No More Learning

"

"Yes I do--except when I look at this stuff. Ugh! "

"Read me what you've done," I said. He read, and it was wondrous bad
and he paused at all the specially turgid sentences, expecting a little
approval; for he was proud of those sentences, as I knew he would be.

"It needs compression," I suggested, cautiously.

"I hate cutting my things down. I don't think you could alter a word
here without spoiling the sense. It reads better aloud than when I was
writing it. "

"Charlie, you're suffering from an alarming disease afflicting a
numerous class. Put the thing by, and tackle it again in a week. "

"I want to do it at once. What do you think of it? "

"How can I judge from a half-written tale? Tell me the story as it lies
in your head. "

Charlie told, and in the telling there was everything that his ignorance
had so carefully prevented from escaping into the written word. I looked
at him, and wondering whether it were possible, that he did not know the
originality, the power of the notion that had come in his way? It was
distinctly a Notion among notions. Men had been puffed up with pride by
notions not a tithe as excellent and practicable. But Charlie babbled
on serenely, interrupting the current of pure fancy with samples of
horrible sentences that he purposed to use. I heard him out to the end.
It would be folly to allow his idea to remain in his own inept hands,
when I could do so much with it. Not all that could be done indeed; but,
oh so much!

"What do you think? " he said, at last. "I fancy I shall call it 'The
Story of a Ship. '"

"I think the idea's pretty good; but you won't Be able to handle it for
ever so long. Now I--"

"Would it be of any use to you? Would you care to take it? I should be
proud," said Charlie, promptly.

There are few things sweeter in this world than the guileless,
hot-headed, intemperate, open admiration of a junior. Even a woman in
her blindest devotion does not fall into the gait of the man she adores,
tilt her bonnet to the angle at which he wears his hat, or interlard her
speech with his pet oaths. And Charlie did all these things. Still
it was necessary to salve my conscience before I possessed myself of
Charlie's thoughts.

"Let's make a bargain. I'll give you a fiver for the notion," I said.

Charlie became a bank-clerk at once.

"Oh, that's impossible. Between two pals, you know, if I may call you
so, and speaking as a man of the world, I couldn't. Take the notion if
it's any use to you. I've heaps more. "

He had--none knew this better than I--but they were the notions of other
men.

"Look at it as a matter of business--between men of the world," I
returned. "Five pounds will buy you any number of poetry-books. Business
is business, and you may be sure I shouldn't give that price unless--"

"Oh, if you put it that way," said Charlie, visibly moved by the thought
of the books. The bargain was clinched with an agreement that he should
at unstated intervals come to me with all the notions that he possessed,
should have a table of his own to write at, and unquestioned right to
inflict upon me all his poems and fragments of poems. Then I said, "Now
tell me how you came by this idea. "

"It came by itself. " Charlie's eyes opened a little.

"Yes, but you told me a great deal about the hero that you must have
read before somewhere. "

"I haven't any time for reading, except when you let me sit here, and
on Sundays I'm on my bicycle or down the river all day. There's nothing
wrong about the hero, is there? "

"Tell me again and I shall understand clearly. You say that your hero
went pirating. How did he live? "

"He was on the lower deck of this ship-thing that I was telling you
about. "

"What sort of ship? "

"It was the kind rowed with oars, and the sea spurts through the
oar-holes and the men row sitting up to their knees in water. Then
there's a bench running down between the two lines of oars and an
overseer with a whip walks up and down the bench to make the men work. "

"How do you know that? "

"It's in the table. There's a rope running overhead, looped to the upper
deck, for the overseer to catch hold of when the ship rolls. When the
overseer misses the rope once and falls among the rowers, remember the
hero laughs at him and gets licked for it. He's chained to his oar of
course--the hero. "

"How is he chained? "

"With an iron band round his waist fixed to the bench he sits on, and a
sort of handcuff on his left wrist chaining him to the oar. He's on the
lower deck where the worst men are sent, and the only light comes from
the hatchways and through the oar-holes. Can't you imagine the sunlight
just squeezing through between the handle and the hole and wobbling
about as the ship moves? "

"I can, but I can't imagine your imagining it. "

"How could it be any other way? Now you listen to me. The long oars on
the upper deck are managed by four men to each bench, the lower ones
by three, and the lowest of all by two. Remember it's quite dark on the
lowest deck and all the men there go mad. When a man dies at his oar
on that deck he isn't thrown overboard, but cut up in his chains and
stuffed through the oar-hole in little pieces. "

"Why? " I demanded, amazed, not so much at the information as the tone of
command in which it was flung out.

