Sci-Fi and Fantasy Stories From 'The Sun' E-Book

Edward Page Mitchell

• Herausgeber: Edward Page Mitchell
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Later described as "the lost giant of American science fiction," Edward Page Mitchell wrote many science fiction and fantasy short stories in the 1870's to 1890's, nearly all of which were published anonymously in the The Sun daily newspaper of New York. Mitchell was editor-in-chief of The Sun and was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board for many years.Mitchell introduced many technological and social predictions which were daring for the time, prior to similar predictions by famous authors, such as travel by pneumatic tube, electrical heating, newspapers printed in the home by electrical transmission, food-pellet concentrates, international broadcasts, suspended animation of a living human being through freezing (cryogenics), a man rendered invisible by scientific means, a time-travel machine, faster-than-light travel, a thinking computer, a cyborg, matter transmission or teleportation, voting by American women, and interracial marriage. His fantasy stories dabble with the occult and bizarre, involving ghosts, the Devil, masochism, inanimate objects coming to life, and more.THE TACHYPOMP (April 1894),THE SOUL SPECTROSCOPE (19 December 1875),THE FACTS IN THE RATCLIFF CASE (07 March 1879),THE STORY OF THE DELUGE (29 April 1875),THE PROFESSOR'S EXPERIMENT (22 February 1880),THE INSIDE OF THE EARTH (27 February 1876),THE BALLOON TREE (25 February 1883),OLD SQUIDS AND LITTLE SPELLER (19 July 1885),THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY (25 March 1877),THE ABLEST MAN IN THE WORLD (04 May 1879),THE SENATOR'S DAUGHTER (27 July 1879),THE CRYSTAL MAN (30 January 1881),THE CLOCK THAT WENT BACKWARD (18 September 1881),and 17 more are contained in this anthology, 30 in all, with an introduction about The Sun by the contributor of this work to Feedbooks' public domain collection.

Leseprobe

Sci-Fi and Fantasy Stories From 'The Sun'

Edward Page Mitchell

Published: 1894Categorie(s): Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Occult & Supernatural, Short Stories

Chapter1 INTRODUCTION

The Sun

The stories you are about to read were published during the late 19th century in a popular newspaper of New York City, called The Sun.  This daily was published from 1833 to 1950, beginning on September 3, 1833, initially as the work of a 23-year-old printer named Benjamin H. Day.  He got the idea from a co-worker, Dave Eamsey, at the printing shop of the Journal of Commerce.  Eamsey's dream was to create a daily morning newspaper called The Sun that would sell for one penny, when other newspapers were selling for 6 cents. Not only would this paper be differentiated by its lower cost, but also it would focus on the human-interest side of news, appealing to both men and women, not the stuffy politics of the other papers that appealed primarily to men.  Eamsey didn't act on his dream, but Day took to the idea and using his own small savings began publication as a morning paper with the slogan "It Shines for All".

It is likely that Day never would have started The Sun if it had not been for the cholera plague which killed more than 3500 people in New York City in 1832.  The plague added to the depression of business already caused by financial disturbances and a mismanaged banking system. The job-printing trade suffered with other industries, and Day decided that he needed a newspaper — not to reform, not to uplift, not to arouse, but to push his own printing business.

The idea of a penny paper was not new. In Philadelphia, the Cent had had a brief, inglorious existence. In Boston, the Bostonian had failed to attract enough readers. Eight months before Day's venture, the Morning Post had braved it in New York, selling first at two cents and later at one cent; but even with Horace Greeley as one of the founders, it lasted only three weeks.   Day's friends scoffed at his foolish idea and warned that it would financially ruin him. He had little in the way of money, but he did have a printing-press, hardly improved from the machine of Benjamin Franklin's day, some job-paper, and plenty of type. The little press would print two hundred impressions an hour at full speed, by man power. 

Day was proprietor, publisher, editor, chief pressman, and mailing-clerk. He was not a lazy man. He stayed up all the night before that Tuesday, September 3, 1833, setting with his own hands some advertisements that were regularly appearing in the six-cent papers, for he wanted to make a show of prosperity. He also wrote, or clipped from some out-of-town newspaper, a poem that would fill nearly a column. He re-wrote news items from the West and South — some of them not more than a month old. As for the snappy local news of the day, he bought, in the small hours of that Tuesday morning, a copy of the New York Courier and Enquirer, the liveliest of the six-cent papers, took it to his small rented press-room, copied verbatim or rewrote the police-court items, and set them up in type by himself. A boy, whose name is unknown, assisted him with typesetting. A journeyman printer, Parmlee, helped with the press.  That first edition was only 4 pages, about 8" by 11".

It was hard in those years to get out a successful daily newspaper, which needs fresh daily news. A weekly would have sufficed for the information that came in by sailing ship and stage from Europe and Washington and Boston. Electronic transmission of news from reporters to the newspaper was not available in those days.  Ben Day was the first man to surmount this almost impossible situation. He did so by the simple method of using what news was nearest at hand — the incidental happenings of New York life. In this way he solved his own problem and the people's, for they found that the local items in The Sun were just what they wanted, while the price of the paper suited them well. 

Ben Day realized what would sell papers. He got clever reporters and good writers. He wanted one reporter to do the police-court work, for he saw, from the first day of the paper, that that was the kind of stuff that his readers devoured. To them, the details of a beating administered by a local man to his wife were more relevant to their own lives than were President Jackson's assaults on the United States Bank.  The paper grew to cover reviews of New York plays, articles about the price of coal, book reviews, investigations of ghosts, editorials advocating for social change, short fictional stories, an article about the potential use of hot-air balloons in warfare, and so on.

On September 14, 1833, The Sun printed its first illustration — a two-column cut of "Herschel's Forty-Feet Telescope." This referred to the astronomer Sir William Herschel, then dead some ten years, and the telescope was on his grounds near Windsor, England.  In 1835, his son, Sir John Herschel with another telescope in a far-away land, was to play a big part in the fortunes of The Sun as the subject of what came to be known as "The Moon Hoax." This was a series of articles represented as news from the allegedly factual notes of Herschel's assistant, describing creatures, plants, and a civilization on the moon as seen from Herschel's telescope.  The public could not get enough of this fascinating story, which grew the readership of the paper tremendously.  On April 13, 1844, The Sun published another popular story, a hoax about an alleged Atlantic crossing by balloon in 3 days, written as though it were a headline news story whereas in reality it was fiction by Edgar Allan Poe.  This one is now known as "The Balloon Hoax." Two days later, a brief retraction was printed, but in those 2 days, the paper was beseiged by people wanting to buy the issues with the details of the daring balloon trip.

