopped. "I cannot allow you to remain a day longer
+in an equivocal position. My honor and your own peace of mind require
+that there shall be an explanation to your father. Have you the
+courage to stake all our happiness on one bold move?"
+
+"I have courage," frankly replied the girl, "to go with you before my
+father and tell him all. And furthermore," she continued, slightly
+pressing his arm and looking into his face with a charming blush, "I
+have courage even beyond that."
+
+"You beloved little Puritanl" was his reply.
+
+As they passed out of the Hall of Representatives, they encountered
+Mr. Walsingham Brown with Miss Hoyette of New York. The New York lady
+spoke cordially to Miss Newton, but recognized Wanlee with a rather
+distant bow. Wanlee's eyes sought and met those of his friend. "I may
+need your counsel before morning," he said in a low voice.
+
+"All right, my dear fellow," said Mr. Brown. "Depend on me." And the
+two couples separated.
+
+The Mongolian and his Massachusetts sweetheart drifted with the tide
+into the supper room. Both were preoccupied with their own thoughts.
+Almost mechanically, Wanlee led his companion to a corner of the
+supper room and established her in a seat behind a screen of
+palmettos, sheltered from the observation of the throne.
+
+"It is nice of you to bring me here," said the girl, "for I am hungry
+after our waltz."
+
+Intimate as their souls had become, this was the first time that she
+had ever asked him for food. It was an innocent and natural request,
+yet Wanlee shuddered when he heard it, and bit his under lip to
+control his agitation. He looked from behind the palmettos at the
+tables heaped with delicate viands and surrounded by men, eagerly
+pressing forward to obtain refreshment for the ladies in their care.
+Wanlee shuddered again at the spectacle. After a momentary hesitation
+he returned to Miss Newton, seated himself beside her, and taking her
+hand in his, began to speak deliberately and earnestly.
+
+"Clara," he said, "I am going to ask you for a final proof of your
+affection. Do not start and look alarmed, but hear me patiently. If,
+after hearing me, you still bid me bring you a pâté, or the wing of a
+fowl, or a salad, or even a plate of fruit, I will do so, though it
+wrench the heart in my bosom. But first listen to what I have to say."
+
+"Certainly I will listen to all you have to say," she replied.
+
+"You know enough of the political theories that divide parties," he
+went on, nervously examining the rings on her slender fingers, "to be
+aware that what I conscientiously believe to be true is very different
+from what you have been educated to believe."
+
+"I know," said Miss Newton, "that you are a Vegetarian and do not
+approve the use of meat. I know that you have spoken eloquently in the
+House on the right of every living being to protection in its life,
+and that that is the theory of your party. Papa says that it is
+demagogy--that the opposition parade an absurd and sophistical theory
+in order to win votes and get themselves into office. Still, I know
+that a great many excellent people, friends of ours in Massachusetts,
+are coming to believe with you, and, of course, loving you as I do, I
+have the firmest faith in the honesty of your convictions. You are not
+a demagogue, Daniel. You are above pandering to the radicalism of the
+rabble. Neither my father nor all the world could make me think the
+contrary."
+
+Mr. Daniel Webster Wanlee squeezed her hand and went on:
+
+"Living as you do in the most ultra-conservative of circles, dear
+Clara, you have had no opportunity to understand the tremendous
+significance and force of the movement that is now sweeping over the
+land, and of which I am a very humble representative. It is something
+more than a political agitation; it is an upheaval and reorganization
+of society on the basis of science and abstract right. It is fit and
+proper that I, belonging to a race that has only been emancipated and
+enfranchised by the march of time, should stand in the advance guard--
+in the forlorn hope, it may be--of the new revolution."
+
+His flaming eyes were now looking directly into hers. Although a
+little troubled by his earnestness, she could not hide her proud
+satisfaction in his manly bearing.
+
+"We believe that every animal is born free and equal," he said. "That
+the humblest polyp or the most insignificant mollusk has an equal
+right with you or me to life and the enjoyment of happiness. Why, are
+we not all brothers? Are we not all children of a common evolution?
+What are we human animals but the more favored members of the great
+family? Is Senator Newton of Massachusetts further removed in
+intelligence from the Australian bushman, than the Australian bushman
+or the Flathead Indian is removed from the ox which Senator Newton
+orders slain to yield food for his family? Have we a right to take the
+paltriest life that evolution has given? Is not the butchery of an ox
+or of a chicken murder--nay, fratricide--in the view of absolute
+justice? Is it not cannibalism of the most repulsive and cowardly sort
+to prey upon the flesh of our defenseless brother animals, and to
+sacrifice their lives and rights to an unnatural appetite that has no
+foundation save in the habit of long ages of barbarian selfishness?"
+
+"I have never thought of these things," said Miss Clara, slowly.
+"Would you elevate them to the suffrage--I mean the ox and the chicken
+and the baboon?"
+
+"There speaks the daughter of the senator from Massachusetts," cried
+Wanlee. "No, we would not give them the suffrage--at least, not at
+present. The right to live and enjoy life is a natural, an inalienable
+right. The right to vote depends upon conditions of society and of
+individual intelligence. The ox, the chicken, the baboon are not yet
+prepared for the ballot. But they are voters in embryo; they are
+struggling up through the same process that our own ancestors
+underwent, and it is a crime, an unnatural, horrible thing, to cut off
+their career, their future, for the sake of a meal!"
+
+"Those are noble sentiments, I must admit," said Miss Newton, with
+considerable enthusiasm.
+
+"They are the sentiments of the Mongol-Vegetarian party," said Wanlee.
+"They will carry the country in 1940, and elect the next President of
+the United States."
+
+"I admire your earnestness," said Miss Newton after a pause, "and I
+will not grieve you by asking you to bring me even so much as a
+chicken wing. I do not think I could eat it now, with your words still
+in my ears. A little fruit is all that I want."
+
+"Once more," said Wanlee, taking the tall girl's hand again, "I must
+request you to consider. The principles, my dearest, that I have
+already enunciated are the principles of the great mass of our party.
+They are held even by the respectable, easygoing, not oversensitive
+voters such as constitute the bulk of every political organization.
+But there are a few of us who stand on ground still more advanced. We
+do not expect to bring the laggards up to our line for years, perhaps
+in our lifetime. We simply carry the accepted theory to its logical
+conclusions and calmly await ultimate results."
+
+"And what is your ground, pray?" she inquired. "I cannot see how
+anything could be more dreadfully radical--that is, more bewildering
+and generally upsetting at first sight--than the ground which you just
+took."
+
+"If what I have said is true, and I believe it to be true, then how
+can we escape including the Vegetable Kingdom in our proclamation of
+emancipation from man's tyranny? The tree, the plant, even the fungus,
+have they not individual life, and have they not also the right to
+live?"
+
+"But how--"
+
+"And indeed," continued the Chinaman, not noticing the interruption,
+"who can say where vegetable life ends and animal life begins? Science
+has tried in vain to draw the boundary line. I hold that to uproot a
+potato is to destroy an existence certainly, although perhaps remotely
+akin to ours. To pluck a grape is to maim the living vine; and to
+drink the juice of that grape is to outrage consanguinity. In this
+broad, elevated view of the matter it becomes a duty to refrain from
+vegetable food. Nothing less than the vital principal itself becomes
+the test and tie of universal brotherhood. 'All living things are born
+free and equal, and have a right to existence and the enjoyment of
+existence.' Is not that a beautiful thought?"
+
+"It is a beautiful thought," said the maiden. "But-I know you will
+think me dreadfully cold, and practical, and unsympathetic--but how
+are we to live? Have we no right, too, to existence? Must we starve to
+death in order to establish the theoretical right of vegetables not to
+be eaten?"
+
+"My dear love," said Wanlee, "that would be a serious and perplexing
+question, had not the latest discovery of science already solved it
+for us."
+
+He took from his waistcoat pocket the small gold box, scarcely larger
+than a watch, and opened the cover. In the palm of her white hand he
+placed one of the little pastilles.
+
+"Eat it," said he. "It will satisfy your hunger."
+
+She put the morsel into her mouth. "I would do as you bade me," she
+said, "even if it were poison."
+
+"It is not poison," he rejoined. "It is nourishment in the only
+rational form."
+
+"But it is tasteless; almost without substance."
+
+"Yet it will support life for from eighteen to twenty-five days. This
+little gold box holds food enough to afford all subsistence to the
+entire Seventy-sixth Congress for a month."
+
+She took the box and curiously examined its contents.
+
+"And how long would it support my life--for more than a year,
+perhaps?"
+
+"Yes, for more than ten--more than twenty years."
+
+"I will not bore you with chemical and physiological facts," continued
+Wanlee, "but you must know that the food which we take, in whatever
+form, resolves itself into what are called proximate principles--
+starch, sugar, oleine, flurin, albumen, and so on. These are selected
+and assimilated by the organs of the body, and go to build up the
+necessary tissues. But all these proximate principles, in their turn,
+are simply combinations of the ultimate chemical elements, chiefly
+carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen. It is upon these elements that
+we depend for sustenance. By the old plan we obtained them indirectly.