"To save trouble and to frighten the others. It needs two overseers to
drag a man's body up to the top deck; and if the men at the lower deck
oars were left alone, of course they'd stop rowing and try to pull up
the benches by all standing up together in their chains. "

"You've a most provident imagination. Where have you been reading about
galleys and galley-slaves? "

"Nowhere that I remember. I row a little when I get the chance. But,
perhaps, if you say so, I may have read something. "

He went away shortly afterward to deal with booksellers, and I wondered
how a bank clerk aged twenty could put into my hands with a profligate
abundance of detail, all given with absolute assurance, the story of
extravagant and bloodthirsty adventure, riot, piracy, and death in
unnamed seas. He had led his hero a desperate dance through revolt
against the overseas, to command of a ship of his own, and ultimate
establishment of a kingdom on an island "somewhere in the sea, you
know"; and, delighted with my paltry five pounds, had gone out to buy
the notions of other men, that these might teach him how to write. I
had the consolation of knowing that this notion was mine by right of
purchase, and I thought that I could make something of it.

When next he came to me he was drunk--royally drunk on many poets for
the first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his words
tumbled over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations. Most of
all was he drunk with Longfellow.

"Isn't it splendid? Isn't it superb? " he cried, after hasty greetings.

"Listen to this--

"'Wouldst thou,' so the helmsman answered, 'Know the secret of the sea?
Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery. '

"By gum!

"'Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery. '" he repeated
twenty times, walking up and down the room and forgetting me. "But I can
understand it too," he said to himself. "I don't know how to thank you
for that fiver. And this; listen--

"'I remember the black wharves and the ships And the sea-tides tossing
free, And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and
mystery of the ships, And the magic of the sea. '

"I haven't braved any dangers, but I feel as if I knew all about it. "

"You certainly seem to have a grip of the sea. Have you ever seen it? "

"When I was a little chap I went to Brighton once; we used to live in
Coventry, though, before we came to London. I never saw it.

"'When descends on the Atlantic The gigantic Storm-wind of the
Equinox. '"

He shook me by the shoulder to make me understand the passion that was
shaking himself.

"When that storm comes," he continued, "I think that all the oars in
the ship that I was talking about get broken, and the rowers have their
chests smashed in by the bucking oar-heads. By the way, have you done
anything with that notion of mine yet? "

"No. I was waiting to hear more of it from you. Tell me how in the world
you're so certain about the fittings of the ship. You know nothing of
ships. "

"I don't know. It's as real as anything to me until I try to write it
down. I was thinking about it only last night in bed, after you had
loaned me 'Treasure Island'; and I made up a whole lot of new things to
go into the story. "

"What sort of things? "

"About the food the men ate; rotten figs and black beans and wine in a
skin bag, passed from bench to bench. "

"Was the ship built so long ago as that? "

"As what? I don't know whether it was long ago or not. It's only a
notion, but sometimes it seems just as real as if it was true. Do I
bother you with talking about it? "

"Not in the least. Did you make up anything else? "

"Yes, but it's nonsense. " Charlie flushed a little.

"Never mind; let's hear about it. "

"Well, I was thinking over the story, and after awhile I got out of bed
and wrote down on a piece of paper the sort of stuff the men might be
supposed to scratch on their oars with the edges of their handcuffs. It
seemed to make the thing more lifelike. It is so real to me, y'know. "

"Have you the paper on you? "

"Ye-es, but what's the use of showing it? It's only a lot of scratches.
All the same, we might have 'em reproduced in the book on the front
page. "

"I'll attend to those details. Show me what your men wrote. "

He pulled out of his pocket a sheet of note-paper, with a single line of
scratches upon it, and I put this carefully away.