At the 50th anniversary of the paper in 1883, the editor of The Sun at that time, Edward Page Mitchell, summed up the reasons for the paper's success:

"No waste of words, no nonsense, plain, outspoken expressions of honest opinion, the abolishment of the conventional measures of news importance, the substitution of the absolute standard of real interest to human beings, bright and enjoyable writing, wit, philosophical good humor, intolerance of humbug, hard hitting from the shoulder on proper occasions — do we not see all these qualities now in our esteemed contemporaries on every side of us, and in every part of the land?"

From its simple, risky beginning, The Sun thus succeeded where the other penny papers had failed.

Edward Page Mitchell Joins The Sun

Edward Page Mitchell first became a professional journalist at the Daily Advertiser in Boston, Massachusetts, where his mentor was Edward Everett Hale, now also recognized as an early author of science fiction.

Mitchell had a lifelong interest in the supernatural and paranormal, and several of his early newspaper pieces are factual investigations of alleged hauntings, usually determined (by Mitchell) to have a normal explanation. Mitchell later interviewed and befriended Madame Blavatsky, the well-known alleged psychic, yet (despite their friendship) he considered her a fraud.

 The young Mitchell was hired by The Sun, where he eventually advanced from copy writer to editorial writer and short-story author to editor and to editor-in-chief.  His entree was his ghost story "Back From That Bourne".  This fictional story purported to be the true account of a recently deceased resident of Maine returning as a ghost. One of Mitchell's later stories, "An Uncommon Sort of Spectre", is one of fiction's earliest examples of a ghost from the future. Many of Mitchell's fictions—published originally as factual newspaper articles—deal with ghosts or other supernatural events, and would now be considered works of fantasy rather than science fiction. Many other stories are definitely of the science fiction genre, dealing with time-travel, teleportation, a thinking machine, and other innovations which we recognize as early science fiction.

The stories Mitchell wrote for The Sun were published anonymously, often in the style of a news article.  The gradual rediscovery of Mitchell and his work was a direct result of the publication in 1973 of a book-length anthology of his stories, compiled by Sam Moskowitz, with a detailed introduction by Moskowitz giving much information about Mitchell's personal life. Because Mitchell's stories were not by-lined on original publication, nor indexed, Moskowitz expended a major effort to track down and collect these works by the author whom Moskowitz cited as "the lost giant of American science fiction".

Chapter2 THE SOUL SPECTROSCOPE

PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S VIEWS

The Singular Materialism of a Progressive Thinker

MORE THAN JUSTIFIED BY THE EXPERIMENTS OF THE CELEBRATED PROFESSOR DUMMKOPT OF BOSTON, MASS.

BOSTON, December 13—Professor Dummkopf, a German gentleman of education and ingenuity, at present residing in this city, is engaged on experiments which, if successful, will work a great change both in metaphysical science and in the practical relationships of life.

The professor is firm in the conviction that modern science has narrowed down to almost nothing the border territory between the material and the immaterial. It may be some time, he admits, before any man shall be able to point his finger and say with authority, "Here mind begins; here matter ends." It may be found that the boundary line between mina and matter is as purely imaginary as the equator that divides the northern from the southern hemisphere. It may be found that mind is essentially objective as is matter, or that matter is as entirely Subjective as is mind. It may be that there is no matter except as conditioned in mind. It may be that there is no mind except as conditioned in matter. Professor Dummkopf's views upon this broad topic are interesting, although somewhat bewildering. I can cordially recommend the great work in nine volumes, Koerperliehegelswissenschaft, to any reader who may be inclined to follow up the subject. The work can undoubtedly be obtained in the original Leipzig edition through any responsible importer of foreign books.

Great as is the problem suggested above, Professor Dummkopf has no doubt whatever that it will be solved, and at no distant day. He himself has taken a masterly stride toward a solution by the brilliant series of experiments I am about to describe. He not only believes with Tyndall that matter contains the promise and potency of all life, but he believes that every force, physical, intellectual, and moral, may be resolved into matter, formulated in terms of matter, and analyzed into its constituent forms of matter; that motion is matter, mind is matter, law is matter, and even that abstract relations of mathematical abstractions are purely material.

PHOTOGRAPHING SMELL

In accordance with an invitation extended to me at the last meeting of the Radical Club—an organization, by the way, which is doing a noble work in extending our knowledge of the Unknowable—I dallied yesterday at Professor Dummkopf's rooms in Joy Street, at the West End. I found the professor in his apartment on the upper floor, busily engaged in an attempt to photograph smell.

"You see," he said, as he stirred up a beaker from which strongly marked fumes of sulphuretied hydrogen were arising and filling the room, "you see that, having demonstrated the objectiveness of sensation, it has now become my privilege and easy task to show that the phenomena of sensation are equally material. Hence I am attempting to photograph smell."

The professor then darted behind a camera which was leveled upon the vessel in which the suffocating fumes were generated and busied himself awhile with the plate.

A disappointed look stole over his face as he brought the negative to the light and examined it anxiously. "Not yet, not yet!" he said sadly, "but patience and improved appliances will finally bring it. The trouble is in my tools, you see, and not in my theory. I did fancy the other day that I obtained a distinctly marked negative from the odor of a hot onion stew, and the thought has cheered me ever since. But it's bound to come. I tell you, my worthy friend, the actinic ray wasn't made for nothing. Could you accommodate me with a dollar and a quarter to buy some more collodion?"

THE BOTTLE THEORY OF SOUND

I expressed my cheerful readiness to be banker to genius.

