Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/340

 of the artist's power of seeing into the future. In my dreams a voice whispered to me that he alone could ensure my safety. And to my importunity he yielded. He yielded to that importunity which when I have felt called upon to exert it, no man has ever been able to resist.

"What a sanctuary did this prison with its indescribable gloom offer to me! All the days of my life had been cast with drunkards, madmen, thieves, panders, and prostitutes. They had rendered the very breath of heaven unclean. From one slum to another slum, from one gutter to another gutter had my steps been traced. Will it astonish you that what after all was a powerful nature had founded its grand passion upon an irreconcilable hatred of its kind? Yet I was brought into prison, and for the first time I tasted the breath of the living God.

"It was the horror of my doom, I think, giving to a life that had never had any finite knowledge the certainty of the surgeon's knife, which had the power to touch me for the first time with the instinct of beauty. I am sure I know not whether such was the case; but a pall was lifted from my brain, a stealthy drug seemed to evaporate out of my pores. There were times when I lay behind the bars of this prison in which I could have cried aloud for gladness. The open sores in my nature began to heal. All those dark mysteries, that had pressed me down like a curse, were spread out before me luminous with meaning at those hours when the dawn stole into my cell. Ere long I would lie awake all night to watch for its appearance, for I knew that every time it came