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THE SUHHABT THE THING ON t h e HEARTH | By MtlvilU D. Post. ^ \The first eonfirniatory eridence of the thing, Excellency, was the ptint of a woman’s bare feet.” He was an immense creature. He satin an uptight chair that seemed to have been provided esDCcially for him. The great bulk of him flowed eat and filled the chair. It did not seem to be fat that enveloped him. it seemed rather to be soaaa •eft, tough fibar,like the pudgy mass making up the body of a deep-sea thing. One got an impres sion of strength. The country was before the open window; the ealtivated shrub on the sweep of velvet lawn ex- teadiag to the great wall that inclosed the place, then the bend of the rivet and beyond, the distant mountains, blue and mysterieue, blending indis- ssraibly inte tie sky. A soft sun eloeded with the haze of autumn was over it. \You know bow the faint moisture in the bare foot will make an impression.\ He paused as though there was some eempel- liag force in the reflection. It was impossible to say, with accuracy, to what race the man belonged. He came from some queer bleed of Sastem peoples. His body and the cast of his features were Mongolian. But oae gat always, before him, a feeling of the hot East lying low down against the stagnant Snez. One felt that he had got up slowly into our world of hard air tod sun out of tho va^st swaltering ooze of|it. He spoke Englisblwitb a eertain care in the selection of the wotds, but with ease, with an absence of effort, as though languages were iostinctive to him ■ as though be could speak any language. And he impressed yen \ itb this same effortless facility in all the things he did. It is necessary to try to understand this, beetuse it explains the eoBceptioB everybody got of the creature, when they saw him in charge of Hnd- lon. I am usieg precisely tbs decriptive words; he was exclusively in charge of Hudson, as a jinnee in an Arabian tale might have been in charge of a king’s son. The oreature was servile—with almost a grove ling servility. But one felt that this servility re sulted from something potent and secret. One looked to see Hudson take Solomon’s ring out of his waistceat pocket. I suppose there is no longer any doubt about the fact that Hudson was one of those gigantic human iiteliigonces who sometimes appear in the world and by their Immense conceptions dwarf all human knowledge - a sort of mental monster tlat we feel nature has no right to produce. Lord Bsyless Truxley said that Hudson was four gen erations in advance of the lime; and Lord Bayless Truxley was beyond question, tho greatest mait- srof syntbstic chemistry in the world. Uudsen was rich and. everybody supposed, in- dolsBt; no ona over thought very much about him ustil be published his brochure on the scientiflo ■iDufacture of precious stones. Then instantly everybody with any pretension to a knowledge sf syutbetic chemistry turned toward him. The brochure startled the wetid. It proposed to adapt the luster and beauty of jewels to commercial uses We were being con- tsot with etude imitation colors in eur commercial glass, when we could quite as easily have the utual structure and the actual luster of the jewel in it. We were psinfully hunting over the tarth, and in its bowels, for a few crystals and prsttily colored stones which we hoarded and treasured, when in a manufacturing laboratory we could easily produce them, mote perfect than ssture, and in unlimited quantity. Now, if you want to understtnd what 1 am kistiaghere about Hudson, you must think about tkis thing as a scientific possibility and not as a fastastie notion. Take, for example, Hudson’s address before the Serbt nne, or his report to the International .Congress of Science in Edinburgh, aid yon will begin to see what I mean. The Marchesa Giovanni,who wai a delegate to that Congress, and Pastreaux, said that the only thing ii the way of an actual practical realization of what Hudson outlined was the forwulBa. If Hadson could work out the formulas, jewel stuff (ould be produced as cheaply as glass, and in any qiantity—by the carload. Imagine it, sheet ruby, sheet emerald, all the beauty andlusterof jewels in the windows < i the corner drugstore! And there is another thing that I want you to think about. Think about the imraenee destrue- tisn of value — not to ns, so greatly, for onr stocks of precious itoues are not large; but th e thing meant, pfactisally, wiping oiit all the as- aemblad wealth of Asia except the actual earth and its structures. The destruction of value was incredible. Put the thing some ether way and consider it. Suppose we should snddsuly disrover that purs geld could be produced by treating common yel low clay with sulphuric acid, or^thal some gen ius uheuld s«t up a ms chine on the border of the Sahara that received sand at one end and turn ed enc tacked wheat at the ethtr! What, then, would our hoarded gold be worth, or the wheat- lands of Australia, Canada cr the Northwest? The illustrations are fantastic. Bat the thing Hudson was after was a pratical fact. He bad it on the way. Giovanni and Lord Bayless Trnx- Isy were convinced that the man would work out the formulas. They tiled to prepare the world for it over their signatnres. The w hole of Asia v ae appalled. The rajahs of the native atatea in ladia prepared a memorial and sent it to the British Government. The thing cam* out after the myiterieus, ic- ercdible tragedy, 1 should not have written that LIFE’S SPLENDOR There is ao much «f laughter on the earth. So much that’s tender, gentle, fine and true, ’That all the hate and bitterness men do. And all the lottow ckilling joy and miitb Are lost to memory when the skies grow blue. Sin stalks in hotrer for a little while. Vice takes its victims from the lew, ’Tis the exeception when a fiircd’s untrue. But here end there the human heart it vile— Life’s splendor never can be hid from view. More sunshine fal s upon the earth than rnio. The days are touched with more of joy than woe. Despite the hurt andgrief which menmustknow Of sin and tbamc-our hearts growglsd again— And gladness sets all honest eye a aglow. Edgar A. Guett. final sentence. I want yon to think, just now, about the great bulk of a man that sat in his big chair beyond me at the window. It wag like-Hudson to turn up with an outland ish human creature attending him hand and foot. Hew the thing came about sounded like a lie; it sounded like tbe wildest lie that anybody ever put