"Thanks," said the professor, pocketing the scrip and resuming his position at the camera. "When I have pictorially captured smell, the most palpable of the senses, the next thing will be to imprison sound—vulgarly speaking, to bottle it. Just think a moment. Force is as imperishable as matter; indeed, as I have been somewhat successful in showing, it is matter. Now, when a sound wave is once started, it is only lost through an indefinite extension of its circumference. Catch that sound wave, sir! Catch it in a bottle, then its circumference cannot extend. You may keep the sound wave forever if you will only keep it corked up tight. The only difficulty is in bottling it in the first place. I shall attend to the details of that operation just as soon as I have managed to photograph the confounded rotten-egg smell of sulphydric acid."

The professor stirred up the offensive mixture with a glass rod, and continued:

"While my object in bottling sound is mainly scientific, I must confess that I see in success in that direction a prospect of considerable pecuniary profit. I shall be prepared at no distant day to put operas in quart bottles, labeled and assorted, and contemplate a series of light and popular airs in ounce vials at prices to suit the times. You know very well that it costs a ten-dollar bill now to take a lady to hear Martha or Mignon, rendered in first-class style. By the bottle system, the same notes may be heard in one's own parlor at a comparatively trifling expense. I could put the operas into the market at from eighty cents to a dollar a bottle. For oratorios and symphonies I should use demijohns, and the cost would of course be greater. I don't think that ordinary bottles would hold Wagner's music. It might be necessary to employ carboys. Sir, if I were of the sanguine habit of you Americans, I should say that there were millions in it. Being a phlegmatic Teuton, accustomed to the precision and moderation of scientific language, I will merely say that in the success of my experiments with sound I see a comfortable income, as well as great renown.

A SCIENTIFIC MARVEL

By this time the professor had another negative, but an eager examination of it yielded nothing more satisfactory than before. He sighed and continued:

"Having photographed smell and bottled sound, I shall proceed to a project as much higher than this as the reflective faculties are higher than the perceptive, as the brain is more exalted than the ear or nose.

"I am perfectly satisfied that elements of mind are just as susceptible of detection and analysis as elements of matter. Why, mind is matter.

"The soul spectroscope, or, as it will better be known, Dummkopf's duplex self-registering soul spectroscope, is based on the broad fact that whatever is material may be analyzed and determined by the position of the Frauenhofer lines upon the spectrum. If soul is matter, soul may thus be analyzed and determined. Place a subject under the light, and the minute exhalations or emanations proceeding from his soul—and these exhalations or emanations are, of course, matter—will be represented by their appropriate symbols upon the face of a properly arranged spectroscope.

"This, in short, is my discovery. How I shall arrange the spectroscope, and how I shall locate the subject with reference to the light is of course my secret. I have applied for a patent. I shall exploit the instrument and its practical workings at the Centennial. Till then I must decline to enter into any more explicit description of the invention."

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DISCOVERY

"What will be the bearing of your great discovery in its practical workings?"

"I can go so far as to give you some idea of what those practical workings are. The effect of the soul spectroscope upon everyday affairs will be prodigious, simply prodigious. All lying, deceit, double dealing, hypocrisy, will be abrogated under its operation. It will bring about a millennium of truth and sincerity.

"A few practical illustrations. No more bell punches on the horse railroad. The superintendent, with a smattering of scientific knowledge and one of my soul spectroscopes in his office, will examine with the eye of infallible science every applicant for the position of conductor and will determine by the markings on his spectrum whether there is dishonesty in his soul, and this as readily as the chemist decides whether there is iron in a meteorolite or hydrogen in Saturn's ring.

"No more courts, judges, or juries. Hereafter justice will be represented with both eyes wide open and with one of my duplex self- registering soul spectroscopes in her right hand. The inmost nature of the accused will be read at a glance and he will be acquitted, imprisoned for thirty days, or hung, just as the Frauenhofer lines which lay bare his soul may determine.

"No more official corruption or politicians' lies. The important element in every campaign will be one of my soul spectroscopes, and it will effect the most radical, and, at the same time, the most practicable of civil service reforms.

"No more young stool pigeons in tall towers. No man will subscribe for a daily newspaper until a personal inspection of its editor's soul by means of one of my spectroscopes has convinced him that he is paying for truth, honest conviction, and uncompromising independence, rather than for the false utterances of a hired conscience and a bought judgment.

"No more unhappy marriages. The maiden will bring her glibly promising lover to me before she accepts or rejects his proposal, and I shall tell her whether his spectrum exhibits the markings of pure love, constancy, and tenderness, or of sordid avarice, vacillating affections, and post-nuptial cruelty. I shall be the angel with shining sword (or rather spectroscope] who shall attend Hymen and guard the entrance to his paradise.

"No more shame. If anything be wanting in the character of a mean, no amount of brazen pretension on his part can place the missing line in his spectrum. If anything is lacking in him, it will be lacking there. I found by a long series of experiments upon the imperfectly constituted minds of the patients in the lunatic asylum at Taunton-"

"Then you have been at Taunton?"

"Yes. For two years I pursued my studies among the unfortunate inmates of that institution. Not exactly as a patient myself, you understand, but as a student of the phenomena of morbid intellectual developments. But I see I am wearying you, and I must resume my photography before this stuff stops smelling. Come again."

Having bid the professor farewell and wished him abundant success in his very interesting experiments, I went home and read again for the thirty-ninth time Professor Tyndall's address at Belfast.

Chapter3 THE FACTS IN THE RATCLIFF CASE

I.

I first met Miss Borgier at a tea party in the town of R—, where I was attending medical lectures. She was a tall girl, not pretty; her face would have been insipid but for the peculiar restlessness of her eyes. They were neither bright nor expressive, yet she kept them so constantly in motion that they seemed to catch and reflect light from a thousand sources. Whenever, as rarely happened, she fixed them even for a few seconds upon one object, the factitious brilliancy disappeared, and they became dull and somnolent. I am unable to say what was the color of Miss Borgier's eyes.