+They passed from the earth and the air into the grass; from the grass
+into the muscular tissues of the ox; and from the beef into our own
+persons, loaded down and encumbered by a mass of useless, irrelevant
+matter. The German chemists have discovered how to supply the needed
+elements in compact, undiluted form--here they are in this little box.
+Now shall mankind go direct to the fountainhead of nature for his
+aliment; now shall the old roundabout, cumbrous, inhuman method be at
+an end; now shall the evils of gluttony and the attendant vices cease;
+now shall the brutal murdering of fellow animals and brother
+vegetables forever stop--now shall all this be, since the new, holy
+cause has been consecrated by the lips I love!"
+
+He bent and kissed those lips. Then he suddenly looked up and saw Mr.
+Walsingham Brown standing at his elbow.
+
+"You are observed--compromised, I fear," said Mr. Brown, hurriedly.
+"That Italian dancer in your employ, Miss Newton, has been following
+you like a hound. I have been paying him the same gracious attention.
+He has just left the Capitol post haste. I fear there may be a scene."
+
+The brave girl, with clear eyes, gave her Mongolian lover a look worth
+to him a year of life. "There shall be no scene," she said; "we will
+go at once to my father, Daniel, and bear ourselves the tale which
+Francesco would carry."
+
+The three left the Capitol without delay. At the head of Pennsylvania
+Avenue they entered a great building, lighted up as brilliantly as the
+Capitol itself. An elevator took them down toward the bowels of the
+earth. At the fourth landing they passed from the elevator into a
+small carriage, luxuriously upholstered. Mr. Walsingham Brown touched
+an ivory knob at the end of the conveyance. A man in uniform presented
+himself at the door.
+
+"To Boston," said Mr. Walsingham Brown.
+
+III  THE FROZEN BRIDE
+
+The senator from Massachusetts sat in the library of his mansion on
+North Street at two o'clock in the morning. An expression of
+astonishment and rage distorted his pale, cold features. The pen had
+dropped from his fingers, blotting the last sentences written upon the
+manuscript of his great speech--for Senator Newton still adhered to
+the ancient fashion of recording thought. The blotted sentences were
+these:
+
+"The logic of events compels us to acknowledge the political equality
+of those Asiatic invaders--shall I say conquerors?--of our Indo-
+European institutions. But the logic of events is often repugnant to
+common sense, and its conclusions abhorrent to patriotism and right.
+The sword has opened for them the way to the ballot box; but, Mr.
+President, and I say it deliberately, no power under heaven can unlock
+for these aliens the sacred approaches to our homes and hearts!"
+
+Beside the senator stood Francesco, the professional dancer. His face
+wore a smile of malicious triumph.
+
+"With the Chinaman? Miss Newton--my daughter?" gasped the senator. "I
+do not believe you. It is a lie."
+
+"Then come to the Capitol, Your Excellency, and see it with your own
+eyes," said the Italian.
+
+The door was quickly opened and Clara Newton entered the room,
+followed by the Honorable Mr. Wanlee and his friend.
+
+"There is no need of making that excursion, Papa," said the girl. "You
+can see it with your own eyes here and now. Francesco, leave the
+house!"
+
+The senator bowed with forced politeness to Mr. Walsingbam Brown. Of
+the presence of Wanlee he took not the slightest notice.
+
+Senator Newton attempted to laugh. "This is a pleasantry, Clara," he
+said; "a practical jest, designed by yourself and Mr. Brown for my
+midnight diversion. It is a trifle unseasonable."
+
+"It is no jest," replied his daughter, bravely. She then went up to
+Wanlee and took his hand in hers. "Papa," she said, "this is a
+gentleman of whom you already know something. He is our equal in
+station, in intellect, and in moral worth. He is in every way worthy
+of my friendship and your esteem. Will you listen to what he has to
+say to you? Will you, Papa?"
+
+The senator laughed a short, hard laugh, and turned to Mr. Walsingham
+Brown. "I have no communication to make to the member of the lower
+branch," said he. "Why should he have any communication to make to
+me?"
+
+Miss Newton put her arm around the waist of the young Chinaman and led
+him squarely in front of her father. "Because," she said, in a voice
+as firm and clear as the note of a silver bell "-because I love him."
+
+In recalling with Wanlee the circumstances of this interview, Mr.
+Walsingham Brown said long afterward, "She glowed for a moment like
+the platinum of your thermo-electrode."
+
+"If the member from California," said Senator Newton, without changing
+the tone of his voice, and still continuing to address himself to Mr.
+Brown, "has worked upon the sentimentality of this foolish child, that
+is her misfortune, and mine. It cannot be helped now. But if the
+member from California presumes to hope to profit in the least by his
+sinister operations, or to enjoy further opportunities for pursuing
+them, the member from California deceives himself."
+
+So saying he turned around in his chair and began to write on his
+great speech.
+
+"I come," said Wanlee slowly, now speaking for the first time, "as an
+honorable man to ask of Senator Newton the hand of his daughter in
+honorable marriage. Her own consent has already been given."
+
+"I have nothing further to say," said the Senator, once more turning
+his cold face toward Mr. Brown. Then he paused an instant, and added
+with a sting, "I am told that the member from California is a prophet
+and apostle of Vegetable Rights. Let him seek a cactus in marriage. He
+should wed on his own level."
+
+Wanlee, coloring at the wanton insult, was about to leave the room. A
+quick sign from Miss Newton arrested him.
+
+"But I have something further to say," she cried with spirit. "Listen,
+Father; it is this. If Mr. Wanlee goes out of the house without a word
+from you--a word such as is due him from you as a gentleman and as my
+father--I go with him to be his wife before the sun rises!"
+
+"Go if you will, girl," the senator coldly replied. "But first consult
+with Mr. Walsingham Brown, who is a lawyer and a gentleman, as to the
+tenor and effect of the Suspended Animation Act."
+
+Miss Newton looked inquiringly from one face to another. The words had
+no meaning to her. Her lover turned suddenly pale and clutched at the
+back of a chair for support. Mr. Brown's cheeks were also white. He
+stepped quickly forward, holding out his hands as if to avert some
+dreadful calamity.
+
+"Surely you would not-" he began. "But no! That is an absolute low, an
+inhuman, outrageous enactment that has long been as dead as the
+partisan fury that prompted it. For a quarter of a century it has been
+a dead letter on the statute books."
+
+"I was not aware," said the senator, from between firmly set teeth,
+"that the act had ever been repealed."
+
+He took from the shelf a volume of statutes and opened the book. "I
+will read the text," he said. "It will form an appropriate part of the
+ritual of this marriage." He read as follows:
+
+  "Section 7.391. No male person of Caucasian descent, of or under the
+age of 25 years, shall marry, or promise or contract himself in
+marriage with any female person of Mongolian descent without the full
+written consent of his male parent or guardian, as provided by law;
+and no female person, either maid or widow, under the age of 30 years,
+of Caucasian parentage, shall give, promise, or contract herself in
+marriage with any male person of Mongolian descent without the full
+written and registered consent of her male and female parents or
+guardians, as provided by law. And any marriage obligations so
+contracted shall be null and void, and the Caucasian so contracting
+shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and liable to punishment at the
+discretion of his or her male parent or guardian as provided by law.
+
+  "Section 7.392. Such parents or guardians may, at their discretion
+and upon application to the authorities of the United States District
+Court for the district within which the offense is committed, deliver
+the offending person of Caucasian descent to the designated officers,
+and require that his or her consciousness, bodily activities, and
+vital functions be suspended by the frigorific process known as the
+Werkomer process, for a period equal to that which must elapse before
+the offending person will arrive at the age of 25 years, if a male, or
+30 years, if a female; or for a shorter period at the discretion of
+the parent or guardian; said shorter period to be fixed in advance."
+
+"What does it mean?" demanded Miss Newton, bewildered by the verbiage
+of the act, and alarmed by her lover's exclamation of despair.
+
+Mr. Walsingbam Brown shook his head, sadly. "It means," said he, "that
+the cruel sin of the fathers is to be visited upon the children."
+
+"It means, Clara," said Wanlee with a great effort, "that we must
+part."
+
+"Understand me, Mr. Brown," said the senator, rising and motioning
+impatiently with the hand that held the pen, as if to dismiss both the
+subject and the intruding party. "I do not employ the Suspended
+Animation Act as a bugaboo to frighten a silly girl out of her
+lamentable infatuation. As surely as the law stands, so surely will I
+put it to use."
+
+Miss Newton gave her father a long, steady look which neither Wanlee
+nor Mr. Brown could interpret and then slowly led the way to the
+parlor. She closed the door and locked it. The clock on the mantel
+said four.
+
+A complete change had come over the girl's manner. The spirit of
+defiance, of passionate appeal, of outspoken love, had gone. She was
+calm now, as cold and self-possessed as the senator himself. "Frozen!"
+she kept saying under her breath. "He has frozen me already with his
+frigid heart."
+
+She quickly asked Mr. Walsingham Brown to explain clearly the force
+and bearings of the statute which her father had read from the book.
+When he had done so, she inquired, "Is there not also a law providing
+for voluntary suspension of animation?"
+
+"The Twenty-seventh Amendment to the Constitution," replied the
+lawyer, "recognizes the right of any individual, not satisfied with
+the condition of his life, to suspend that life for a time, long or
+short, according to his pleasure. But it is rarely, as you know, that
+any one avails himself of the right--practically never, except as the
+only means to procure divorce from uncongenial marriage relations."