"What is it supposed to mean in English? " I said.

"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps it means 'I'm beastly tired. ' It's great
nonsense," he repeated, "but all those men in the ship seem as real
people to me. Do do something to the notion soon; I should like to see
it written and printed. "

"But all you've told me would make a long book. "

"Make it then. You've only to sit down and write it out. "

"Give me a little time. Have you any more notions? "

"Not just now. I'm reading all the books I've bought. They're splendid. "

When he had left I looked at the sheet of note-paper with the
inscription upon it. Then I took my head tenderly between both hands, to
make certain that it was not coming off or turning round.

Then--but there seemed to be no interval between quitting my rooms and
finding myself arguing with a policeman outside a door marked Private
in a corridor of the British Museum. All I demanded, as politely as
possible, was "the Greek antiquity man. " The policeman knew nothing
except the rules of the Museum, and it became necessary to forage
through all the houses and offices inside the gates. An elderly
gentleman called away from his lunch put an end to my search by holding
the note-paper between finger and thumb and sniffing at it scornfully.

"What does this mean? H'mm," said he. "So far as I can ascertain it is
an attempt to write extremely corrupt Greek on the part"--here he glared
at me with intention--"of an extremely illiterate--ah--person. " He read
slowly from the paper, "Pollock, Erckman, Tauchnitz, Henniker"--four
names familiar to me.

"Can you tell me what the corruption is supposed to mean--the gist of
the thing? " I asked.

"'I have been--many times--overcome with weariness in this particular
employment. That is the meaning. '" He returned me the paper, and I fled
without a word of thanks, explanation, or apology.

I might have been excused for forgetting much. To me of all men had been
given the chance to write the most marvelous tale in the world, nothing
less than the story of a Greek galley-slave, as told by himself. Small
wonder that his dreaming had seemed real to Charlie. The Fates that are
so careful to shut the doors of each successive life behind us had, in
this case, been neglectful, and Charlie was looking, though that he did
not know, where never man had been permitted to look with full knowledge
since Time began. Above all he was absolutely ignorant of the knowledge
sold to me for five pounds; and he would retain that ignorance, for
bank-clerks do not understand metempsychosis, and a sound commercial
education does not include Greek. He would supply me--here I capered
among the dumb gods of Egypt and laughed in their battered faces--with
material to make my tale sure--so sure that the world would hail it as
an impudent and vamped fiction. And I--I alone would know that it was
absolutely and literally true. I alone held this jewel to my hand for
the cutting and polishing.

Therefore I danced again among the gods till a policeman saw me and took
steps in my direction.

It remained now only to encourage Charlie to talk, and here there was no
difficulty. But I had forgotten those accursed books of poetry. He came
to me time after time, as useless as a surcharged phonograph--drunk on
Byron, Shelley, or Keats. Knowing now what the boy had been in his past
lives, and desperately anxious not to lose one word of his babble, I
could not hide from him my respect and interest. He misconstrued both
into respect for the present soul of Charlie Mears, to whom life was as
new as it was to Adam, and interest in his readings; and stretched my
patience to breaking point by reciting poetry--not his own now, but
that of others. I wished every English poet blotted out of the memory of
mankind. I blasphemed the mightiest names of song because they had drawn
Charlie from the path of direct narrative, and would, later, spur him to
imitate them; but I choked down my impatience until the first flood of
enthusiasm should have spent itself and the boy returned to his dreams.

"What's the use of my telling you what I think, when these chaps wrote
things for the angels to read? " he growled, one evening. "Why don't you
write something like theirs? "

"I don't think you're treating me quite fairly," I said, speaking under
strong restraint.

