Page:Weird Tales Volume 26 Number 01 (1935-07).djvu/114

 "but I think I might have worked the poison out of my system if I hadn't grieved so at the death of Sir Roger, and especially if I had not been tormented all the time by the fear that I should blurt out the awful word some time or other and exterminate a whole roomful, or a hallful, or a streetful, of innocent victims. The crazy thing rings in my head ail the time and I can't forget it. But I am so near the end now that I think the world is safe from me. And when I die, the danger will be past. The word will die with me"



SMALL lane, the name of which I have forgotten, or do not choose to remember, slants suddenly off from Chatham Street (before that headlong thoroughfare rushes into the Park), and retreats suddenly down towards the East River, as if it were disgusted with the smell of old clothes, and had determined to wash itself clean. This excellent intention it has, however, evidently contributed towards the making of that imaginary pavement mentioned in the old adage; for it is still emphatically a dirty street. It has never been able to shake off the Hebraic taint of filth which it inherits from the ancestral thoroughfare. It is slushy and greasy, as if it were twin brother of the Roman Ghetto.

I like a dirty slum; not because I am naturally unclean—I have not a drop of Neapolitan blood in my veins—but because I generally find a certain sediment of philosophy precipitated in its gutters. A clean street is terribly prosaic. There is no food for thought in carefully swept pavements, barren kennels, and vulgarly spotless houses. But when I go down a street which has been left so long to itself that it has acquired a distinct outward character, I find plenty to think about. The scraps of sodden letters lying in the ash-barrel have their meaning: W.T.—7