After tea, I was one of a group of people whom our host, the Reverend Mr. Tinker, sought to entertain with a portfolio of photographs of places in the Holy Land. While endeavoring to appear interested in his descriptions and explanations, all of which I had heard before, I became aware that Miss Borgier was honoring me with steady regard. My gaze encountered hers and I found that I could not, for the life of me, withdraw my own eyes from the encounter. Then I had a singular experience, the phenomena of which I noted with professional accuracy. I felt the slight constriction of the muscles of my face, the numbness of the nerves that precedes physical stupor induced by narcotic agency. Although I was obliged to struggle against the physical sense of drowsiness, my mental faculties were more than ordinarily active. Her eyes seemed to torpify my body while they stimulated my mind, as opium does. Entirely conscious of my present surroundings, and particularly alert to the Reverend Mr. Tinker's narrative of the ride from Joppa, I accompanied him on that journey, not as one who listens to a traveler's tale, but as one who himself travels the road. When, finally, we reached the point where the Reverend Mr. Tinker's donkey makes the last sharp turn around the rock that has been cutting off the view ahead, and the Reverend Mr. Tinker beholds with amazement and joy the glorious panorama of Jerusalem spread out before him, I saw it all with remarkable vividness. I saw Jerusalem in Miss Borgier's eyes.

I tacitly thanked fortune when her eyes resumed their habitual dance around the room, releasing me from what had become a rather humiliating captivity. Once free from their strange influence, I laughed at my weakness. "Pshawl" I said to myself. "You are a fine subject for a young woman of mesmeric talents to practice upon."

"Who is Miss Borgier?" I demanded of the Reverend Mr. Tinker's wife, at the first opportunity.

"Why, she is Deacon Borgier's daughter," replied that good person, with some surprise.

"And who is Deacon Borgier?"

"A most excellent man; one of the pillars of my husband's congregation. The young people laugh at what they call his torpidity, and say that he has been walking about town in his sleep for twenty years; but I assure you that there is not a sincerer, more fervent Chris—"

I turned abruptly around, leaving Mrs. Tinker more astonished than ever, for I knew that the subject of my inquiries was looking at me again. She sat in one corner of the room, apart from the rest of the company. I straightway went and seated myself at her side.

"That is right," she said. "I wished you to come. Did you enjoy your journey to Jerusalem?"

"Yes, thanks to you."

"Perhaps. But you can repay the obligation. I am told that you are Dr. Mack's assistant in surgery at the college. There is a clinic tomorrow. I want to attend it."

"As a patient?" I inquired.

She laughed. "No, as a spectator. You must find a way to gratify my curiosity."

I expressed, as politely as possible, my astonishment at so extraordinary a fancy on the part of a young lady, and hinted at the scandal which her appearance in the amphitheater would create. She immediately offered to disguise herself in male attire. I explained that the nature of the relations between the medical college and the patients who consented to submit to surgical treatment before the class were such that it would be a dishonorable thing for me to connive at the admission of any outsider, male or female. That argument made no impression upon her mind. I was forced to decline peremptorily to serve her in the affair. "Very well," she said. "I must find some other way."

At the clinic the next day I took pains to satisfy myself that Miss Borgier had not surreptitiously intruded. The students of the class came in at the hour, noisy and careless as usual, and seated themselves in the lower tiers of chairs around the operating table. They produced their notebooks and began to sharpen lead pencils. Miss Borgier was certainly not among them. Every face in the lecture room was familiar to me. I locked the door that opened into the hallway, and then searched the anteroom on the other side of the amphitheater. There were a dozen or more patients, nervous and dejected, waiting for treatment and attended by friends hardly less frightened than themselves. But neither Miss Borgier nor anybody resembling Miss Borgier was of the number.

Dr. Mack now briskly entered by his private door. He glanced sharply at the table on which his instruments were arranged, ready for use, and, having assured himself that everything was in its place, began the clinical lecture. There were the usual minor operations—two or three for strabismus, one for cataract, the excision of several cysts and tumors, large and small, the amputation of a railway brakeman's crushed thumb. As the cases were disposed of, I attended the patients back to the anteroom and placed them in the care of their friends.

Last came a poor old lady named Wilson, whose leg had been drawn up for years by a rheumatic affection, so that the joint of the knee had ossified. It was one of those cases where the necessary treatment is almost brutal in its simplicity. The limb had to be straightened by the application of main force. Mrs. Wilson obstinately refused to take advantage of anesthesia. She was placed on her back upon the operating table, with a pillow beneath her head. The geniculated limb showed a deflection of twenty or twenty-five degrees from a right line. As already remarked, this deflection had to be corrected by direct, forcible pressure downward upon the knee.

With the assistance of a young surgeon of great physical strength, Dr. Mack proceeded to apply this pressure. The operation is one of the most excruciating that can be imagined. I was stationed at the head of the patient, in order to hold her shoulders should she struggle. But I observed that a marked change had come over her since we established her upon the table. Very much agitated at first, she had become perfectly calm. As she passively lay there, her eyes directed upward with a fixed gaze, the eyelids heavy as if with approaching slumber, the face tranquil, it was hard to realize that this woman had already crossed the threshold of an experience of cruel pain.

I had no time, however, to give more than a thought to her wonderful courage. The harsh operation had begun. The surgeon and his assistant were steadily and with increasing force bearing down upon the rigid knee. Perhaps the Spanish Inquisition never devised a method of inflicting physical torture more intense than that which this woman was now undergoing, yet not a muscle of her face quivered. She breathed easily and regularly, her features retained their placid expression, and, at the moment when her sufferings must have been the most agonizing, I saw her eyes close, as if in peaceful sleep.

At the same instant the tremendous force exerted upon the knee produced its natural effect. The ossified joint yielded, and, with a sickening noise—the indescribable sound of the crunching and gritting of the bones of a living person, a sound so frightful that I have seen old surgeons, with sensibilities hardened by long experience, turn pale at hearing it—the crooked limb became as straight as its mate.

Closely following this horrible sound, I heard a ringing peal of laughter.

The operating table, in the middle of the pit of the amphitheater, was lighted from overhead. Directly above the table, a shaft, five or six feet square, and closely boarded on its four sides, led up through the attic story of the building to a skylight in the roof. The shaft was so deep and so narrow that its upper orifice was visible from no part of the room except a limited space immediately around the table. The laughter which startled me seemed to come from overhead. If heard by any other person present, it was probably ascribed to a hysterical utterance on the part of the patient. I was in a position to know better. Instinctively I glanced upward, in the direction in which the eyes of Mrs. Wilson had been so fixedly bent.

