Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/120

 opportunity for an adept working out of a genuinely weird plot. Incidentally, we had the opportunity of reading this story in manuscript—and felt it would have been an ideal serial for WEIRD TALES had space permitted. As it is, we can very enthusiastically recommend the book to the fans; for the author is the worthy follower of a great tradition.

From Crandon, Wisconsin, Virginia Combs writes:

I have just read the last issue of WEIRD TALES and enjoyed it immensely, as usual. Where are you, Mr. Biggs belonged in an StF mag, but it was a good story just the same. I do have a kick about Birthmark. Nonsense. The minute I read it I said to myself, "Mr. Quinn is leading us up the garden." If Mrs. Watrous had been carried off by the gorilla only one week before she was delivered, there was no possibility of the child having a physical mark as a result of her mother's fright. She might have had monkey-like tendencies, such as surprising agility of the feet to grasp and hold things, and an ungirlish ability to climb trees, but that is all. I am no doctor, but a child, even premature, as Fedoda doubtless was, cannot assume a physical appearance foreign to the species homo in one week. The foetus must have been fully developed, for Fedocia lived and was healthy although born only one week after her mother's fright. Do you suppose that some chemical reaction of fear in the mother's blood dissolved a pair of human feet on an unborn infant and replaced them with those of a gorilla? Nonsense Mr. Quinn. If you had said that Fedocia was born five months later, such a birthmark might have been possible, if you believe in such things, and I have seen enough in my short span to know that not all things are guessed at in our philosophy.

On the other hand, I thought the nature of the birthmark in taste with the events that lead up to it. The gorilla did not harm Mrs. Watrous, only frightened her, therefore Fedocia's beauty remained unmarred. Only her feet showed that tragic influence.

Edward Goodell writes from Kansas City, Kansas:

I wish to thank you for printing my letter in full in the last issue of WEIRD TALES; I have received some very nice letters from people all over the country.

I am inclosing an actual spell in poem form from the book of Runes that I mentioned in my former letter to you (the one that was published). It has been translated from the Old English script that it was originally written in. I have had to add a modern word, or series of words, here and there to keep it in rhyme, as the original is. I have called it The Witch's Curse, though it is really the spell to kill a rival.