The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-02-06

l " eS kVuno, anu lay ShSkS1 SOoDAnE painfully.
 stood in my place dumb with horror
 and indignation but my guide aroused
 me with an imp Atient word, drove me
 with the force ot her look q can describe it in no other way) back into the passage and shut the door of the room again.
 Nov" she said, "do you know us al last?"
 It is" answered in a low voice o wonder and dismay, "it is a scene out oi
 Wilfrid Gales novel"
 | It was a smile almost of triumph that my companion led me back to the sitting. room. She pressed her wasted hands on the table there, and leaned over it toward me as she sald: "Is it satisfactory tc you2 Would you like it to go on for. ever?"
 "l?" was my perplexed and troubled answer.
 "Yes, you," she repeated, with gentle insisting, as if she could now afford to be forbearing with me. "Do you realize i. all, and the weary length of it2 Would you like us never to reach the end ?"
 You ~ l repeated again helplessly
 "Yes, |; l and the others. It is no better for me, knowing what we are and all the thin uselessness of our existence, than for the others, who do not guess, who go through it all again aad again as if it were for the first time and the last. Does it help me, do you suppose it can help me, in the misery of my life here, to know that am but the shadow of man $ thought-a shadow that would have faded away if it had not been strength ened by the force of another mans will. and stamped by the recognition ot so many others with the seal of miserable continuance ?"
 CT do not think that understand you " I replied. although began to fear that I did.
 She smiled incredulously.
 It adds to the bitterness of my sui. ferings which cannot escape, be- cause they are myself and l am them-to know that they are nothing, the reflection ot mans disappoint nent, of his sadness which he put into form and made alive in this way; to know that can never es- cape, never feel or think for myself, but must live over and over again the wretch. edness which he mapped out for me, in order to buy himself fame-and a fame of which he knows nothingl'
 " This, at least," l said, "is not in Wilfrid Gales story; this scene he did not plan."
 "No," she said, her brow darkening, " but it is not much; it is the effort of despair. You can help us, and no one else. knew that, and the knowledge gave me stresgth for once to break through the letters of his mind, and to act for myself. am not lik. the others" she went on gloomily, "who guess noth- ing, but feel on the lines that he laid down and have no thought of escape. sup pose," she said, faint smile showing through the bitterness of her speech. that the evolution which explains all things to you may work also in the world of fancy, where we, like the creations of other artists, are doom to live and he had made me so self-conscious and ana lytical, and you had thrown so much reality into his sketch of me, that it is not wonderful for the self.consciousness to have deepened into a knowledge of what am, and how came to be. | fought and struggled toward the knowl- edge as soon as dimly guessed it, in the hope that it might set me free; for if knew myself to be only the dream of a novelist, would not the dream vanish at h. touch of the daylight of truth But it vas not SO; my knowledge helps me no more than yours does. Do not the Budd- hists teach that consciousness is ignor- ance, and that knowledge will destroy it and absorb all life into the eternally un- conscious! But who among you has reached this height except by those gates of death which are closed to usp Some of your poets have said that creation is only breath of God, which He will in. hale again and so destroy. But the man who gave life to us by his fancy is dead himself, and has left us to survive him. Some of you have said again that you are only thought of your Creator; but do you suffer less because it is only in His | thought that you suffer! If you know that you are nothing, does it help you when you feel cold or hunger2 It helps | me no more than that when go through | those bangs which your friend appointed | for me to suffer. And there is no more | any hope of appeal to him; he has gone away ant left us to take our chance | Nay, he wanted our sufferings to have the | which he had nos and, be- | cause his will was too weak to enforce his | desire, you came forward to help with | the strength of yours.
 Do you mean," said, "that it is all | my fault that you suffer so much ?"
 "Whose fault besides?" she answered indignantly. Your friends fancv ere ated us but it was not strong eaough to give us lasting life. We should have passed away and h>en forgotten, as he would have been, but you have given us a place in the thoughts of men from which we cannot escape; you have breathed new vitality into what was dying before. As long as we are real in the minds of many, we must be real to ourselves too we must work out over and over again the problems of our existence, and love, and hate, and suffer, even though we may come to have the bitterness of knowing as l know-that our passion is foolish ness, our pain a shadow, and ourselves the mere plaything of vain mans am