+
+"Still," she persisted, "the right exists and the way is open?" He
+bowed. She went to Wanlee and said:
+
+"My darling, it must be so. I must leave you for a time, but as your
+wife. We will arrange a wedding"--and she smiled sadly--"within this
+hour. Mr. Brown will go with us to the clergyman. Then we will proceed
+at once to the Refuge, and you yourself shall lead me to the cloister
+that is to keep me safe till times are better for us. No, do not be
+startled, my love! The resolution is taken; you cannot alter it. And
+it will not be so very long, dear. Once, by accident, in arranging my
+father's papers, I came across his Life Probabilities, drawn up by the
+Vital Bureau at Washington. He has less than ten years to live. I
+never thought to calculate in cold blood on the chances of my father's
+life, but it must be. In ten years, Daniel, you may come to the Refuge
+again and claim your bride. You will find me as you left me."
+
+With tears streaming down his pale cheeks, the Mongolian strove to
+dissuade the Caucasian from her purpose. Hardly less affected, Mr.
+Walsingham Brown joined his entreaties and arguments.
+
+"Have you ever seen," he asked, "a woman who has undergone what you
+propose to undergo? She went into the Refuge, perhaps, as you will go,
+fresh, rosy, beautiful, full of life and energy. She comes out a
+prematurely aged, withered, sallow, flaccid body, a living corpse--a
+skeleton, a ghost of her former self. In spite of all they say, there
+can be no absolute suspension of animation. Absolute suspension would
+be death. Even in the case of the most perfect freezing there is still
+some activity of the vital functions, and they gnaw and prey upon the
+existence of the unconscious subject. Will you risk," he suddenly
+demanded, using the last and most perfect argument that can be
+addressed to a woman "-will you risk the effect your loss of beauty
+may have upon Wanlee's love after ten years' separation?"
+
+Clara Newton was smiling now. "For my poor beauty," she replied, "I
+care very little. Yet perhaps even that may be preserved."
+
+She took from the bosom of her dress the little gold box which the
+Chinaman had given her in the supper room of the Capitol, and hastily
+swallowed its entire contents.
+
+Wanlee now spoke with determination: "Since you have resolved to
+sacrifice ten years of your life my duty is with you. I shall share
+with you the sacrifice and share also the joy of awakening."
+
+She gravely shook her head. "It is no sacrifice for me," she said.
+"But you must remain in life. You have a great and noble work to
+perform. Till the oppressed of the lower orders of being are
+emancipated from man's injustice and cruelty, you cannot abandon their
+cause. I think your duty is plain."
+
+"You are right," he said, bowing his head to his breast.
+
+In the gray dawn of the early morning the officials at the Frigorific
+Refuge in Cambridgeport were astonished by the arrival of a bridal
+party. The bridegroom's haggard countenance contrasted strangely with
+the elegance of his full evening toilet, and the bright scarlet bows
+at his knees seemed a mockery of grief. The bride, in white satin,
+wore a placid smile on her lovely face. The friend accompanying the
+two was grave and silent.
+
+Without delay the necessary papers of admission were drawn up and
+signed and the proper registration was made upon the books of the
+establishment. For an instant husband and wife rested in each other's
+arms. Then she, still cheerful, followed the attendants toward the
+inner door, while he, pressing both hands upon his tearless eyes,
+turned away sobbing.
+
+A moment later the intense cold of the congealing chamber caught the
+bride and wrapped her close in its icy embrace.
+EOT
+
+*** section-6
+
+THE CRYSTAL MAN
+
+Rapidly turning into the Fifth Avenue from one of the cross streets
+above the old reservoir, at quarter past eleven o'clock on the night
+of November 6, 1879, I ran plump into an individual coming the other
+way.
+
+It was very dark on this corner. I could see nothing of the person
+with whom I had the honor to be in collision. Nevertheless, the quick
+habit of a mind accustomed to induction had furnished me with several
+well-defined facts regarding him before I fairly recovered from the
+shock of the encounter.
+
+These were some of the facts: He was a heavier man than myself, and
+stiffer in the legs; but he lacked precisely three inches and a half
+of my stature. He wore a silk hat, a cape or cloak of heavy woolen
+material, and rubber overshoes or arctics. He was about thirty-five
+years old, born in America, educated at a German university, either
+Heidelberg or Freiburg, naturally of hasty temper, but considerate and
+courteous, in his demeanor to others. He was not entirely at peace
+with society: there was something in his life or in his present errand
+which he desired to conceal.
+
+How did I know all this when I had not seen the stranger, and when
+only a single monosyllable had escaped his lips? Well, I knew that he
+was stouter than myself, and firmer on his foot, because it was I, not
+he, who recoiled. I knew that I was just three inches and a half
+taller than he, for the tip of my nose was still tingling from its
+contact with the stiff, sharp brim of his hat. My hand, involuntarily
+raised, had come under the edge of his cape. He wore rubber shoes, for
+I had not heard a footfall. To an observant ear; the indications of
+age are as plain in the tones of the voice as to the eye in the lines
+of the countenance. In the first moment of exasperation of my
+maladroitness, he had muttered "Ox!" a term that would occur to nobody
+except a German at such a time. The pronunciation of the guttural,
+however, told me that the speaker was an American German, not a German
+American, and that his German education had been derived south of the
+river Main. Moreover, the tone of the gentleman and scholar was
+manifest even in the utterance of wrath. That the gentleman was in no
+particular hurry, but for some reason anxious to remain unknown; was a
+conclusion drawn from the fact that, after listening in silence to my
+polite apology, he stooped to recover and restore to me my umbrella,
+and then passed on as noiselessly as he had approached.
+
+I make it a point to verify my conclusions when possible. So I turned
+back into the cross street and followed the stranger toward a lamp
+part way down the block. Certainly, I was not more than five seconds
+behind him. There was no other road that he could have taken. No house
+door had opened and closed along the way. And yet, when we came into
+the light, the form that ought to have been directly in front of me
+did not appear. Neither man nor man's shadow was visible.
+
+Hurrying on as fast as I could walk to the next gaslight, I paused
+under the lamp and listened. The street was apparently deserted. The
+rays from the yellow flame reached only a little way into the
+darkness. The steps and doorway, however, of the brownstone house
+facing the street lamp were sufficiently illuminated. The gilt figures
+above the door were distinct. I recognized the house: the number was a
+familiar one. While I stood under the gaslight, waiting, I heard a
+slight noise on these steps, and the click of a key in a lock. The
+vestibule door of the house was slowly opened, and then closed with a
+slam that echoed across the street. Almost immediately followed the
+sound of the opening and shutting of the inner door. Nobody had come
+out. As far as my eyes could be trusted to report an event hardly ten
+feet away and in broad light, nobody had gone in.
+
+With a notion that here was scanty material for an exact application
+of the inductive process, I stood a long time wildly guessing at the
+philosophy of the strange occurrence. I felt that vague sense of the
+unexplainable which amounts almost to dread. It was a relief to hear
+steps on the sidewalk opposite, and turning, to see a policeman
+swinging his long black club and watching me.
+
+II
+
+This house of chocolate brown, whose front door opened and shut at
+midnight without indications of human agency, was, as I have said,
+well known to me. I had left it not more than ten minutes earlier,
+after spending the evening with my friend Bliss and his daughter
+Pandora. The house was of the sort in which each story constitutes a
+domicile complete in itself. The second floor, or flat, had been
+inhabited by Bliss since his return from abroad; that is to say, for a
+twelvemonth. I held Bliss in esteem for for his excellent qualities of
+heart, while his deplorably illogical and unscientific mind commanded
+my profound pity. I adored Pandora.
+
+Be good enough to understand that my admiration for Pandora Bliss was
+hopeless, and not only hopeless, but resigned to its hopelessness. In
+our circle of acquaintance there was a tacit covenant that the young
+lady's peculiar position as a flirt wedded to a memory should be at
+all times respected. We adored Pandora mildly, not passionately--just
+enough to feed her coquetry without excoriating the seared surface of
+her widowed heart. On her part, Pandora conducted herself with signal
+propriety. She did not sigh too obtrusively when she flirted: and she
+always kept her flirtations so well in hand that she could cut them
+short whenever the fond, sad recollections came.
+
+It was considered proper for us to tell Pandora that she owed it to
+her youth and beauty to put aside the dead past like a closed book,
+and to urge her respectfully to come forth into the living present. It
+was not considered proper to press the subject after she had once
+replied that this was forever impossible.
+
+The particulars of the tragic episode in Miss Pandora's European
+experience were not accurately known to us. It was understood, in a
+vague way, that she had loved while abroad, and trifled with her
+lover: that he had disappeared, leaving her in ignorance of his fate
+and in perpetual remorse for her capricious behavior. From Bliss I had
+gathered a few, sporadic facts, not coherent enough to form a history
+of the case. There was no reason to believe that Pandora's lover had
+committed suicide. His name was Flack. He was a scientific man. In
+Bliss's opinion he was a fool. In Bliss's opinion Pandora was a fool
+to pine on his account. In Bliss's opinion all scientific men were
+more or less fools.
