Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 05.djvu/118

638 mind, though. Too—I'd like a yarn of the 'iron and heroic North'—tales of Vikings and die Walkure—tall blond men and tall fair women. Gimme—and will I love it!"

Misti Selkirk writes from La Oroya, Peru: "Imagine a splendid banquet, the tables loaded down with a countless variety of the most delicious viands, meats and pottages in endless array, fruits and cakes and sweets in profusion, what a feast for the eye! But imagine those steaming roasts, those heaping platters, without one grain of salt, those cakes, those jellies, those alluring desserts, entirely devoid of sugar, without one so small drop of flavoring essence, those green mountains of salad deprived of the last tiny drop of life-giving vinegar; certainly filling, nourishing beyond doubt, but lacking that piquant something beyond mere food that gives us the feeling of having truly dined. The feast without flavor was the August issue of our Magazine without the illustrations which have come to be so much a part of our monthly expectation. May I be one of the thousands who will petition for the printing of those truant illustrations, better late than never, in another issue? The tales in the August number were, as always, beyond comparison in their class. We do not censure the rice and duck from which is made our arroz con pato simply because the cook neglected that dash of aji which adds so much to our delight in the feast. Though slightly less than 'tops,' our meal was still miles above, over, and beyond the frijoles, yuca, y papas of our everyday diet. In his Wolf-Girl of Josselin, Arlton Eadie quotes his character as saying, 'and in addition we find variants of the legend (that of the werewolf) in Asia, India, Africa, and South America.' Perhaps Mr. Eadie may have known, as have I not long since, that strange alloy of incredulity and of horror that comes of seeing two crouching human figures slinking, under the leprous light of the rising moon, down into the ghostly white confines of a rocky defile, from which, seconds later, gallop two Things, four-footed, hairy and silent. But, indeed, had Mr. Eadie stood with me that night, scant five weeks ago, upon that slope above the tombs of Tarmatambo and seen what then I saw, who knows he might not speak now of 'legend'? Seabury Quinn gives us a slightly different version of the poison-accustomed Nemesis in his Venomed Breath of Vengeance. A dramatic tale, no doubt, but I was constrained to laughter by imagining his nitrobenzol-swilling Sepoy as coming off second best in a contest with one of us garlic-guzzling Spigs. Edmond Hamilton, in his latest serial, The Fire Princess, seems keeping to the same high level of excellence to which he has elevated his recent tales. If, now, he can but avoid the conflict between 'the band with the red trappings and that with the black,' then may he at last have reached the standard of the immortals of weird fiction. The culmination of The Black Drama was everything which the superb introductory chapters led us to expect. Please convey my congratulations to Mr. Field for a masterful piece of plot-building. May your years be as those of the walls of Ollantaytambo, Mr. Field, and may you give us each year at least one more of your tales. Dead Dog and Three Gentlemen in Black are expressions of the conventional ghost story which yet achieve something beyond mere convention, something almost belief-compelling. That touch, by which the third Gentleman in Black is made to be the figure turning into the lane, that is the hairline that divides between an ordinary spook yarn and an imaginative masterpiece. Mr. Derleth has long compelled my silent admiration; may this be the breaking of that silence. Of course, anything I can say regarding The Tree can be but as the comments of the guttering candle upon the setting of the magnificent sun."

Readers, what is your favorite story in this issue? As we go to press, two stories are in a tic for popular favor in the September issue, as shown by your votes and letters. These are Seabury Quinn's tale of Salem witchcraft, As 'Twas Told to Me; and the biological thrill-tale written by Earl Peirce and Bruce Bryan, The White Rat.