The Bright Messenger

l kept provocatively, exasperatingly, out of reach, when, about the midd

mistic idealism to prophesy a New Age, looked about them bewilderingly and in vain for signs of its fair birth. The latter, to whom, perhaps, Dr. Fillery belonged, were more bitterly disappointed, more cruelly shocked, than the former. The race, it seemed to many unshirking eyes, had leaped back centuries at a single spring; the gulf of primal savagery which had gaped wide open for five years,

the facts. His attitude lost something of its original enthusiasm. Looking about him, he saw no big constructive movement; the figure who more than any o

it was now empty again, the staff, carefully chosen and proved by long service, dismissed on holidays,

a week or two, and Dr. Fillery, before resuming his normal work, found himself with

e Insane. I know you are no longer head of the Establishment in Liverpool, but that you confine yourself to private work along similar lines, though upon a smaller scale, and that you welcome only cases that have been given up as hopeless. I honour your courage and your sympathy, I know your skill. So far as a cure is conceivable, this one is hopeless

ith a devotion a child of my own might have expected. But now, my end not far away, I cannot leave him behind me here unc

u will not refuse the care of this strange being whose nature and peculiarities indicate your especial care, and yours alone? Is it too much to wonder if you yours

meaning of the word. What precisely he may be, to what stratum of consciousness he belongs, what kind of being he is, I mean...." The last two lines were then scored through, though

eat open-minded soul-that to human life, a

t painting I made of him some four years ago. I am no artist; for background you must imagine what lay beyond my little skill-the blazing glory of the immense wood-fires that he loves to make upon the open mountain side, usually at dawn after a night of prayer and singing, while waiting

t all the immediate past (in fact to date), and telling him he will

fe, of which, let me add, I am not ignorant. You have known, I believe, my serious, as also my lighter imaginative books; my occas

ities few have ever dreamed of, and that I myself, filled as I am with the memory of their contemplation, can hardly credit even now. Perhaps in an earlier stage of evolution, as Delboeuf believes, man was fully aware of all that went on within himself-a region since closed to us, owing to attention being increasingly

y; there were intervals, evidently, perhaps of hours, perhaps of days, between the paragraphs. Dr. Fillery read, re-read, then read again the strange epistle, coming each time to the same conclusion-the writer was dying in the very act of forming the last se

to Devonham, too, was definite enough. Dr. Fillery remembered vaguely a correspondence during recent crowded years with a man named Mason, living away in Switzerland somewhere, and that Devonham had asked him questions from time to time about what he called, with his rough

books caused him an uncomfortable feeling of neglec

e eminent geologist? Had Devonham not realized who he was? Must he blame his assistant, whose jealous care and

fairy tale, however, lay a curious conviction. Atlantis was of yesterday compared with earlier civilizations, now extinct by fire and flood and general upheaval, which once may have inhabited the globe. The present evolutionary system, buttressed by Darwin and the rest, was but a little recent insignificant series, trivial both in time and space, when set beside the mightier systems that had come and gone. Their evidence he

knowledge, with acutest imaginative insight. His earliest writings were the text-books of the time. His name,

eology was not in his line of work and knowledge; and Mason was a common name. Rather he blamed himself for not having been

" he said to himself with a smile,

ed the case of questionable value. The letters from

peasant, Jura Mountains, Vaud, French Switzerland," and details how to reach this appare

vers in Magic (various, but chiefly concerned with Nature and natural forces, once known, forgotten to-day, of immense po

or to human, though sometimes inferior; long periods of quiescence, followed by immense, almost super-hum

e desire for heat, which, together with free

obia) both water and sol

love means nothing. Has, on the other hand, extraordinarily high ideal of service. Is puzzled by quarrels and differences of personal kind. Half-memories of vast

broke of

face was enigmatical. He was more than surprised that Devonham had not drawn his attention to the case in detail. Placing his hand so as to hide the lower portion of the face, he examined the eyes, then turned the portrait upside down, gazing at the eyes afresh. He seemed lost in

with satisfaction as he noticed the date Devonha

, had interrupted

r notes of his own in th

's mind, communicated thence to his proté

The mother was, obviously, his-Mason's-great love. Yet the father was his life fr

the comment spoke

ent intensely believed (not stated in detail)

lived alone in remote pla

arents' beliefs, dramatizing this by f

to the young mind he has since formed, a plastic mind uninfluenc

f a sex-ins

ote, summarizing eviden

amined further. N.B.-Look up Mason fir

ers to the portrait, smiled a litt

ested him still more. It

itive life again. Entire Western Civilization crumbles. Modern inventions and knowledge vanish. N

he carefully typed dossier, but these were very incomplete, and Devon

al history? Is he not, through the parents, the cause? Mania seems harmless, both to subject and others. No suffering or unhappiness.

emembered details. Devonham's holiday that year, he recalled, was due o

g, seemed to refer to the treatment Mason had aske

ody is irksome and seek to escape it. Teach him natural history-botany, geology, insects, animals, even astronomy, but always giving him reasons

m, thinking over what he had read. Devonham's advice was clever eno

ed the cabinet, and went out into another room, and thence into the hall. Taking his hat and stick, he left the house, already composing in his mind the telegram instructing Devonham, while apologizing for the interrupted

ting patient. Details index und

von