+
+III
+
+That year I ate Thanksgiving dinner with the Blisses. In the evening I
+sought to astonish the company by reciting the mysterious events on
+the night of my collision with the stranger. The story failed to
+produce the expected sensation. Two or three odious people exchanged
+glances. Pandora, who was unusually pensive, listened with seeming
+indifference. Her father, in his stupid inability to grasp anything
+outside the commonplace, laughed outright, and even went so far as to
+question my trustworthiness as an observer of phenomena.
+
+Somewhat nettled, and perhaps a little shaken in my own faith in the
+marvel, I made an excuse to withdraw early. Pandora accompanied me to
+the threshold. "Your story," said she, "interested me strangely. I,
+too, could report occurrences in and about this house which would
+surprise you. I believe I am not wholly in the dark. The sorrowful
+past casts a glimmer of light--but let us not be hasty. For my sake
+probe the matter to the bottom."
+
+The young woman sighed as she bade me good night. I thought I heard a
+second sigh, in a deeper tone than hers, and too distinct to be a
+reverberation.
+
+I began to go downstairs. Before I had descended half a dozen steps I
+felt a man's hand laid rather heavily upon my shoulder from behind. My
+first idea was that Bliss had followed me into the hall to apologize
+for his rudeness. I turned around to meet his friendly overture.
+Nobody was in sight.
+
+Again the hand touched my arm. I shuddered in spite of my philosophy.
+
+This time the hand gently pulled at my coat sleeve, as if to invite me
+upstairs. I ascended a step or two, and the pressure on my arm was
+relaxed. I paused, and the silent invitation was repeated with an
+urgency that left no doubt as to what was wanted.
+
+We mounted the stairs together, the presence leading the way, I
+following. What an extraordinary journey it was! The halls were bright
+with gaslight. By the testimony of my eyes there was no one but myself
+upon the stairway. Closing my eyes, the illusion, if illusion it could
+be called, was perfect. I could hear the creaking of the stairs ahead
+of me, the soft but distinctly audible footfalls synchronous with my
+own, even the regular breathing of my companion and guide. Extending
+my arm, I could touch and finger the skirt of his garment--a heavy
+woolen cloak lined with silk.
+
+Suddenly I opened my eyes. They told me again that I was absolutely
+alone.
+
+This problem then presented itself to mind: How to determine whether
+vision was playing me false, while the senses of hearing and feeling
+correctly informed me, or whether my ears and touch lied, while my
+eyes reported the truth. Who shall be arbiter when the senses
+contradict each other? The reasoning faculty? Reason was inclined to
+recognize the presence of an intelligent being, whose existence was
+flatly denied by the most trusted of the senses.
+
+We reached the topmost floor of the house. The door leading out of the
+public hall opened for me, apparently of its own accord. A curtain
+within seemed to draw itself aside, and hold itself aside long enough
+to give me ingress to an apartment wherein every appointment spoke of
+good taste and scholarly habits. A wood fire was burning in the
+chimney place. The walls were covered with books and pictures. The
+lounging chairs were capacious and inviting. There was nothing in the
+room uncanny, nothing weird, nothing different from the furniture of
+everyday flesh and blood existence.
+
+By this time I had cleared my mind of the last lingering suspicion of
+the supernatural. These phenomena were perhaps not inexplicable; all
+that I lacked was the key. The behavior of my unseen host argued his
+amicable disposition. I was able to watch with perfect calmness a
+series of manifestations of independent energy on the part of
+inanimate objects.
+
+In the first place, a great Turkish easy chair wheeled itself out of a
+corner of the room and approached the hearth. Then a square-backed
+Queen Anne chair started from another corner, advancing until it was
+planted directly opposite the first. A little tripod table lifted
+itself a few inches above the floor and took a position between the
+two chairs. A thick octavo volume backed out of its place on the shelf
+and sailed tranquilly through the air at the height of three or four
+feet, landing neatly on top of the table. A finely painted porcelain
+pipe left a hook on the wall and joined the volume. A tobacco box
+jumped from the mantlepiece. The door of a cabinet swung open, and a
+decanter and wineglass made the journey in company, arriving
+simultaneously at the same destination. Everything in the room seemed
+instinct with the spirit of hospitality.
+
+I seated myself in the easy chair, filled the wineglass, lighted the
+pipe, and examined the volume. It was the Handbuch der Gewebelehre of
+Bussius of Vienna. When I had replaced the book upon the table, it
+deliberately opened itself at the four hundred and forty-third page.
+
+"You are not nervous?" demanded a voice, not four feet from my
+tympanum.
+
+IV
+
+This voice had a familiar sound. I recognized it as the voice that I
+heard in the street on the night of November 6, when it called me an ox.
+
+"No," I said. "I am not nervous. I am a man of science, accustomed to
+regard all phenomena as explainable by natural laws, provided we can
+discover the laws. No, I am not frightened."
+
+"So much the better. You are a man of science, like myself"--here the
+voice groaned--"a man of nerve, and a friend of Pandora's."
+
+"Pardon me," I interposed. "Since a lady's name is introduced it would
+be well to know with whom or with what I am speaking."
+
+"That is precisely what I desire to communicate," replied the voice,
+"before I ask you to render me a great service. My name is or was
+Stephen Flack. I am or have been a citizen of the United States. My
+exact status at present is as great a mystery to myself as it can
+possibly be to you. But I am, or was, an honest man and a gentleman,
+and I offer you my hand."
+
+I saw no hand. I reached forth my own, however, and it met the
+pressure of warm, living fingers.
+
+"Now," resumed the voice, after this silent pact of friendship, "be
+good enough to read the passage at which I have opened the book upon
+the table."
+
+Here is a rough translation of what I read in German:
+
+  As the color of the organic tissues constituting the body depends
+upon the presence of certain proximate principles of the third class,
+all containing iron as one of the ultimate elements, it follows that
+the hue may vary according to well-defined chemico-physiological
+changes. An excess of hematin in the blood globules gives a ruddier
+tinge to every tissue. The melanin that colors the choroid of the eye,
+the iris, the hair, may be increased or diminished according to laws
+recently formulated by Schardt of Basel. In the epidermis the excess
+of melanin makes the Negro, the deficient supply the albino. The
+hematin and the melanin, together with the greenish-yellow biliverdine
+and the reddish-yellow urokacine, are the pigments which impart color
+character to tissues otherwise transparent, or nearly so. I deplore my
+inability to record the result of some highly interesting histological
+experiments conducted by that indefatigable investigator Fröliker in
+achieving success in the way of separating pink discoloration of the
+human body by chemical means.
+
+"For five years," continued my unseen companion when I had finished
+reading, "I was Fröliker's student and laboratory assistant at
+Freiburg. Bussius only half guessed at the importance of our
+experiments. We reached results which were so astounding that public
+policy required they should not be published, even to the scientific
+world. Fröliker died a year ago last August.
+
+"I had faith in the genius of this great thinker and admirable man. If
+he had rewarded my unquestioning loyalty with full confidence, I
+should not now be a miserable wretch. But his natural reserve, and the
+jealousy with which all savants guard their unverified results, kept
+me ignorant of the essential formulas governing our experiments. As
+his disciple I was familiar with the laboratory details of the work;
+the master alone possessed the radical secret. The consequence is that
+I have been led into a misfortune more appalling than has been the lot
+of any human being since the primal curse fell upon Cain.
+
+"Our efforts were at first directed to the enlargement and variation
+of the quantity of pigmentary matter in the system. By increasing the
+proportion of melanin, for instance, conveyed in food to the blood, we
+were able to make a fair man dark, a dark man black as an African.
+There was scarcely a hue we could not impart to the skin by modifying
+and varying our combinations. The experiments were usually tried on
+me. At different times I have been copper-colored, violet blue,
+crimson, and chrome yellow. For one triumphant week I exhibited in my
+person all the colors of the rainbow. There still remains a witness to
+the interesting character of our work during this period."
+
+The voice paused, and in a few seconds a hand bell upon the mantel was
+sounded. Presently an old man with a close-fitting skullcap shuffled
+into the room.
+
+"Käspar," said the voice, in German, "show the gentleman your hair."
+
+Without manifesting any surprise, and as if perfectly accustomed to
+receive commands addressed to him out of vacancy, the old domestic
+bowed and removed his cap. The scanty locks thus discovered were of a
+lustrous emerald green. I expressed my astonishment.
+
+"The gentleman finds your hair very beautiful," said the voice, again
+in German. "That is all, Käspar."
+
+Replacing his cap, the domestic withdrew, with a look of gratified
+vanity on his face.
+
+"Old Käspar was Fröliker's servant, and is now mine. He was the
+subject of one of our first applications of the process. The worthy
+man was so pleased with the result that he would never permit us to
+restore his hair to its original red. He is a faithful soul, and my
+only intermediary and representative in the visible world.
+
+"Now," continued Flack, "to the story of my undoing. The great
+histologist with whom it was my privilege to be associated, next
+turned his attention to another and still more interesting branch of
+the investigation. Hitherto he had sought merely to increase or to
+modify the pigments in the tissues. He now began a series of
+experiments as to the possibility of eliminating those pigments
+altogether from the system by absorption, exudation, and the use of
+the chlorides and other chemical agents acting on organic matter. He
+was only too successful!
