Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/371

Rh to look around and seek for a stable and satisfactory means of livelihood.

Out of those indescribably trying and soul-searching days, when the whole weight of the Tsar's machine seemed bent upon crushing the life out of me, two glaringly significant and incongruous facts burned themselves into my memory and my soul. The first was that, try as all the previously proud strength of my mind and body could, I had not been able "to endure" and to respond to that voice of my mother which floated in to me, as I sat in hunger and despair on the park bench. The second was that Chance should have taken the credit of accomplishing that which all my physical, mental and spiritual effort could not effect, and that two men, of whose existence I did not previously even know, and a handful of pink cotton should have proved themselves able to change the whole course of my life.

It seemed as though some Power, not within myself and greater far, were seeking to give me a final lesson of sympathy and understanding for the other atoms of Human Dust to whom Chance had not come with a ball of pink cotton and who were not one whit weaker than I had proved myself to be.

Often afterwards, when working in the laboratory or at my desk, I thought that the most thrilling and trying experiences of life were already behind me.

I did not dream then that I should one day come face to face with beasts, men and gods, who were to embody all the extreme and incredible passions and powers of the mundane universe; that I should again have to wander through the marshes and meshes of Oriental lands and strange events. I had no thought that it would be ordained that I should be immersed and swept on in the wildest maelstrom of modern madness and perverted