There, framed in a quadrangle of blue sky, I saw the head and neck of Miss Borgier. The sash of the skylight had been removed, to afford ventilation. The young woman was evidently lying at full length upon the fiat roof. She commanded a perfect view of all that was done upon the operating table. Her face was flushed with eager interest and wore an expression of innocent wonder, not =mingled with delight. She nodded merrily to me when I looked up and laid a finger against her lips, as if to warn me to silence. Disgusted, I withdrew my eyes hastily from hers. Indeed, after my experience of the previous evening, I did not care to trust my self-control under the influence of her gaze.

As Dr. Mack with his sharp scissors cut the end of a linen bandage, he whispered to me: "This is without a parallel. Not a sign of syncope, no trace of functional disorder. She has dropped quietly into healthy sleep during an infliction of pain that would drive a strong man mad."

As soon as released from my duties in the lecture room, I made my way to the roof of the building. As I emerged through the scuttle-way, Miss Borgier scrambled to her feet and advanced to meet me without manifesting the slightest discomposure. Her face fairly beamed with pleasure.

"Wasn't it beautiful?" she asked with a smile, extending her hand. "I heard the bones slowly grinding and crushing!"

I did not take her hand. "How came you here?" I demanded, avoiding her glance.

"Oh!" said she, with a silvery laugh. "I came early, about sunrise. The janitor left the door ajar and I slipped in while he was in the cellar. All the morning I spent in the place where they dissect; and when the students began to come in downstairs I escaped here to the roof."

"Are you aware, Miss Borgier," I asked, very gravely, "that you have committed a serious indiscretion, and must be gotten out of the building as quickly and privately as possible?"

She did not appear to understand. "Very well," she said. "I suppose there is nothing more to see. I may as well go."

I led her down through the garret, cumbered with boxes and barrels of unarticulated human bones; through the medical library, unoccupied at that hour; by a back stairway into and across the great vacant chemical lecture room; through the anatomical cabinet, full of objects appalling to the imagination of her sex. I was silent and she said nothing; but her eyes were everywhere, drinking in the strange surroundings with an avidity which I could feel without once looking at her. Finally we came to a basement corridor, at the end of which a door, not often used, gave egress by an alleyway to the street. It was through this door that subjects for dissection were brought into the building. I took a bunch of keys from my pocket and turned the lock. "Your way is clear now," I said.

To my immense astonishment, Miss Borgier, as we stood together at the end of the dark corridor, threw both arms around my neck and kissed me.

"Good-by," she said, as she disappeared through the half-opened door.

When I awoke the next morning, after sleeping for more than fifteen hours, I found that I could not raise my head from the pillow without nausea. The symptoms were exactly like those which mark the effects of an overdose of laudanum.

II.

I have thought it due to myself and to my professional reputation to recount these facts before briefly speaking of my recent testimony as an expert, in the Ratcliff murder trial, the character of my relations with the accused having been persistently misrepresented.

The circumstances of that celebrated case are no doubt still fresh in the recollection of the public. Mr. John L. Ratcliff, a wealthy, middle-aged merchant of Boston, came to St. Louis with his young bride, on their wedding journey. His sudden death at the Planters' Hotel, followed by the arrest of his wife, who was entirely without friends or acquaintances in the city, her indictment for murder by poisoning, the conflict of medical testimony at the trial, and the purely circumstantial nature of the evidence against the prisoner, attracted general attention and excited public interest to a degree that was quite extraordinary.

It will be remembered that the state proved that the relations of Mr. and Mrs. Ratcliff, as observed by the guests and servants of the hotel, were not felicitous; that he rarely spoke to her at table, habitually averting his face in her presence; that he wandered aimlessly about the hotel for several days previous to his illness, apparently half stupefied, as if by the oppression of some heavy mental burden, and that when accosted by anyone connected with the house he started as if from a dream, and answered incoherently if at all.

It was also shown that, by her husband's death, Mrs. Ratcliff became the sole mistress of a large fortune.

The evidence bearing directly upon the circumstances of Mr. Ratcliff's death was very clear. For twenty-four hours before a physician was summoned, no one had access to him save his wife. At dinner that day, in response to the polite inquiry of a lady neighbor at table, Mrs. Ratcliff announced, with great self-possession, that her husband was seriously indisposed. Soon after eleven o'clock at night, Mrs. Ratcliff rang her bell, and, without the least agitation of manner, remarked that her husband appeared to be dying, and that it might be well to send for a physician. Dr. Culbert, who arrived within a very few minutes, found Mr. Ratcliff in a profound stupor, breathing stertorously. He swore at the trial that when he first entered the room the prisoner, pointing to the bed, coolly said, "I suppose that I have killed him."

Dr. Culbert's testimony seemed to point unmistakably to poisoning by laudanum or morphine. The unconscious man's pulse was full but slow; his skin cold and pallid; the expression of his countenance placid, yet ghastly pale; lips livid. Coma had already supervened, and it was impossible to rouse him. The ordinary expedients were tried in vain. Flagellation of the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, electricity applied to the head and spine, failed to make any impression on his lethargy. The eyelids being forcibly opened, the pupils were seen to be contracted to the size of pinheads, and violently turned inward. Later, the stertorous breathing developed into the ominously loud rattle of mucous in the trachea; there were convulsions, attended by copious frothings at the mouth; the under jaw fell upon the breast; and paralysis and death followed, four hours after Dr. Culbert's arrival.

Several of the most eminent practitioners of the city, put upon the stand by the prosecution, swore that, in their opinion, the symptoms noted by Dr. Culbert not only indicated opium poisoning, but could have resulted from no other cause.

On the other hand, the state absolutely failed to show either that opium in any form had been purchased by Mrs. Ratcliff in St. Louis, or that traces of opium in any form were found in the room after the event. It is true that the prosecuting attorney, in his closing argument, sought to make the latter circumstance tell against the prisoner. He argued that the disappearance of any vessel containing or having contained laudanum, in view of the positive evidence that laudanum had been employed, served to establish a deliberate intention of murder and to demolish any theory of accidental poisoning that the defense might attempt to build; and he propounded half a dozen hypothetical methods by which Mrs. Ratcliff might have disposed, in advance, of this evidence of her crime. The court, of course, in summing up, cautioned the jury against attaching weight to these hypotheses of the prosecuting attorney.