+
+"Again I was the subject of experiments which Fröliker supervised,
+imparting to me only so much of the secret of this process as was
+unavoidable. For weeks at a time I remained in his private laboratory,
+seeing no one and seen by no one excepting the professor and the
+trustworthy Käspar. Herr Friiliker proceeded with caution, closely
+watching the effect of each new test, and advancing by degrees. He
+never went so far in one experiment that he was unable to withdraw at
+discretion. He always kept open an easy road for retreat. For that
+reason I felt myself perfectly safe in his hands and submitted to
+whatever he required.
+
+"Under the action of the etiolating drugs which the professor
+administered in connection with powerful detergents, I became at first
+pale, white, colorless as an albino, but without suffering in general
+health. My hair and beard looked like spun glass and my skin like
+marble. The professor was satisfied with his results, and went no
+further at this time. He restored to me my normal color.
+
+"In the next experiment, and in those succeeding, he allowed his
+chemical agents to take firmer hold upon the tissues of my body. I
+became not only white, like a bleached man, but slightly translucent,
+like a porcelain figure. Then again he paused for a while, giving me
+back my color and allowing me to go forth into the world. Two months
+later I was more than translucent. You have seen floating those sea
+radiates, the medusa or jellyfish, their outlines almost invisible to
+the eye. Well, I became in the air like a jellyfish in the water.
+Almost perfectly transparent, it was only by close inspection that old
+Käspar could discover my whereabouts in the room when he came to bring
+me food. It was Käspar who ministered to my wants at times when I was
+cloistered."
+
+"But your clothing?" I inquired, interrupting Flack's narrative. "That
+must have stood out in strong contrast with the dim aspect of your
+body."
+
+"Ah, no," said Flack. "The spectacle of an apparently empty suit of
+clothes moving about the laboratory was too grotesque even for the
+grave professor. For the protection of his gravity he was obliged to
+devise a way to apply his process to dead organic matter, such as the
+wool of my cloak, the cotton of my shirts, and the leather of my
+shoes. Thus I came to be equipped with the outfit which still serves
+me.
+
+"It was at this stage of our progress, when we had almost attained
+perfect transparency, and therefore complete invisibility, that I met
+Pandora Bliss.
+
+"A year ago last July, in one of the intervals of our experimenting,
+and at a time when I presented my natural appearance, I went into the
+Schwarzwald to recuperate. I first saw and admired Pandora at the
+little village of St. Blasien. They had come from the Falls of the
+Rhine, and were traveling north; I turned around and traveled north.
+At the Stern Inn I loved Pandora; at the summit of the Feldberg I
+madly worshiped her. In the Höllenpass I was ready to sacrifice my
+life for a gracious word from her lips. On Hornisgrinde I besought her
+permission to throw myself from the top of the mountain into the
+gloomy waters of the Mummelsee in order to prove my devotion. You know
+Pandora. Since you know her, there is no need to apologize for the
+rapid growth of my infatuation. She flirted with me, laughed with me,
+laughed at me, drove with me, walked with me through byways in the
+green woods, climbed with me up aeclivities so steep that climbing
+together was one delicious, prolonged embrace; talked science with me,
+and sentiment; listened to my hopes and enthusiasm, snubbed me, froze
+me, maddened me--all at her sweet will, and all while her matter-of-
+fact papa dozed in the coffee rooms of the inns over the financial
+columns of the latest New York newspapers. But whether she loved me I
+know not to this day.
+
+"When Pandora's father learned what my pursuits were, and what my
+prospects, he brought our little idyl to an abrupt termination. I
+think he classed me somewhere between the professional jugglers and
+the quack doctors. In vain I explained to him that I should be famous
+and probably rich. 'When you are famous and rich,' he remarked with a
+grin, 'I shall be pleased to see you at my office in Broad street' He
+carried Pandora off to Paris, and I returned to Freiburg.
+
+"A few weeks later, one bright afternoon in August, I stood in
+Fröliker's laboratory unseen by four persons who were almost within
+the radius of my arm's length. Käspar was behind me, washing some test
+tubes. Fröliker, with a proud smile upon his face, was gazing intently
+at the place where he knew I ought to be. Two brother professors,
+summoned on some pretext, were unconsciously almost jostling me with
+their elbows as they discussed I know not what trivial question. They
+could have heard my heart beat. 'By the way, Herr Professor,' one
+asked as he was about to depart, 'has your assistant, Herr Flack,
+returned from his vacation?' This test was perfect.
+
+"As soon as we were alone, Professor Fröliker grasped my invisible
+hand, as you have grasped it tonight. He was in high spirits.
+
+"'My dear fellow,' he said, 'tomorrow crowns our work. You shall
+appear--or rather not appear--before the assembled faculty of the
+university. I have telegraphed invitations to Heidelberg, to Bonn, to
+Berlin. Schrotter, Haeckel, Steinmetz, Lavallo, will be here. Our
+triumph will be in presence of the most eminent physicists of the age.
+I shall then disclose those secrets of our process which I have
+hitherto withheld even from you, my colaborer and trusted friend. But
+you shall share the glory. What is this I hear about the forest bird
+that has flown? My boy, you shall be restocked with pigment and go to
+Paris to seek her with fame in your hands and the blessings of science
+on your head.'
+
+"The next morning, the nineteenth of August, before I had arisen from
+my cot bed, Käspar hastily entered the laboratory.
+
+"'Herr Flack! Herr Flack!' he gasped, 'the Herr Doctor Professor is
+dead of apoplexy.'"
+
+V
+
+The narrative had come to an end. I sat a long time thinking. What
+could I do? What could I say? In what shape could I offer consolation
+to this unhappy man?
+
+Flack, the invisible, was sobbing bitterly.
+
+He was the first to speak. "It is hard, hard, hard! For no crime in
+the eyes of man, for no sin in the sight of God, I have been condemned
+to a fate ten thousand times worse than hell. I must walk the earth, a
+man, living, seeing, loving, like other men, while between me and all
+that makes life worth having there is a barrier fixed forever. Even
+ghosts have shapes. My life is living death; my existence oblivion. No
+friend can look me in the face. Were I to clasp to my breast the woman
+I love, it would only be to inspire terror inexpressible. I see her
+almost every day. I brush against her skirts as I pass her on the
+stairs. Did she love me? Does she love me? Would not that knowledge
+make the curse still more cruel? Yet it was to learn the truth that I
+brought you here."
+
+Then I made the greatest mistake of my life.
+
+"Cheer up!" I said. "Pandora has always loved you."
+
+By the sudden overturning of the table I knew with what vehemence
+Flack sprang to his feet. His two hands had my shoulders in a fierce
+grip.
+
+"Yes," I continued; "Pandora has been faithful to your memory. There
+is no reason to despair. The secret of Fröliker's process died with
+him, but why should it not be rediscovered by experiment and induction
+ab initio, with the aid which you can render? Have courage and hope.
+She loves you. In five minutes you shall hear it from her own lips."
+
+No wail of pain that I ever heard was half so pathetic as his wild cry
+of joy.
+
+I hurried downstairs and summoned Miss Bliss into the hall. In a few
+words I explained the situation. To my surprise, she neither fainted
+nor went into hysterics. "Certainly, I will accompany you," she said,
+with a smile which I could not then interpret.
+
+She followed me into Flack's room, calmly scrutinizing every corner of
+the apartment, with the set smile still upon her face. Had she been
+entering a ballroom she could not have shown greater self-possession.
+She manifested no astonishment, no terror, when her hand was seized by
+invisible hands and covered with kisses from invisible lips. She
+listened with composure to the torrent of loving and caressing words
+which my unfortunate friend poured into her ears.
+
+Perplexed and uneasy, I watched the strange scene.
+
+Presently Miss Bliss withdrew her hand.
+
+"Really, Mr. Flack," she said with a light laugh, "you are
+sufficiently demonstrative. Did you acquire the habit on the
+Continent?"
+
+"Pandora!" I heard him say, "I do not understand."
+
+"Perhaps," she calmly went on, "you regard it as one of the privileges
+of your invisibility. Let me congratulate you on the success of your
+experiment. What a clever man your professor--what is his name?--must
+be. You can make a fortune by exhibiting yourself."
+
+Was this the woman who for months had paraded her inconsolable sorrow
+for the loss of this very man? I was stupefied. Who shall undertake to
+analyze the motives of a coquette? What science is profound enough to
+unravel her unconscionable whims?
+
+"Pandora!" he exclaimed again, in a bewildered voice. "What does it
+mean? Why do you receive me in this manner? Is that all you have to
+say to me?"
+
+"I believe that is all," she coolly replied, moving toward the door.
+"You are a gentleman, and I need not ask you to spare me any further
+annoyance."
+
+"Your heart is quartz," I whispered, as she passed me in going out.
+"You are unworthy of him."
+
+Flack's despairing cry brought Käspar into the room. With the instinct
+acquired by long and faithful service, the old man went straight to
+the place where his master was. I saw him clutch at the air, as if
+struggling with and seeking to detain the invisible man. He was flung
+violently aside. He recovered himself and stood an instant listening,
+his neck distended, his face pale. Then he rushed out of the door and
+down the stairs. I followed him.
