I Believe That When I Am Dead,

Pictures! Pictures! Pictures! Often, Before I Learned, Did I Wonder Whence Came The Multitudes Of Pictures That Thronged My Dreams; For They Were Pictures The Like Of Which I Had Never Seen In Real Wake-a-day Life. They Tormented My Childhood, Making Of My Dreams A Procession Of Nightmares And A Little Later Convincing Me That I Was Different From My Kind, A Creature Unnatural And Accursed.

A Vast Silence Reigned Over The Land. The Land Itself Was A Desolation, Lifeless, Without Movement, So Lone And Cold That The Spirit Of It Was Not Even That Of Sadness. There Was A Hint In It Of Laughter, But Of Laughter More Terrible Than Any Sadness-a Laughter That Was Mirthless As The Smile Of The Sphinx, A Laughter Cold As The Frost And Partaking Of The Grimness Of Infallibility. It Was The Masterful And Incommunicable Wisdom Of Eternity Laughing At The Futility Of Life And The Effort Of Life. It Was The Wild, The Savage, Frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

And Not Only Did He Learn By Experience, But Instincts Long Dead Became Alive Again. The Domesticated Generations Fell From Him. In Vague Ways He Remembered Back To The Youth Of The Breed, To The Time The Wild Dogs Ranged In Packs Through The Primeval Forest And Killed Their Meat As They Ran It Down.

Life, In A Sense, Is Living And Surviving. And All That Makes For Living And Surviving Is Good. He Who Follows The Fact Cannot Go Astray, While He Who Has No Reverence For The Fact Wanders Afar.

He Was Justifying His Existence, Than Which Life Can Do No Greater; For Life Achieves Its Summit When It Does To The Uttermost That Which It Was Equipped To Do.