The court, however, put much emphasis on the medical testimony for the prosecution, and on the calm declaration of Mrs. Ratcliff to Dr. Culbert, "I suppose that I have killed him."

Having conducted the autopsy, and afterward made a qualitative analysis of the contents of the dead man's stomach, I was put upon the stand as a witness for the defense.

Then I saw the prisoner for the first time in more than five years. When I had taken the oath and answered the preliminary questions, Mrs. Ratcliff raised the veil which she had worn since the trial began, and looked me in the face with the well-remembered eyes of Miss Borgier.

I confess that my behavior during the first few moments of surprise afforded some ground for the reports that were afterward current concerning my relations with the prisoner. Her eyes chained not only mine, but my tongue also. I saw Jerusalem again, and the face framed in blue sky peering down into the amphitheater of the old medical college. It was only after a struggle which attracted the attention of judge, jury, bar, and spectators that I was able to proceed with my testimony.

That testimony was strong for the accused. My knowledge of the case was wholly post-mortem. It began with the autopsy. Nothing had been found that indicated poisoning by laudanum or by any other agent. There was no morbid appearance of the intestinal canal; no fullness of the cerebral vessels, no serous effusion. Every appearance that would have resulted from death by poison was wanting in the subject. That, of course, was merely negative evidence. But, furthermore, my chemical analysis had proved the absence of the poison in the system. The opium odor could not be detected. I bad tested for morphine with nitric acid, permuriate of iron, chromate of potash, and, most important of all, iodic acid. I had tested again for meconic acid with the permuriate of iron. I had tested by Lassaigne's process, by Dublane's, and by Flandin's. As far as the resources of organic chemistry could avail, I had proved that, notwithstanding the symptoms of Mr. Ratcliff's case before death, death had not resulted from laudanum or any other poison known to science.

The questions by the prosecuting counsel as to my previous acquaintance with the prisoner, I was able to answer truthfully in a manner that did not shake the force of my medical testimony. And it was chiefly on the strength of this testimony that the jury, after a short deliberation, returned a verdict of not guilty.

Did I swear falsely? No; for science bore me out in every assertion. I knew that not a drop of laudanum or a grain of morphine had passed Ratcliff's lips. Ought I to have declared my belief regarding the true cause of the man's death, and told the story of my previous observations of Miss Borgier's case? No; for no court of justice would have listened to that story for a single moment. I knew that the woman did not murder her husband. Yet I believed and knew—as surely as we can know anything where the basis of ascertained fact is slender and the laws obscure—that she poisoned him, poisoned him to death with her eyes.

I think that it will be generally conceded by the profession that I am neither a sensationalist nor prone to lose my self-command in the mazes of physico-psychologic speculation. I make the foregoing assertion deliberately, fully conscious of all that it implies.

What was the mystery of the noxious influence which this woman exerted through her eyes? What was the record of her ancestry, the secret of predisposition in her case? By what occult process of evolution did her glance derive the toxical effect of the papaver somniferum? How did she come to be a Woman-Poppy? I cannot yet answer these questions. Perhaps I shall never be able to answer them.

But if there is need of further proof of the sincerity of my denial of any sentiment on my part which might have led me to shield Mrs. Ratcliff by perjury, I may say that I have now in my possession a letter from her, written after her acquittal, proposing to endow me with her fortune and herself; as well as a copy of my reply, respectfully declining the offer.

Chapter4 THE STORY OF THE DELUGE

THE REMARKABLE DISCOVERIES OF MR. GEORGE SMITH

Interesting Particulars Respecting the Translations of the Assyrian Tablets in the British Museum—Newly Discovered Facts About the Flood and Noah, Together with Some Light on the History of the Senator from Maine and the Settlement of Brooklyn.

Boston, April 26—Mr. Jacob Rounds of London, one of the assistant curators of the British Museum, in a private letter to a distinguished Orientalist of this city, gives some interesting particulars regarding the progress which has been made in the arrangement and translation of the sculptured tablets and lateres coctiles brought from Assyria and Chaldea by Mr. George Smith. The results of the past three or four months are gratifying in the extreme. The work, which was begun three quarters of a century ago by Grotefend, and pursued by archaeologists such as Rask, St. Martin, Klaproth, Oppert, and the indefatigable Rawlinson, each of whom was satisfied if he carried it forward a single step, has been pushed far and fast by Mr. George Smith and his scholarly associates. The Assyrio-Babylonian cuneiforms, the third and most complicated branch of the trilogy, may fairly be said to have found their Oedipus.

The riddles of Accad and of Sumir are read at last. The epigraphs on tablets dug from the earth and rubbish of the Ninevite mounds are now translated by Mr. George Smith as readily as Professor Whitney translates Greek, or a fifth-term schoolboy, the fable of the man and the viper.

It is not many years since the learned Witte declared that these sphenographic characters, arranged so neatly upon the slabs of gray alabaster, or the carefully prepared surface of clay—like specimen arrowheads in the museum of some ancient war department—were entirely without alphabetic significance, mere whimsical ornaments, or perhaps the trail of worms! But their exegesis has been perfected. The mounds of Nimroud, and Kouyunjik, and Khorsabad, and Nebbi Yunus have yielded up their precious treasures, and are now revealing, page by page, the early history of our globe.

Mr. Smith and Mr. Rounds are both confirmed in the belief, first entertained by Westergaarde, that the cuneiform character is closely akin to the Egyptian demotic; and also that its alphabet—which contains over four hundred signs, some syllable, some phonetic, and some ideographic—is of the most complicated and arbitrary nature. As already intimated, the inscriptions which Mr. Smith and his colaborers have deciphered are in the primitive or Babylonian character, which is much more obscure than either of its successors and modifications, the so-called Persian and Median cunei.

SENNACHERIB'S LIBRARY

The slabs of the greatest interest and importance were those found buried in the famous Kouyunjik mound, first opened in 1843 by M. Paul Emile Botta, and subsequently explored by Layard himself.

