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Y God! My God! At last, then, I am to commit to paper that which happened me. But can I do it? Shall I dare do it? It is all so strange, so inexplicable, so incomprehensible, so maddening!

Were I not assured of what my eyes beheld; were I not certain that there was nothing defective in my reasoning, that there was no error in my observation, no link missing in the chain of rigorous verification, I should set myself down as a mere bedlamite, the sport of a fantastic vision. After all, who can tell?

I am to-day the inmate of an asylum for lunatics, but I took up my abode there voluntarily, from caution, from fear! Only one living soul is acquainted with my story. The physician here. I am going to write it down. Why? I do not clearly know. To rid myself of it, for I feel it within me like an intolerable nightmare."

It is this:

I have always been a recluse, a dreamer, a sort of lonely, kindly disposed philosopher, content with little, without bitterness toward man and without hate