+
+The street door of the house was open. On the sidewalk Käspar
+hesitated a few seconds. It was toward the west that he finally
+turned, running down the street with such speed that I had the utmost
+difficulty to keep at his side.
+
+It was near midnight. We crossed avenue after avenue. An inarticulate
+murmur of satisfaction escaped old Käspar's lips. A little way ahead
+of us we saw a man, standing at one of the avenue corners, suddenly
+thrown to the ground. We sped on, never relaxing our pace. I now heard
+rapid footfalls a short distance in advance of us. I clutched Käspar's
+arm. He nodded.
+
+Almost breathless, I was conscious that we were no longer treading
+upon pavement, but on boards and amid a confusion of lumber. In front
+of us were no more lights; only blank vacancy. Käspar gave one mighty
+spring. He clutched, missed, and fell back with a cry of horror.
+
+There was a dull splash in the black waters of the river at our feet.
+
+*** section-7
+
+THE CLOCK THAT WENT BACKWARD
+
+A row of Lombardy poplars stood in front of my great-aunt Gertrude's
+house, on the bank of the Sheepscot River. In personal appearance my
+aunt was surprisingly like one of those trees. She had the look of
+hopeless anemia that distinguishes them from fuller blooded sorts. She
+was tall, severe in outline, and extremely thin. Her habiliments clung
+to her. I am sure that had the gods found occasion to impose upon her
+the fate of Daphne she would have taken her place easily and naturally
+in the dismal row, as melancholy a poplar as the rest.
+
+Some of my earliest recollections are of this venerable relative.
+Alive and dead she bore an important part in the events I am about to
+recount: events which I believe to be without parallel in the
+experience of mankind.
+
+During our periodical visits of duty to Aunt Gertrude in Maine, my
+cousin Harry and myself were accustomed to speculate much on her age.
+Was she sixty, or was she six score? We had no precise information;
+she might have been either. The old lady was surrounded by old-
+fashioned things. She seemed to live altogether in the past. In her
+short half-hours of communicativeness, over her second cup of tea, or
+on the piazza where the poplars sent slim shadows directly toward the
+east, she used to tell us stories of her alleged ancestors. I say
+alleged, because we never fully believed that she had ancestors.
+
+A genealogy is a stupid thing. Here is Aunt Gertrude's, reduced to its
+simplest forms:
+
+Her great-great-grandmother (1599-1642) was a woman of Holland who
+married a Puritan refugee, and sailed from Leyden to Plymouth in the
+ship Ann in the year of our Lord 1632. This Pilgrim mother had a
+daughter, Aunt Gertrude's great-grandmother (1640-1718). She came to
+the Eastern District of Massachusetts in the early part of the last
+century, and was carried off by the Indians in the Penobscot wars. Her
+daughter (1680-1776) lived to see these colonies free and independent,
+and contributed to the population of the coming republic not less than
+nineteen stalwart sons and comely daughters. One of the latter (1735-
+1802) married a Wiscasset skipper engaged in the West India trade,
+with whom she sailed. She was twice wrecked at sea--once on what is
+now Seguin Island and once on San Salvador. It was on San Salvador
+that Aunt Gertrude was born.
+
+We got to be very tired of hearing this family history. Perhaps it was
+the constant repetition and the merciless persistency with which the
+above dates were driven into our young ears that made us skeptics. As
+I have said, we took little stock in Aunt Gertrude's ancestors. They
+seemed highly improbable. In our private opinion the great-
+grandmothers and grandmothers and so forth were pure myths, and Aunt
+Gertrude herself was the principal in all the adventures attributed to
+them, having lasted from century to century while generations of
+contemporaries went the way of all flesh.
+
+On the first landing of the square stairway of the mansion loomed a
+tall Dutch clock. The case was more than eight feet high, of a dark
+red wood, not mahogany, and it was curiously inlaid with silver. No
+common piece of furniture was this. About a hundred years ago there
+flourished in the town of Brunswick a horologist named Cary, an
+industrious and accomplished workman. Few well-to-do houses on that
+part of the coast lacked a Cary timepiece. But Aunt Gertrude's clock
+had marked the hours and minutes of two full centuries before the
+Brunswick artisan was born. It was running when William the Taciturn
+pierced the dikes to relieve Leyden. The name of the maker, Jan
+Lipperdam, and the date, 1572, were still legible in broad black
+letters and figures reaching quite across the dial. Cary's
+masterpieces were plebeian and recent beside this ancient aristocrat.
+The jolly Dutch moon, made to exhibit the phases over a landscape of
+windmills and polders, was cunningly painted. A skilled hand had
+carved the grim ornament at the top, a death's head transfixed by a
+two-edged sword. Like all timepieces of the sixteenth century, it had
+no pendulum. A simple Van Wyck escapement governed the descent of the
+weights to the bottom of the tall case.
+
+But these weights never moved. Year after year, when Harry and I
+returned to Maine, we found the hands of the old clock pointing to the
+quarter past three, as they had pointed when we first saw them. The
+fat moon hung perpetually in the third quarter, as motionless as the
+death's head above. There was a mystery about the silenced movement
+and the paralyzed hands. Aunt Gertrude told us that the works had
+never performed their functions since a bolt of lightning entered the
+clock; and she showed us a black hole in the side of the case near the
+top, with a yawning rift that extended downward for several feet. This
+explanation failed to satisfy us. It did not account for the sharpness
+of her refusal when we proposed to bring over the watchmaker from the
+village, or for her singular agitation once when she found Harry on a
+stepladder, with a borrowed key in his hand, about to test for himself
+the clock's suspended vitality.
+
+One August night, after we had grown out of boyhood, I was awakened by
+a noise in the hallway. I shook my cousin. "Somebody's in the house,"
+I whispered.
+
+We crept out of our room and on to the stairs. A dim light came from
+below. We held breath and noiselessly descended to the second landing.
+Harry clutched my arm. He pointed down over the banisters, at the same
+time drawing me back into the shadow.
+
+We saw a strange thing.
+
+Aunt Gertrude stood on a chair in front of the old clock, as spectral
+in her white nightgown and white nightcap as one of the poplars when
+covered with snow. It chanced that the floor creaked slightly under
+our feet. She turned with a sudden movement, peering intently into the
+darkness, and holding a candle high toward us, so that the light was
+full upon her pale face. She looked many years older than when I bade
+her good night. For a few minutes she was motionless, except in the
+trembling arm that held aloft the candle. Then, evidently reassured,
+she placed the light upon a shelf and turned again to the clock.
+
+We now saw the old lady take a key from behind the face and proceed to
+wind up the weights. We could hear her breath, quick and short. She
+rested a band on either side of the case and held her face close to
+the dial, as if subjecting it to anxious scrutiny. In this attitude
+she remained for a long time. We heard her utter a sigh of relief, and
+she half turned toward us for a moment. I shall never forget the
+expression of wild joy that transfigured her features then.
+
+The hands of the clock were moving; they were moving backward.
+
+Aunt Gertrude put both arms around the clock and pressed her withered
+cheek against it. She kissed it repeatedly. She caressed it in a
+hundred ways, as if it had been a living and beloved thing. She
+fondled it and talked to it, using words which we could hear but could
+not understand. The hands continued to move backward.
+
+Then she started back with a sudden cry. The clock had stopped. We saw
+her tall body swaying for an instant on the chair. She stretched out
+her arms in a convulsive gesture of terror and despair, wrenched the
+minute hand to its old place at a quarter past three, and fell heavily
+to the floor.
+
+II
+
+Aunt Gertrude's will left me her bank and gas stocks, real estate,
+railroad bonds, and city sevens, and gave Harry the clock. We thought
+at the time that this was a very unequal division, the more surprising
+because my cousin had always seemed to be the favorite. Half in
+seriousness we made a thorough examination of the ancient timepiece,
+sounding its wooden case for secret drawers, and even probing the not
+complicated works with a knitting needle to ascertain if our whimsical
+relative had bestowed there some codicil or other document changing
+the aspect of affairs. We discovered nothing.
+
+There was testamentary provision for our education at the University
+of Leyden. We left the military school in which we had learned a
+little of the theory of war, and a good deal of the art of standing
+with our noses over our heels, and took ship without delay. The clock
+went with us. Before many months it was established in a corner of a
+room in the Breede Straat.
+
+The fabric of Jan Lipperdam's ingenuity, thus restored to its native
+air, continued to tell the hour of quarter past three with its old
+fidelity. The author of the clock had been under the sod for nearly
+three hundred years. The combined skill of his successors in the craft
+at Leyden could make it go neither forward nor backward.
+
+We readily picked up enough Dutch to make ourselves understood by the
+townspeople, the professors, and such of our eight hundred and odd
+fellow students as came into intercourse. This language, which looks
+so hard at first, is only a sort of polarized English. Puzzle over it
+a little while and it jumps into your comprehension like one of those
+simple cryptograms made by running together all the words of a
+sentence and then dividing in the wrong places.
+
+The language acquired and the newness of our surroundings worn off, we
+settled into tolerably regular pursuits. Harry devoted himself with
+some assiduity to the study of sociology, with especial reference to
+the round-faced and not unkind maidens of Leyden. I went in for the
+higher metaphysics.