The inscriptions are mostly upon clay, and seem to have constituted the walls of the great library of Assurbanipal in Sennacherib's palace. Sennacherib was probably a monarch of a nautical turn of mind, for a large portion of the inscriptions illustrate the history of the flood and the voyage of Noah, or of Nyab, his Assyrian counterpart, who also corresponds, in some particulars, with the Deucalion of the Grecian myths. Piece by piece and fragment by fragment the diluvian narrative has been worked out, until it stands complete, a distinct episode in the vast epic which Mr. George Smith is engaged in reconstructing. Mr. Rounds may certainly be pardoned for the naturally enthusiastic terms in which he speaks of these labors.

And well may he be proud. These men in the British Museum are successfully compiling, brick by brick, what they claim to be a complete encyclopedia of sacred and profane history, beginning with the conception of matter and the birth of mind. Their extraordinary researches have placed them upon a pedestal of authority, from which they now gravely pronounce their approval of the Holy Scriptures, and even stoop to pat Moses on the head and to tell him that his inspired version was very nearly correct.

So graphic is the account of the adventures of Nyab, or Noah as he may more conveniently be called; so clear is the synopsis of his method of navigation; so startling are the newly discovered facts regarding the Ark and its passengers, that I am tempted to avail myself of the kind permission of the Boston savant who has the honor to be Mr. Rounds's esteemed correspondent, and to transcribe somewhat in detail, for the benefit of your readers, the extraordinary story of the flood as told by the Assyrian cuneiforms—cryptograms for four thousand years until the genius of a Smith unveiled the mystery of their meaning.

THE RISING OF THE WATERS

Mr. Smith ascertains from these inscriptions that when Noah began to build his Ark and prophesy a deluge, the prevailing opinion was that he was either a lunatic or a shrewd speculator who proposed, by his glowing predictions and appearance of perfect sincerity, so to depreciate real estate that he might buy, through his brokers, to any extent at prices merely nominal.

Even after the lowlands were submerged, and it was apparent that there was to be a more than usually wet season, Noah's wicked neighbors were accustomed to gather for no other purpose than to deride the ungainly architecture of the Ark and to question its sailing qualities. They were not wanting who asserted that the Thing would roll over at the first puff of wind like a too heavily freighted tub. So people came from far and near to witness and laugh at the discomfiture of the aged patriarch.

But there was no occasion for ridicule. The Ark floated like a cork. Noah dropped his center board and stood at the helm waving graceful adieus to his wicked contemporaries, while the good vessel caught a fresh southerly breeze and moved on like a thing of life. There is nothing whatever in the Assyrian account to confirm the tradition that Noah accelerated the motion of the Ark by raising his own coattails. This would have been an unnecessary as well as undignified proceeding. The tall house on deck afforded sufficient resistance to the wind to drive the Ark along at a very respectable rate of speed.

NOAH AS A NAVIGATOR

After the first novelty of the situation had worn off, and there was no longer the satisfaction of kindly but firmly refusing applications for passage, and seeing the lately derisive people scrambling for high land, only to be eventually caught by and swallowed up in the roaring waters, the voyage was a vexatious and disagreeable one. The Ark at the best was an unwieldy craft. She fell off from the wind frightfully, and almost invariably missed stays. Every choppy sea hammered roughly upon her flat bottom, making all on board so seasick as to wish that they too had been wicked, and sunk with the crowd.

Inside the miserable shanty which served for a cabin, birds, beasts, and human beings were huddled promiscuously together. One of the deluge tablets says, not without a touch of pathos: "It was extremely uncomfortable [amakharsyar] to sleep with a Bengal tiger glaring at one from a corner, and a hedgehog nestled up close against one's bare legs. But it was positively dangerous when the elephant became restless, or the polar bear took offense at some fancied slight."

I will not anticipate Mr. Smith's detailed account of the cruise of the Ark. He has gathered data for a complete chart of Noah's course during the many months of the voyage. The tortuous nature of the route pursued and the eccentricity of Noah's great circle sailing are proof that the venerable navigator, under the depressing influence of his surroundings, had frequent recourse to ardent spirits, an infirmity over which we, his descendants, should drop the veil of charity and of silence.

EXTRACT FROM NOAH'S LOG

The most astounding discovery of all, however, is a batch of tablets giving an actual and literal transcript from Noah's logbook. The journal of the voyage—which Noah, as a prudent navigator, doubtless kept with considerable care—was probably bequeathed to Shem, eldest born and executive officer of the Ark. Portions of the log, it may be, were handed down from generation to generation among the Semitic tribes; and Mr. Rounds does not hesitate to express his opinion that these tablets in the British Museum were copied directly from the original entries made in the ship's book by Noah or Shem.

He sends to his Boston correspondent early proofs of some of the lithographic facsimiles which are to illustrate Mr. Smith's forthcoming work, An Exhaustive History of the Flood and of the Noachic Voyage. They should bear in mind that the inscription reads from left to right, and not, like Arabic and numerous other Semitic languages, from right to left.

Expressed in the English character, this inscription would read as follows:

… dahyarva saka ormudzi… fraharram athura uvatish… kia rich thyar avalna nyasadayram okanaus mana frabara … gathava Hambi Humin khaysathryam nam Buhmi… pasara ki hi baga Jethyths paruvnam oazarka… Rhsayarsha …

Such progress has been made in the interpretation of the Aramaic dialects that it is comparatively an easy matter for Mr. Rounds to put this into our vernacular, which he does as follows, supplying certain hiatuses to the inscription where the connection is obvious:

SCOW "AHK," LATITUDE 44° 15', LONGITUDE… Water falling rapidly. Ate our last pterodactyl yesterday… Hambl Hamin [Hannibal Hamlin!] down with scurvy. Must put him ashore… THURS, 7TH. Bitter ale and mastodons all gone. Mrs. Japheth's had another pair of twins. All well.

The importance of this scrap of diluvian history can hardly be overestimated. It throws light on three or four points which have been little understood hitherto. Having viewed the subject in all its bearings, and having compared the extract here quoted with numberless other passages which I have not time to give, Mr. Smith and Mr. Rounds arrive at the following.

IMPORTANT CONCLUSIONS

I. When this entry was made in the logbook by Noah (or Shem ) the Ark was somewhere off the coast of Maine. The latitude warrants this inference; the longitude is unfortunately wanting. Parallel proof that Noah visited the shores of North America is to be found in the old ballad, founded on a Habbinical tradition, where mention is made of Barnegat. The singular error which locates Ararat just three miles south of Barnegat is doubtless due to some confusion in Noah's logarithms—the natural result of his unfortunate personal habits.

