Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/79

Rh brought from India, and some pictures;— drawings on rice paper; but this of very late years. I have never seen anything in pictures like the place I have described to you."

"How long have you been dreaming of these places?"

"Well, since I was a boy."

"Was your father ever in India, or your mother?"

"My father was, sir; not my mother. But he died there when I was a child. I was born in Europe."

"Hereditary impressions!" cried the Doctor. "That explains all your stories of metempsychosis. The memories of the father descending to the children, perhaps even to the third and fourth generation. You dream of Indian cities you have never seen and probably never will see. Why? Because the delicate and invisible impressions made upon the brain of an English traveler in India, through the mediums of sight and sound, are inherited by his children born in a colder climate who have never seen the Orient, and will nevertheless be forever haunted by visions of the Far East."