"I've given you the story," he said, shortly replunging into "Lara. "

"But I want the details. "

"The things I make up about that damned ship that you call a galley?
They're quite easy. You can just make 'em up yourself. Turn up the gas a
little, I want to go on reading. "

I could have broken the gas globe over his head for his amazing
stupidity. I could indeed make up things for myself did I only know what
Charlie did not know that he knew. But since the doors were shut behind
me I could only wait his youthful pleasure and strive to keep him
in good temper. One minute's want of guard might spoil a priceless
revelation: now and again he would toss his books aside--he kept them
in my rooms, for his mother would have been shocked at the waste of
good money had she seen them--and launched into his sea dreams. Again I
cursed all the poets of England. The plastic mind of the bank-clerk had
been overlaid, colored and distorted by that which he had read, and the
result as delivered was a confused tangle of other voices most like the
muttered song through a City telephone in the busiest part of the day.

He talked of the galley--his own galley had he but known it--with
illustrations borrowed from the "Bride of Abydos. " He pointed the
experiences of his hero with quotations from "The Corsair," and threw
in deep and desperate moral reflections from "Cain" and "Manfred,"
expecting me to use them all.
Only when the talk turned on Longfellow
were the jarring cross-currents dumb, and I knew that Charlie was
speaking the truth as he remembered it.

"What do you think of this? " I said one evening, as soon as I understood
the medium in which his memory worked best, and, before he could
expostulate read him the whole of "The Saga of King Olaf! "

He listened open-mouthed, flushed his hands drumming on the back of the
sofa where he lay, till I came to the Songs of Emar Tamberskelver and
the verse:

"Emar then, the arrow taking From the loosened string, Answered: 'That
was Norway breaking 'Neath thy hand, O King. '"

He gasped with pure delight of sound.

"That's better than Byron, a little," I ventured.

"Better? Why it's true! How could he have known? "

I went back and repeated:

"'What was that? ' said Olaf, standing
On the quarter-deck,
'Something heard I like the stranding
Of a shattered wreck. '"

"How could he have known how the ships crash and the oars rip out and go
z-zzp all along the line? Why only the other night--But go back please
and read 'The Skerry of Shrieks' again. "

"No, I'm tired. Let's talk. What happened the other night? "

"I had an awful nightmare about that galley of ours. I dreamed I was
drowned in a fight. You see we ran alongside another ship in harbor. The
water was dead still except where our oars whipped it up. You know where
I always sit in the galley? " He spoke haltingly at first, under a fine
English fear of being laughed at.

"No. That's news to me," I answered, meekly, my heart beginning to beat.

"On the fourth oar from the bow on the right side on the upper deck.
There were four of us at the oar, all chained. I remember watching the
water and trying to get my handcuffs off before the row began. Then we
closed up on the other ship, and all their fighting men jumped over our
bulwarks, and my bench broke and I was pinned down with the three other
fellows on top of me, and the big oar jammed across our backs. "

"Well? " Charlie's eyes were alive and alight. He was looking at the wall
behind my chair.

"I don't know how we fought. The men were trampling all over my back,
and I lay low. Then our rowers on the left side--tied to their oars, you
know--began to yell and back water. I could hear the water sizzle, and
we spun round like a cockchafer and I knew, lying where I was, that
there was a galley coming up bow-on, to ram us on the left side. I could
just lift up my head and see her sail over the bulwarks. We wanted to
meet her bow to bow, but it was too late. We could only turn a little
bit because the galley on our right had hooked herself on to us and
stopped our moving. Then, by gum! there was a crash! Our left oars began
to break as the other galley, the moving one y'know, stuck her nose into
them. Then the lower-deck oars shot up through the deck-planking, butt
first, and one of them jumped clean up into the air and came down again
close to my head. "

"How was that managed? "

"The moving galley's bow was plunking them back through their own
oarholes, and I could hear the devil of a shindy in the decks below.
Then her nose caught us nearly in the middle, and we tilted sideways,
and the fellows in the right-hand galley unhitched their hooks and
ropes, and threw things on to our upper deck--arrows, and hot pitch or
something that stung, and we went up and up and up on the left side,
and the right side dipped, and I twisted my head round and saw the water
stand still as it topped the right bulwarks, and then it curled over and
crashed down on the whole lot of us on the right side, and I felt it hit
my back, and I woke. "

"One minute, Charlie. When the sea topped the bulwarks, what did it look
like? " I had my reasons for asking. A man of my acquaintance had
once gone down with a leaking ship in a still sea, and had seen the
water-level pause for an instant ere it fell on the deck.