+
+Outside of our respective studies, we had a common ground of unfailing
+interest. To our astonishment, we found that not one in twenty of the
+faculty or students knew or cared a sliver about the glorious history
+of the town, or even about the circumstances under which the
+university itself was founded by the Prince of Orange. In marked
+contrast with the general indifference was the enthusiasm of Professor
+Van Stopp, my chosen guide through the cloudiness of speculative
+philosophy.
+
+This distinguished Hegelian was a tobacco-dried little old man, with a
+skullcap over features that reminded me strangely of Aunt Gertrude's.
+Had he been her own brother the facial resemblance could not have been
+closer. I told him so once, when we were together in the Stadthuis
+looking at the portrait of the hero of the siege, the Burgomaster Van
+der Werf. The professor laughed. "I will show you what is even a more
+extraordinary coincidence," said he; and, leading the way across the
+hall to the great picture of the siege, by Warmers, he pointed out the
+figure of a burgher participating in the defense. It was true. Van
+Stopp might have been the burgher's son; the burgher might have been
+Aunt Gertrude's father.
+
+The professor seemed to be fond of us. We often went to his rooms in
+an old house in the Rapenburg Straat, one of the few houses remaining
+that antedate 1574. He would walk with us through the beautiful
+suburbs of the city, over straight roads lined with poplars that
+carried us back to the bank of the Sheepscot in our minds. He took us
+to the top of the ruined Roman tower in the center of the town, and
+from the same battlements from which anxious eyes three centuries ago
+had watched the slow approach of Admiral Boisot's fleet over the
+submerged polders, he pointed out the great dike of the Landscheiding,
+which was cut that the oceans might bring Boisot's Zealanders to raise
+the leaguer and feed the starving. He showed us the headquarters of
+the Spaniard Valdez at Leyderdorp, and told us how heaven sent a
+violent northwest wind on the night of the first of October, piling up
+the water deep where it had been shallow and sweeping the fleet on
+between Zoeterwoude and Zwieten up to the very walls of the fort at
+Lammen, the last stronghold of the besiegers and the last obstacle in
+the way of succor to the famishing inhabitants. Then he showed us
+where, on the very night before the retreat of the besieging army, a
+huge breach was made in the wall of Leyden, near the Cow Gate, by the
+Walloons from Lammen.
+
+"Why!" cried Harry, catching fire from the eloquence of the
+professor's narrative, "that was the decisive moment of the siege."
+
+The professor said nothing. He stood with his arms folded, looking
+intently into my cousin's eyes.
+
+"For," continued Harry, "had that point not been watched, or had
+defense failed and the breach been carried by the night assault from
+Lammen, the town would have been burned and the people massacred under
+the eyes of Admiral Boisot and the fleet of relief. Who defended the
+breach?"
+
+Van Stopp replied very slowly, as if weighing every word:
+
+"History records the explosion of the mine under the city wall on the
+last night of the siege; it does not tell the story of the defense or
+give the defender's name. Yet no man that ever lived had a more
+tremendous charge than fate entrusted to this unknown hero. Was it
+chance that sent him to meet that unexpected danger? Consider some of
+the consequences had he failed. The fall of Leyden would have
+destroyed the last hope of the Prince of Orange and of the free
+states. The tyranny of Philip would have been reestablished. The birth
+of religious liberty and of self-government by the people would have
+been postponed, who knows for how many centuries? Who knows that there
+would or could have been a republic of the United States of America
+had there been no United Netherlands? Our University, which has given
+to the world Grotius, Scaliger, Arminius, and Descartes, was founded
+upon this hero's successful defense of the breach. We owe to him our
+presence here today. Nay, you owe to him your very existence. Your
+ancestors were of Leyden; between their lives and the butchers outside
+the walls he stood that night."
+
+The little professor towered before us, a giant of enthusiasm and
+patriotism. Harry's eyes glistened and his cheeks reddened.
+
+"Go home, boys," said Van Stopp, "and thank God that while the
+burghers of Leyden were straining their gaze toward Zoeterwoude and
+the fleet, there was one pair of vigilant eyes and one stout heart at
+the town wall just beyond the Cow Gate!"
+
+III
+
+The rain was splashing against the windows one evening in the autumn
+of our third year at Leyden, when Professor Van Stopp honored us with
+a visit in the Breede Straat. Never had I seen the old gentleman in
+such spirits. He talked incessantly. The gossip of the town, the news
+of Europe, science, poetry, philosophy, were in turn touched upon and
+treated with the same high and good humor. I sought to draw him out on
+Hegel, with whose chapter on the complexity and interdependency of
+things I was just then struggling.
+
+"You do not grasp the return of the Itself into Itself through its
+Otherself?" he said smiling. "Well, you will, sometime."
+
+Harry was silent and preoccupied. His taciturnity gradually affected
+even the professor. The conversation flagged, and we sat a long while
+without a word. Now and then there was a flash of lightning succeeded
+by distant thunder.
+
+"Your clock does not go," suddenly remarked the professor. "Does it
+ever go?"
+
+"Never since we can remember," I replied. "That is, only once, and
+then it went backward. It was when Aunt Gertrude-"
+
+Here I caught a warning glance from Harry. I laughed and stammered,
+"The clock is old and useless. It cannot be made to go."
+
+"Only backward?" said the professor, calmly, and not appearing to
+notice my embarrassment. "Well, and why should not a clock go
+backward? Why should not Time itself turn and retrace its course?"
+
+He seemed to be waiting for an answer. I had none to give.
+
+"I thought you Hegelian enough," he continued, "to admit that every
+condition includes its own contradiction. Time is a condition, not an
+essential. Viewed from the Absolute, the sequence by which future
+follows present and present follows past is purely arbitrary.
+Yesterday, today, tomorrow; there is no reason in the nature of things
+why the order should not be tomorrow, today, yesterday."
+
+A sharper peal of thunder interrupted the professor's speculations.
+
+"The day is made by the planet's revolution on its axis from west to
+east. I fancy you can conceive conditions under which it might turn
+from east to west, unwinding, as it were, the revolutions of past
+ages. Is it so much more difficult to imagine Time unwinding itself;
+Time on the ebb, instead of on the flow; the past unfolding as the
+future recedes; the centuries countermarching; the course of events
+proceeding toward the Beginning and not, as now, toward the End?"
+
+"But," I interposed, "we know that as far as we are concerned the-"
+
+"We know!" exclaimed Van Stopp, with growing scorn. "Your intelligence
+has no wings. You follow in the trail of Compte and his slimy brood of
+creepers and crawlers. You speak with amazing assurance of your
+position in the universe. You seem to think that your wretched little
+individuality has a firm foothold in the Absolute. Yet you go to bed
+tonight and dream into existence men, women, children, beasts of the
+past or of the future. How do you know that at this moment you
+yourself, with all your conceit of nineteenth-century thought, are
+anything more than a creature of a dream of the future, dreamed, let
+us say, by some philosopher of the sixteenth century? How do you know
+that you are anything more than a creature of a dream of the past,
+dreamed by some Hegelian of the twenty-sixth century? How do you know,
+boy, that you will not vanish into the sixteenth century or 2060 the
+moment the dreamer awakes?"
+
+There was no replying to this, for it was sound metaphysics. Harry
+yawned. I got up and went to the window. Professor Van Stopp
+approached the clock.
+
+"Ah, my children," said he, "there is no fixed progress of human
+events. Past, present, and future are woven together in one
+inextricable mesh. Who shall say that this old clock is not right to
+go backward?"
+
+A crash of thunder shook the house. The storm was over our heads.
+
+When the blinding glare had passed away, Professor Van Stopp was
+standing upon a chair before the tall timepiece. His face looked more
+than ever like Aunt Gertrude's. He stood as she had stood in that last
+quarter of an hour when we saw her wind the clock.
+
+The same thought struck Harry and myself.
+
+"Hold!" we cried, as he began to wind the works. "It may be death if
+you-"
+
+The professor's sallow features shone with the strange enthusiasm that
+had transformed Aunt Gertrude's.
+
+"True," he said, "it may be death; but it may be the awakening. Past,
+present, future; all woven together! The shuttle goes to and fro,
+forward and back-"
+
+He had wound the clock. The hands were whirling around the dial from
+right to left with inconceivable rapidity. In this whirl we ourselves
+seemed to be borne along. Eternities seemed to contract into minutes
+while lifetimes were thrown off at every tick. Van Stopp, both arms
+outstretched, was reeling in his chair. The house shook again under a
+tremendous peal of thunder. At the same instant a ball of fire,
+leaving a wake of sulphurous vapor and filling the room with dazzling
+light, passed over our heads and smote the clock. Van Stopp was
+prostrated. The hands ceased to revolve.
+
+IV
+
+The roar of the thunder sounded like heavy cannonading. The
+lightning's blaze appeared as the steady light of a conflagration.
+With our hands over our eyes, Harry and I rushed out into the night.
+
+Under a red sky people were hurrying toward the Stadthuis. Flames in
+the direction of the Roman tower told us that the heart of the town
+was afire. The faces of those we saw were haggard and emaciated. From
+every side we caught disjointed phrases of complaint or despair.
