The Bright Messenger

ture. At the age of thirty-eight he still remained a spectator, a searching, critical, analytical, yet chiefly, perhaps, a sy

ose fierce illicit passion had deprived him of an honourable seat. The first shock of resentment over, he had fa

nate gift of seeing things as they were, undisturbed by personal emotion, while yet asking himself with scientific accuracy why and how they came to be so. These were invaluable qualities in the line of knowledge and research he chose for himself as psychologist and doctor. The terms are

etian peasant girl, daughter of a shepherd in these lonely and majestic mountains, whose intolerable grandeur may well intoxicate a man to madness. A dangerous and disgraceful episode it seems to have been between J

ons, contributed to the birth of Edward, who first saw the light in a secret chamber of a dirty Tiflis house, above the Koura torrent. That same night, when the sun d

ote wilderness of amazing loveliness, lent him, perhaps, a strain of illicit, almost unearthly yearning, a secret nostalgia

episode he had given of his very best; he remained true to his gorgeous memory and his sin; the cream of his life, its essence and its perfume, had been spent in those wild wind-swept azalea valleys beyond Artvine. The azalea honey was in h

ly, reading and studying on his own account, possessed at the same time by a vehement love of nature and outdoor life that was far more than the average English boy's inclination to open air a

ead or heard; its origin in the child's mind remained a mystery. But its characteristics were unusual, even for such fanciful imaginings: too full-fledged to have been created gradually by the boy's loneliness, it seemed half goblin a

ll as death. Then: "Plop! So there you are!" as though it had dropped through empty space and landed at his feet. "It came from a tremenjus height," the child explained. "The wind's up there,

and then became very busy with his friend in the grate and about the hearth, just as though he helped and superintended what was being invisibly accomplished. "It's burning better,

likes it. It's his work really, don't

is it? I see, yes. But my t

ged five, addressing his tiny friend among

le to keep alive. It had been dying slowly for some days, when Edward announced that he saw its "inside" flitting about t

ld are we to do about

stion of the empty air and listening for the answer. "Of course. Now I see. Look, father,

e d'you see it? I-d

flower will live." The child put out a hand as though

like?" asked his

h he caught it and popped it back into the red drooping blossoms. "There you are! Now you're alive a

xt day, when, to his surprise, he found the geranium blooming

e fire," the child replied. "It's heat. Witho

grow?" he asked sudd

what makes

hasis. "Who builds the bodi

cture, you me

being asked for information, but was being cross-exam

hat means naturally, under th

ho keeps them w

a mental gulp, re

elephant's?" persisted the child undeceived by th

ed his list to include sea-anemones, frost-patterns, fire, wind,

intense conviction, clapping his ha

en you know more th

his playmate, but so naturally and convincingly that a chill ran down his father's spine as he watched-"is fire, isn't it?

ed out all night to see the sunrise, made fires even when fires were not exactly needed, and hunted with Red Indians and with what he called "Windy-Fire people" everywhere. He was never in the house. He ran wild. Great open spaces, tre

, his father watched the growth of this fiercer strain that mere cove

d, isn't it?" he asked once tentati

people, you m

don't you? And the is

not quite understand what his indulgent

nd see things and peopl

thought, the latter noticing. Th

the same, aren't

rences-yes, we a

le his father was thinking of this reply, and of what he shou

orld? No others of any sort-bigger, for instance, or-more wild and wonderful?" Then he added, a th

space and time for him, imagination, rich and pagan, ran, he well knew, to vast and mighty beings, superior to human

that we know of. W

red-sometimes. But, as you say, we'v

his father. "Poetic le

indicated plainly what his career should be. The Public Schools could help him little; he went to Edinburgh to study medicine; he passed