"It looked just like a banjo-string drawn tight, and it seemed to stay
there for years," said Charlie.

Exactly! The other man had said: "It looked like a silver wire laid down
along the bulwarks, and I thought it was never going to break. " He had
paid everything except the bare life for this little valueless piece of
knowledge, and I had traveled ten thousand weary miles to meet him
and take his knowledge at second hand. But Charlie, the bank-clerk, on
twenty-five shillings a week, he who had never been out of sight of a
London omnibus, knew it all. It was no consolation to me that once in
his lives he had been forced to die for his gains. I also must have died
scores of times, but behind me, because I could have used my knowledge,
the doors were shut.

"And then? " I said, trying to put away the devil of envy.

"The funny thing was, though, in all the mess I didn't feel a bit
astonished or frightened. It seemed as if I'd been in a good many
fights, because I told my next man so when the row began. But that cad
of an overseer on my deck wouldn't unloose our chains and give us a
chance. He always said that we'd all Be set free after a battle, but we
never were; We never were. " Charlie shook his head mournfully.

"What a scoundrel! "

"I should say he was. He never gave us enough to eat, and sometimes
we were so thirsty that we used to drink salt-water. I can taste that
salt-water still. ''

"Now tell me something about the harbor where the fight was fought. "

"I didn't dream about that. I know it was a harbor, though; because we
were tied up to a ring on a white wall and all the face of the stone
under water was covered with wood to prevent our ram getting chipped
when the tide made us rock. "

"That's curious. Our hero commanded the galley? Didn't he? "

"Didn't he just! He stood by the bows and shouted like a good 'un. He
was the man who killed the overseer. "

"But you were all drowned together, Charlie, weren't you? "

"I can't make that fit quite," he said with a puzzled look. "The galley
must have gone down with all hands and yet I fancy that the hero went on
living afterward. Perhaps he climbed into the attacking ship. I wouldn't
see that, of course. I was dead, you know. "

He shivered slightly and protested that he could remember no more.

I did not press him further, but to satisfy myself that he lay in
ignorance of the workings of his own mind, deliberately introduced him
to Mortimer Collins's "Transmigration," and gave him a sketch of the
plot before he opened the pages.

"What rot it all is! " he said, frankly, at the end of an hour. "I don't
understand his nonsense about the Red Planet Mars and the King, and the
rest of it. Chuck me the Longfellow again. "

I handed him the book and wrote out as much as I could remember of his
description of the sea-fight, appealing to him from time to time for
confirmation of fact or detail. He would answer without raising his eyes
from the book, as assuredly as though all his knowledge lay before flint
on the printed page. I spoke under the normal key of my voice that the
current might not be broken, and I know that he was not aware of what he
was saying, for his thoughts were out on the sea with Longfellow.

"Charlie," I asked, "when the rowers on the galleys mutinied how did
they kill their overseers? "

"Tore up the benches and brained 'em. That happened when a heavy sea was
running. An overseer on the lower deck slipped from the centre plank and
fell among the rowers. They choked him to death against the side of the
ship with their chained hands quite quietly, and it was too dark for the
other overseer to see what had happened. When he asked, he was pulled
down too and choked, and the lower deck fought their way up deck by
deck, with the pieces of the broken benches banging behind 'em. How they
howled! "

"And what happened after that? "

"I don't know. The hero went away--red hair and red beard and all. That
was after he had captured our galley, I think. "

The sound of my voice irritated him, and he motioned slightly with his
left hand as a man does when interruption jars.

"You never told me he was redheaded before, or that he captured your
galley," I said, after a discreet interval.

Charlie did not raise his eyes.