+"Horseflesh at ten schillings the pound," said one, "and bread at
+sixteen schillings." "Bread indeed!" an old woman retorted: "It's
+eight weeks gone since I have seen a crumb." "My little grandchild,
+the lame one, went last night." "Do you know what Gekke Betje, the
+washerwoman, did? She was starving. Her babe died, and she and her
+man-"
+
+A louder cannon burst cut short this revelation. We made our way on
+toward the citadel of the town, passing a few soldiers here and there
+and many burghers with grim faces under their broad-brimmed felt hats.
+
+"There is bread plenty yonder where the gunpowder is, and full pardon,
+too. Valdez shot another amnesty over the walls this morning."
+
+An excited crowd immediately surrounded the speaker. "But the fleet!"
+they cried.
+
+"The fleet is grounded fast on the Greenway polder. Boisot may turn
+his one eye seaward for a wind till famine and pestilence have carried
+off every mother's son of ye, and his ark will not be a rope's length
+nearer. Death by plague, death by starvation, death by fire and
+musketry--that is what the burgomaster offers us in return for glory
+for himself and kingdom for Orange."
+
+"He asks us," said a sturdy citizen, "to hold out only twenty-four
+hours longer, and to pray meanwhile for an ocean wind."
+
+"Ah, yes!" sneered the first speaker. "Pray on. There is bread enough
+locked in Pieter Adriaanszoon van der Werf's cellar. I warrant you
+that is what gives him so wonderful a stomach for resisting the Most
+Catholic King."
+
+A young girl, with braided yellow hair, pressed through the crowd and
+confronted the malcontent. "Good people," said the maiden, "do not
+listen to him. He is a traitor with a Spanish heart. I am Pieter's
+daughter. We have no bread. We ate malt cakes and rapeseed like the
+rest of you till that was gone. Then we stripped the green leaves from
+the lime trees and willows in our garden and ate them. We have eaten
+even the thistles and weeds that grew between the stones by the canal.
+The coward lies."
+
+Nevertheless, the insinuation had its effect. The throng, now become a
+mob, surged off in the direction of the burgomaster's house. One
+ruffian raised his hand to strike the girl out of the way. In a wink
+the cur was under the feet of his fellows, and Harry, panting and
+glowing, stood at the maiden's side, shouting defiance in good English
+at the backs of the rapidly retreating crowd.
+
+With the utmost frankness she put both her arms around Harry's neck
+and kissed him.
+
+"Thank you," she said. "You are a hearty lad. My name is Gertruyd van
+der Wert."
+
+Harry was fumbling in his vocabulary for the proper Dutch phrases, but
+the girl would not stay for compliments. "They mean mischief to my
+father"; and she hurried us through several exceedingly narrow streets
+into a three-cornered market place dominated by a church with two
+spires. "There he is," she exclaimed, "on the steps of St. Pancras."
+
+There was a tumult in the market place. The conflagration raging
+beyond the church and the voices of the Spanish and Walloon cannon
+outside of the walls were less angry than the roar of this multitude
+of desperate men clamoring for the bread that a single word from their
+leader's lips would bring them. "Surrender to the King!" they cried,
+"or we will send your dead body to Lammen as Leyden's token of
+submission."
+
+One tall man, taller by half a head than any of the burghers
+confronting him, and so dark of complexion that we wondered how he
+could be the father of Gertruyd, heard the threat in silence. When the
+burgomaster spoke, the mob listened in spite of themselves.
+
+"What is it you ask, my friends? That we break our vow and surrender
+Leyden to the Spaniards? That is to devote ourselves to a fate far
+more horrible than starvation. I have to keep the oath! Kill me, if
+you will have it so. I can die only once, whether by your hands, by
+the enemy's, or by the hand of God. Let us starve, if we must,
+welcoming starvation because it comes before dishonor. Your menaces do
+not move me; my life is at your disposal. Here, take my sword, thrust
+it into my breast, and divide my flesh among you to appease your
+hunger. So long as I remain alive expect no surrender."
+
+There was silence again while the mob wavered. Then there were
+mutterings around us. Above these rang out the clear voice of the girl
+whose hand Harry still held-unnecessarily, it seemed to me.
+
+"Do you not feel the sea wind? It has come at last. To the tower! And
+the first man there will see by moonlight the full white sails of the
+prince's ships."
+
+For several hours I scoured the streets of the town, seeking in vain
+my cousin and his companion; the sudden movement of the crowd toward
+the Roman tower had separated us. On every side I saw evidences of the
+terrible chastisement that had brought this stout-hearted people to
+the verge of despair. A man with hungry eyes chased a lean rat along
+the bank of the canal. A young mother, with two dead babes in her
+arms, sat in a doorway to which they bore the bodies of her husband
+and father, just killed at the walls. In the middle of a deserted
+street I passed unburied corpses in a pile twice as high as my head.
+The pestilence had been there-kinder than the Spaniard, because it
+held out no treacherous promises while it dealt its blows.
+
+Toward morning the wind increased to a gale. There was no sleep in
+Leyden, no more talk of surrender, no longer any thought or care about
+defense. These words were on the lips of everybody I met: "Daylight
+will bring the fleet!"
+
+Did daylight bring the fleet? History says so, but I was not a
+witness. I know only that before dawn the gale culminated in a violent
+thunderstorm, and that at the same time a muffled explosion, heavier
+than the thunder, shook the town. I was in the crowd that watched from
+the Roman Mound for the first signs of the approaching relief. The
+concussion shook hope out of every face. "Their mine has reached the
+wall!" But where? I pressed forward until I found the burgomaster, who
+was standing among the rest. "Quick!" I whispered. "It is beyond the
+Cow Gate, and this side of the Tower of Burgundy." He gave me a
+searching glance, and then strode away, without making any attempt to
+quiet the general panic. I followed close at his heels.
+
+It was a tight run of nearly half a mile to the rampart in question.
+When we reached the Cow Gate this is what we saw:
+
+A great gap, where the wall had been, opening to the swampy fields
+beyond: in the moat, outside and below, a confusion of upturned faces,
+belonging to men who struggled like demons to achieve the breach, and
+who now gained a few feet and now were forced back; on the shattered
+rampart a handful of soldiers and burghers forming a living wall where
+masonry had failed; perhaps a double handful of women and girls,
+serving stones to the defenders and boiling water in buckets, besides
+pitch and oil and unslaked lime, and some of them quoiting tarred and
+burning hoops over the necks of the Spaniards in the moat; my cousin
+Harry leading and directing the men; the burgomaster's daughter
+Gertruyd encouraging and inspiring the women.
+
+But what attracted my attention more than anything else was the
+frantic activity of a little figure in black, who, with a huge ladle,
+was showering molten lead on the heads of the assailing party. As he
+turned to the bonfire and kettle which supplied him with ammunition,
+his features came into the full light. I gave a cry of surprise: the
+ladler of molten lead was Professor Van Stopp.
+
+The burgomaster Van der Werf turned at my sudden exclamation. "Who is
+that?" I said. "The man at the kettle?"
+
+"That," replied Van der Werf, "is the brother of my wife, the
+clockmaker Jan Lipperdam."
+
+The affair at the breach was over almost before we had had time to
+grasp the situation. The Spaniards, who had overthrown the wall of
+brick and stone, found the living wall impregnable. They could not
+even maintain their position in the moat; they were driven off into
+the darkness. Now I felt a sharp pain in my left arm. Some stray
+missile must have hit me while we watched the fight.
+
+"Who has done this thing?" demanded the burgomaster. "Who is it that
+has kept watch on today while the rest of us were straining fools'
+eyes toward tomorrow?"
+
+Gertruyd van der Werf came forward proudly, leading my cousin. "My
+father," said the girl, "he has saved my life."
+
+"That is much to me," said the burgomaster, "but it is not all. He has
+saved Leyden and he has saved Holland."
+
+I was becoming dizzy. The faces around me seemed unreal. Why were we
+here with these people? Why did the thunder and lightning forever
+continue? Why did the clockmaker, Jan Lipperdam, turn always toward me
+the face of Professor Van Stopp? "Harry!" I said, "come back to our
+rooms."
+
+But though he grasped my hand warmly his other hand still held that of
+the girl, and he did not move. Then nausea overcame me. My head swam,
+and the breach and its defenders faded from sight.
+
+V
+
+Three days later I sat with one arm bandaged in my accustomed seat in
+Van Stopp's lecture room. The place beside me was vacant.
+
+"We hear much," said the Hegelian professor, reading from a notebook
+in his usual dry, hurried tone, "of the influence of the sixteenth
+century upon the nineteenth. No philosopher, as far as I am aware, has
+studied the influence of the nineteenth century upon the sixteenth. If
+cause produces effect, does effect never induce cause? Does the law of
+heredity, unlike all other laws of this universe of mind and matter,
+operate in one direction only? Does the descendant owe everything to
+the ancestor, and the ancestor nothing to the descendant? Does
+destiny, which may seize upon our existence, and for its own purposes
+bear us far into the future, never carry us back into the past?"
+
+I went back to my rooms in the Breede Straat, where my only companion
+was the silent clock.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+EOT
+
+