II. "Ate our last pterodactyl yesterday… Bitter ale and mastodons all gone." There we have a simple solution of a problem which has long puzzled science. The provisions stowed away in the Ark did not prove sufficient for the unexpectedly protracted voyage. Hard-pressed for food, Noah and his family were obliged to fall back on the livestock. They devoured the larger and more esculent animals in the collection. The only living specimens of the icthyosaurus, the dodo, the silurian, the pleisosaurus, the mastodon, were eaten up by the hungry excursionists. We can therefore explain the extinction of certain species, which, as geology teaches us, existed in antediluvian times. Were this revelation the only result of Mr. Smith's researches he would not have dug in vain. Mr. Rounds justly observes that the allusion to bitter ale affords strong presumptive evidence that this entry in the log was made by the hand of no other than Noah himself!

III. The allusion to the interesting increase of Japheth's family shows that woman—noble woman, who always rises to the occasion—was doing her utmost to repair the breaches made in the earth's population by the whelming waters. The phrase hibaga may possibly signify triplets; but Mr. Smith, with that conservatism and repugnance to sensation which ever characterize the true archaeologist, prefers to be on the safe side and call it twins.

HANNIBAL HAMLIN THE ORIGINAL HAM

IV. We now come to a conclusion which is as startling as it is inevitable. It connects the Honorable Hannibal Hamlin with the diluvian epoch, and thus with the other long-lived patriarchs who flourished before the flood. Antiquarians have long suspected that the similarity between the names Ham and Hamlin was something more than a coincidence. The industry of a Smith has discovered among the Assyrian ruins the medial link which makes the connection perfectly apparent. Ham, the second son of Noah, is spoken of in these records from Kouyunjik as Hambl Hamin; and no candid mind can fail to see that the extreme antiquity of the senator from Maine is thus very clearly established!

"Hambl Hamin down with the scurvy. Must put him ashore." Buhmi literally signifies earth, dirt: and the phrase nam Buhmi is often used in these inscriptions in the sense of to put in the earth, or bury. This can hardly be the meaning here, however, for the Ark was still afloat. Nam Buhmi can therefore hardly be construed otherwise than "put ashore."

Note the significance. The Ark is beating up and down, off the coast of Maine, waiting for a nor'west wind. Poor Ham, or Hambl Hamin, as he should properly be called, has reason to regret his weakness for maritime excursions and naval junketing parties. The lack of fresh vegetables, and a steady diet of corned mastodon, have told upon his system. Poor Hambl! When he was collector of a Mediterranean port just before the flood, he was accustomed to have green peas and asparagus franked him daily from the Garden of Eden. But now the franking privilege has been abrogated, and the Garden of Eden is full forty fathoms under the brine. Everything is salt. His swarthy face grows pale and haggard. His claw-hammer coat droops upon an attenuated frame. He chews his cherrot moodily as he stands upon the hurricane deck of the Ark with his thumbs in his vest pocket, and thinks that he can hold office on this earth but little longer. His gums begin to soften. He shows the ravages of the scurvy. And Noah, therefore, after considerable argument—for Hambl is reluctant to get out of any place he has once got into—nam Buhmi's him—puts him ashore.

We have no further record of Hambl Hamin, but it is perfectly reasonable to assume that after being landed on the rocky coast of Maine he subsisted upon huckleberries until sufficiently recovered from the scurvy, then sailed up the Penobscot upon a log, founded the ancient village of Ham-den, which he named after himself, and was immediately elected to some public position.

AN OPPOSITION ARK

In Mr. Rounds's long and profoundly interesting communication I have, I fear, an embarras de richesses. From the many curious legends which Mr. Smith has deciphered, I shall select only one more, and shall deal briefly with that. It is the story of an opposition ark.

At the time of the flood there lived a certain merchant named Brith, who had achieved a competence in the retail grocery business. In fact, he was an antediluvian millionaire. Brith had been converted from heathenism by the exceedingly effective preaching of Noah, but had subsequently backslidden. When it began to thunder and lighten, however, and to grow black in the northeast, Brith professed recurring symptoms of piety. He came down to the gangway plank and applied for passage for himself and family. Noah, who was checking off the animals on the back of an old tax bill, sternly refused to entertain any such idea. Brith had recently defeated him for the Common Council.

The worthy grocer's money now stood him in good stead. He did the most sensible thing possible under the circumstances. He built an ark for himself, painted in big letters along the side the words: "The Only Safe Plan of Universal Navigation!" and named it the Toad. The Toad was fashioned after the model of the Ark, and there being no copyright in those days, Noah could only hope that it might prove unseaworthy.

In the Toad, Brith embarked his wife Briatha, his two daughters, Phessar and Barran, his sons-in-law, Lampra and Pinnyish, and a select assortment of beasts hardly inferior to that collected by Noah himself. Lampra and Pinnyish, sly dogs, persuaded fifty of the most beautiful women they could find to come along with them.

Brith was not so good a sailor as Noah. He put to sea full forty days too soon. He lost his dead reckoning and beat around the ocean for the space of seven years and a quarter, living mostly upon the rats that infested the Toad. Brith had foolishly neglected to provision his craft for a long voyage.

After this protracted sailing, the passengers and crew of the Toad managed to make a landing one rainy evening and took ashore, with themselves, their baggage and a coon and dromedary, the sole surviving relics of their proud menagerie. Once on terra firma, the three men separated, having drawn up a tripartite covenant of perpetual amity and divided up the stock of wives. Brith took eighteen, Lampra took eighteen, and Pinnyish, who seems to have been an easygoing sort of fellow, too lazy to quarrel, had to be satisfied with the seventeen that remained.

Tablets from Nebbi Yunus throw some light on the interesting question as to the landing place of this party. Khayarta certainly means island, and Dyinim undeniably signifies long. Perhaps, therefore, Mr. Rounds is justified in his opinion that the Toad dropped anchor in Wallabout Bay, and that Brooklyn and the Plymouth society owe their origin to this singular expedition.