"He was as red as a red bear," said he, abstractedly. "He came from the
north; they said so in the galley when he looked for rowers--not slaves,
but free men. Afterward--years and years afterward--news came from
another ship, or else he came back"--His lips moved in silence. He was
rapturously retasting some poem before him.

"Where had he been, then? " I was almost whispering that the sentence
might come gentle to whichever section of Charlie's brain was working on
my behalf.

"To the Beaches--the Long and Wonderful Beaches! " was the reply, after a
minute of silence.

"To Furdurstrandi? " I asked, tingling from head to foot.

"Yes, to Furdurstrandi," he pronounced the word in a new fashion "And I
too saw"--The voice failed.

"Do you know what you have said? " I shouted, incautiously.

He lifted his eyes, fully roused now. "No! " he snapped. "I wish you'd
let a chap go on reading. Hark to this:

"'But Othere, the old sea captain, He neither paused nor stirred Till
the king listened, and then

Once more took up his pen
And wrote down every word.

"'And to the King of the Saxons
In witness of the truth,
Raising his noble head,
He stretched his brown hand and said,
"Behold this walrus tooth. "

"By Jove, what chaps those must have been, to go sailing all over the
shop never knowing where they'd fetch the land! Hah! "

"Charlie," I pleaded, "if you'll only be sensible for a minute or two
I'll make our hero in our tale every inch as good as Othere. "

"Umph! Longfellow wrote that poem. I don't care about writing things
any more. I want to read. " He was thoroughly out of tune now, and raging
over my own ill-luck, I left him.

Conceive yourself at the door of the world's treasure-house guarded by a
child--an idle irresponsible child playing knuckle-bones--on whose favor
depends the gift of the key, and you will imagine one-half my torment.
Till that evening Charlie had spoken nothing that might not lie within
the experiences of a Greek galley-slave. But now, or there was no virtue
in books, he had talked of some desperate adventure of the Vikings, of
Thorfin Karlsefne's sailing to Wineland, which is America, in the ninth
or tenth century. The battle in the harbor he had seen; and his own
death he had described. But this was a much more startling plunge into
the past. Was it possible that he had skipped half a dozen lives and was
then dimly remembering some episode of a thousand years later? It was
a maddening jumble, and the worst of it was that Charlie Mears in his
normal condition was the last person in the world to clear it up. I
could only wait and watch, but I went to bed that night full of the
wildest imaginings. There was nothing that was not possible if Charlie's
detestable memory only held good.

I might rewrite the Saga of Thorfin Karlsefne as it had never been
written before, might tell the story of the first discovery of America,
myself the discoverer. But I was entirely at Charlie's mercy, and so
long as there was a three-and-six-penny Bohn volume within his reach
Charlie would not tell. I dared not curse him openly; I hardly dared jog
his memory, for I was dealing with the experiences of a thousand years
ago, told through the mouth of a boy of today; and a boy of today is
affected by every change of tone and gust of opinion, so that he lies
even when he desires to speak the truth.

I saw no more of him for nearly a week. When next I met him it was in
Gracechurch Street with a billbook chained to his waist.

Business took him over London Bridge and I accompanied him. He was very
full of the importance of that book and magnified it.

As we passed over the Thames we paused to look at a steamer unloading
great slabs of white and brown marble. A barge drifted under the
steamer's stern and a lonely cow in that barge bellowed.

Charlie's face changed from the face of the bank-clerk to that of an
unknown and--though he would not have believed this--a much shrewder
man. He flung out his arm across the parapet of the bridge, and laughing
very loudly, said: "When they heard our bulls bellow the Skroelings ran
away! "

I waited only for an instant, but the barge and the cow had disappeared
under the bows of the steamer before I answered.

"Charlie, what do you suppose are Skroelings? "

"Never heard of 'em before. They sound like a new kind of seagull. What
a chap you are for asking questions! " he replied. "I have to go to the
cashier of the Omnibus Company yonder. Will you wait for me and we can
lunch somewhere together? I've a notion for a poem. "

"No, thanks. I'm off. You're sure you know nothing about Skroelings? "

"Not unless he's been entered for the Liverpool Handicap. " He nodded and
disappeared in the crowd.