foward to explain a big yellow Orieotal fol lowing one absut. But it was no lie. You could not think up a lie to equal tbe actual things happened to Hud son. Take the way he died! Tbe thing began in India. Hudson hsd gone there to consult with tbe Matchese Giovanni coneerniog some molecular theory that was in volved in his formulas. Giovanni was digging ■pa buried temple on tbe northern border of the Punjab. One night in an explorer’s tent near the excavations, this inscrutable creatnre walked in on Hudson. No one knew how he got into the tent er where he caase from. Giovanni told about it. The tent-flap simply opened, tbe big Orieptalappearcd. He bad some thing under his arts rolled up in a prayer-carpet. He gave no attention to Giovanni, but be sala amed like a coolie to the little American. \Maater he asid, \Yod are hard to find. I have looked over tbe world for you. ’ ’ And he squatted down on tbe dirty floor by Hudson’s camp-stool. Now, that’s precisely the truth. I suppose any ordinary perion would have started no end of fuss. But.not Hudion, and|net, I think, Giovanni. There’s tbe altitude that we can t understand in a genius - did you aver know a man with an invantiva mind who deubtad a miracle? A'thing like that did net seom unreasonable to Hudson. Tha two meD spent the remainder of the night looking at the present that tbeereature btongbt Hudson in his piayer carpet. They wanted to know where tbe Oriental got it, and that's hew bis story earns out. He was something— srarcAer, seems our near est English word to it in the great Shan Mon astery on the southeastern plateau of tbe Gobi. He wai looking for Hudion, beeanse he had the vision tbe light here was another word that the two men could find no term in any modem language to translate; o little flame, was tha literal'meaning. Tha present was from tha treasure-room of the monastery; the very carpet aronnd it, Gio vanni ssid, was worth twenty thoniand lira. There was another thing that came eut in the talk that Giovanni afterward recalled. Hudson was to accept the present and the man who brought it to him. Tho Oriental would protect him, in ercty way, in every direction, from things visible and invisible. He made quite a speech about it. But there was one thiag freas whieh he could not protect him. Tbe Oriental used a lot of bis ancient words to explain, and he did not get it very clear. He seemed to mean that tbe creative forces of tho spirit would not tolerate a division of worship with the creative forces of the body—the celi bate notion in the moaastic idea. Giovanni thought Hadson did not understand it; he thought he himself understood it better. The monk was pledging Hudson to a high virtue in tbe lapse of which something awful was sura to happen. Giovanni wrote a letter to the State Depart ment whea he learned what had happened to Hudson. The llate Department turned it over to the court at tbe tiial. I think it was one of tbe things that influenced the judge iu his decis ion. Still, at the lime, there seemed no other reasonable decision to make. The testimony must have appeared incredible; it must have appeared fantastic. No man reading the record could have come to any other conduiion about it. Yet it seemed impoisible—at least, it seemed impossible for me to consider this great vital hulk of a man as a monk of one of the oldest re ligious orders in tbe world. Every common, academic conception of such a monk be distinctly aegatived. He impressed me, instead, as pea- seesing tbe ultimalequalilits of clever diplomacy — the subtle ambassador of some new Oriental power, shrewd, suave, accomplished. When one read the yellow-backed court-record, the sense of old, obscure, mysterious agencies moving in sinister menace, invisibly, around Hud son could not. be escaped from. You believed it. Against your reason, againit all modern experi ence of life, you believed it. And yet it could not be true! One had to find that t eroict or topple over all humen knowledge that is, all humen knowledge as we understand it. The judge, cutting short the ciiminal trial, took the only way cut of the thing. There was one man in the world that every body wished could have been present at the time. That was Sir Henry Maine, Maine was chief of the-Criminal Investigation Department of Scot land Yard He had been the Eoglish Resicent in the Northwest provinces on the fiontier of the Shan states. But at|the time he was in Asia. As soon as Scotland Yard could release Sir Henry, it sent him. Hudson’s genius was th« ■ommon properly of tbe world. The American Government could not, even with tbe verdict of a trial-court, let Hudson’s death go by under the smoke-screen of sueb a weird, insciutabte mys tery. 1 was to meet Sir Henry and come here with him. But my train into New England was de layed, and when I arrived at the station, I found that Maine bad gone down to have a look at Hud son's cuuntty-bouse, where tbe thing had hap- panod. It was on an isolated forest ridge of tbe Berk- shires, no human soul within a dozen miles of it — a eomforteble stone bouse in the English fash ion. There wsa a big drawing-room across eno end of it, with an immense fireplace framed in black marble under a great white panel to the ceiling. It had a wide black-marble hearth. ■ There is an excellent photograph of it in tbe rec ord, showing tbe single andiron, that mysterious andiron upon which the whole tragedy seemed to turn as on a hinge. Hudson used this drawing room for a workshop. He kept it close-shuttered and locked. Not o\ on this big. yellow, servile creature who took ex clusive care of him in tbe house was allowed to enter, except under Hudson'seye. What he saw in the final scenes of the tragedy, be saw looking in through a crack under tbe door. Tbe earlier things he noticed when be put logs on the fire at dark. Time is hardly a measure for the activities of the mind. These reflections winged by in n scarcely preceptible interval of it. They have taken me some time to write out here, but they crowded past while the big Oriental was speak ing—in the panse between hfs words. \The print,\ he eontinoed “waa the first con firmatory evidence, but it was not tho first in dicatory sign. I donbt if tbe Master) himself noticed tbe thing at the beginning. The sednet- ions of this disaster could not have come qniekly; and besides that, Ex«elleccy, the agencies behind tbe material world get a footing in it only with eontinuoua pressure. Do not receive )a wrong (Continued on Page 6)
