The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1891-12-31

u " II. al 3sa&
With his free hand he seized I,
, arm, and, as kept silent, he leana;;
forward as one who listens. SCENE,
to make out some faint, sinenla
sound, something like the glidin@ =
. a reptile through the. grass. 81
"She is waiting for me!'' he cried
. in tone in which could detect at
Unsurpassed terror; ssI must gov,,s
'Weil, if you must, let us so in to
gether." q
He seemed to hesitate still. The,
with a determined gesture, he NUT
tered: "Come, then; even you coulc
defend me, if by any chance"
lie did not complete the sentence
But as his hand glided over mine
| felt that it was cold as ice.
He led me now We arrived before
the door of the dollhouse. He drew
a key from his pocket, and turned Il
in the lock; and, as I stepped for
ward, seeing nothing about me in the
darkness, he drew me back with sud.
den violence.
"On your life, he whispered, "do
not novel"
In spite of my assurance, felt a
vague, unreasoning dread seize upon
me. Again I heard that strange
rustling which had struck me before;
it was a gentle, gliding sound, such
as is made bya paper slipping across
marble floor
All at once l knew not how, Fred
erick caused glaring, binding light
to illuminate the dollhouse, and
Mortified, my hair rising upon nv
head, I fell back against the door, nv
hands clutching it's iron bars!
In the centre of the room, in the
midst of an endless variety offantas-
tically formedplants, a being, anight-
mare, a horror arose before my ewes:
a hydra, a polyp-a Thing no man
could name.
1t had the shape ola colossal court,
and from it's surface innumerable arms
reached out, with gluacous-bulbs,
like eyes, at the end of each. The in
ner body seemed green, the arms
were of reddish purple, and, as they
spread out to those ghoulish eyes,
| the blood-red seemed to blend and
mingle to the greenness of q putre-
scent corpse.
My eyes closed involuntarily, and I
felt a terrible gripping at my heart;
and still / head that gliding sound,
which [ OWNED came from those arms
as they reached forth and contracted
within themselves necessarily. @
At last, surprised that I had not
been seized by this hideous and mon
strous thing, I mustered. up strength
to look at #. Frederick, who Vas a..
now as pale as death, had taken from
the basket piece of meat, and, with
infinite precautions, balancing gin
gerly on the tips of his toes, as if he
feared lest his hand be touched by
those horrible tentacles, he placed the
raw morsel on the extremity ola clus-
ter of those waving arms. And sud-
denly, as if they we're Of elastic, the
hrms drew in upon themselves, drag,
ging the meat, which was thus
brought to the shorter arms, which I
now saw composed an inner circle.
And all the arms bent in toward the
centre, till I could no longer see the
meat. . Is, E
Shuddering and sick at heart, I
glanced at Frederick. His forehead
was covered with perspiration, his
teeth chattered-the demoniac brute
was motionless now, ravenous over
it's monstrous deglutition.
"She eats, Titane eatsr' he whis-
pered.
'"Titane?" I repeated after him,
stupidity.
"You do not know, you cannot un-
derstand! Do you not recognize her?
Now, look, see, she is tanned "and
all at once I comprehended, l saw
this monstrous beast.
For nearly an hour she will be this
way" said Frederick; "ah, I.know
why you come! They think me mad!
But it is not true-mad! III, who
by a miracle Of perseverance, by a
master-work of selection, have devel-
oped the insectivorous plant Drosera
to this formidable size. You will
see it, this monster, hold out it's ten
tacles to me in an instant empty
and [ must nourish it, 1 must feed it,
Or" He glanced about him ap.
prehensively,
"Or?' repeated.
"Listen," said he; you shall know
my secret, You know with what ard
or followed the discoveries of Nits-
chke, Warming, and Darwin in the
study OF those strange plants that
are intermediate between the vege-
table and animal worlds, which en-
trap insects, seize them, and feed up-
on them, slowly absorbing and suck
ing norishment from them. I was
sure of the results of these strange
studies, I did not doubt the end for
an instant, and said to myself that
the Drosera, the Dionna, the Dros-
ophyllum are-listen to me we'll, now
the degenerate posterity of mon
strous animals, whose terrible forms
have remained to us in the legends of
the most primitive peoples. Hydras,
chimeras: krakens, dragons-all have
existed, the human imagination has
created nothing. But by climatic
adaptations, because of geological
Characterization. and thronrh 49,