Now it is written in the Saga of Eric the Red or that of Thorfin
Karlsefne, that nine hundred years ago when Karlsefne's galleys came
to Leif's booths, which Leif had erected in the unknown land
called Markland, which may or may not have been Rhode Island, the
Skroelings--and the Lord He knows who these may or may not have
been--came to trade with the Vikings, and ran away because they were
frightened at the bellowing of the cattle which Thorfin had brought with
him in the ships. But what in the world could a Greek slave know of that
affair? I wandered up and down among the streets trying to unravel the
mystery, and the more I considered it, the more baffling it grew. One
thing only seemed certain and that certainty took away my breath for the
moment. If I came to full knowledge of anything at all, it would not be
one life of the soul in Charlie Mears's body, but half a dozen--half a
dozen several and separate existences spent on blue water in the morning
of the world!

Then I walked round the situation.

Obviously if I used my knowledge I should stand alone and unapproachable
until all men were as wise as myself. That would be something, but
manlike I was ungrateful. It seemed bitterly unfair that Charlie's
memory should fail me when I needed it most.

Great Powers above--I looked up at them through the fog smoke--did the
Lords of Life and Death know what this meant to me? Nothing less than
eternal fame of the best kind; that comes from One, and is shared by one
alone. I would be content--remembering Clive, I stood astounded at my
own moderation,--with the mere right to tell one story, to work out one
little contribution to the light literature of the day. If Charlie were
permitted full recollection for one hour--for sixty short minutes--of
existences that had extended over a thousand years--I would forego all
profit and honor from all that I should make of his speech. I would take
no share in the commotion that would follow throughout the particular
corner of the earth that calls itself "the world. " The thing should be
put forth anonymously. Nay, I would make other men believe that they had
written it. They would hire bull-hided self-advertising Englishmen to
bellow it abroad. Preachers would found a fresh conduct of life upon it,
swearing that it was new and that they had lifted the fear of death from
all mankind. Every Orientalist in Europe would patronize it discursively
with Sanskrit and Pali texts. Terrible women would invent unclean
variants of the men's belief for the elevation of their sisters.
Churches and religions would war over it. Between the hailing and
re-starting of an omnibus I foresaw the scuffles that would arise among
half a dozen denominations all professing "the doctrine of the True
Metempsychosis as applied to the world and the New Era"; and saw, too,
the respectable English newspapers shying, like frightened kine,
over the beautiful simplicity of the tale. The mind leaped forward a
hundred--two hundred--a thousand years. I saw with sorrow that men would
mutilate and garble the story; that rival creeds would turn it upside
down till, at last, the western world which clings to the dread of death
more closely than the hope of life, would set it aside as an interesting
superstition and stampede after some faith so long forgotten that it
seemed altogether new. Upon this I changed the terms of the bargain that
I would make with the Lords of Life and Death. Only let me know, let me
write, the story with sure knowledge that I wrote the truth, and I would
burn the manuscript as a solemn sacrifice. Five minutes after the last
line was written I would destroy it all. But I must be allowed to write
it with absolute certainty.

There was no answer. The flaming colors of an Aquarium poster caught my
eye and I wondered whether it would be wise or prudent to lure Charlie
into the hands of the professional mesmerist, and whether, if he were
under his power, he would speak of his past lives. If he did, and if
people believed him--but Charlie would be frightened and flustered, or
made conceited by the interviews. In either case he would begin to lie,
through fear or vanity. He was safest in my own hands.

"They are very funny fools, your English," said a voice at my elbow, and
turning round I recognized a casual acquaintance, a young Bengali law
student, called Grish Chunder, whose father had sent him to England to
become civilized. The old man was a retired native official, and on an
income of five pounds a month contrived to allow his son two hundred
pounds a year, and the run of his teeth in a city where he could pretend
to be the cadet of a royal house, and tell stories of the brutal Indian
bureaucrats who ground the faces of the poor.