Before Adam

for they were pictures the like of which I had never seen in real wake-a-day life. They tormented my childhood, making of my dream

l the men who walk the earth with me ever suffer fear of like kind and degree. For my fear is the fear of long ago, the fear that was rampant i

e could you know of the meaning of the things I know so well. As I write this, all the beings and happenings of that

ce, likewise, the doings of the Fire People and the Tree People, and the gibbering councils of the horde. For you know not the peace of the cool caves in the cliffs, the

ent. From my earliest recollection my sleep was a period of terror. Rarely were my dreams tinctured with happiness. As a rule, they were stuffed with fear-and with a fear so strange and alien t

tter, did any of my human kind ever break through the wall of my sleep. I, who had seen trees only in parks and illustrated books, wandered in my sleep through interminable forests. And further,

ess that I had seen that same kind of tree many and countless times in my sleep. So I was not surprised, still later on in my life, to recognize instantly, the firs

binations of the things he has seen in his waking life. But all my dreams violated this law. In my dreams I never saw ANYTHING of which I had knowledge in my w

at knowledge was mine, in my dreams I picked nuts from trees, or gathered them and ate them from the ground un

my mind memories of dreams wherein I had wandered through swampy land eating my fill of them. My mother set before me a dish of the berries. I filled my spoon,

ches of rock; or pursued me into the tree-tops, encircling the trunks with their great shining bodies, driving me higher and higher or farther and farther out on swaying and crackling branches, the ground a dizzy distance beneat

ine, enemies rather, that

t the least sound, frightened of my own shadow, keyed-up, ever alert and vigilant, ready on the instant to dash away in mad flight for my life. F

hoarse roaring shook the air. I tore my hand loose from my father's and dashed wildly back through the entrance. I collided with people, fell down; and all the time I

grass before the swift rush of the tawny one, his leap to the bull's back, the crashing and the bellowing, and the crunch crunch of bones; or again, the cool quiet of the water-hole, the wild horse up to his knees and drinking softly, and then the tawny one-always the tawny one!-the leap, the screaming and the splashing of the horse, and

down, screaming an incoherent mockery and making antic faces. He responded, rushing against the bars and roaring back a

her. I never told them, and they never knew. Already had I developed reticence concerning this

hat night. I was taken home, nervous and overwrought, sick wit

s old. From my dreams I reconstructed for him pictures of that vanished world in which I do believe I once lived. I told him of the terro

eeble fancy. I told him more, and he laughed the harder. I swore in all earnestness that these things were so, and he began t

the telling of which would cause only misunderstanding. When the stories of ghosts and goblins went around, I kept quiet. I smiled grimly to m

flight; the wild dogs that hunted me across the open spaces to the timber-these were terrors concrete and actual, happenings and not imaginings, things of the living flesh and of sweat and blood. O