The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-09-28
TALE OF A SPIDER.
BY JAMES VII lTcome RILEY.

First-I want 1t most distinctly under stood that I am superstltious, notwith- standing the best half of my life. up to the very present. has been spent in tn emphatic denial of that fact. And I am painfully aware that this assertion at so late date can but place my former character in most unenviable light; yet for reasons you will never know, l have, with all due deliberation. determined to hold the truth up stark and naked to the world. with the Just acknowledgement, shorn of all attempt at palliation or ex- cuse. that for the best half of my life I have been simply a coward and a liar. seeond-From q careful and impartial study of my fellow-b beings, have arrived at the settled conviction that nine men of every ten are just as superstitious as myself yet. with the difference, that, for reasons know. they refuse to openly acknowledge 1t. many of them lodging the admission even within their own ever curious and questioning minds.
 Third-Most firmly fixed in this belief and intutively certain of at least the in- ner confidence and sympathy of a grand majority of those who read, I throw aside all personal considerations, defy all ridicule-all reason, if you like-for the purpose wholly to devote myself to the narration of an actual experience that for three long weeks has been occurring with me nightly in this very room. You should hear me laugh about it in the daytime Oh I snap my fingers then, and whistle quite as carelessly and scorn- fully as you doubtless would; but at night--at highland it's night now-l grow very, very serious somehow. and put all raillery aside, and all in vain here argue by the hour that it's nothing in the world but the baleful imaginings of a feverish mind. and the convulsive writhings of dyspeptic fancy. But enoughi-Even forced to admit that I'm fool. will tell my story.
 Although by no means of a morbid or misanthropic disposition, the greater DOT tion of my time l occupy in strict se- clusion, here at my desk-for only when alone can I conscientiously indulge cer- tain propensities of thinking aloud, talk ing to myself. leaping from my chair oc- casionally to dance a new thought round the room. or take it in my arms, and hug and hold and love it as 1 would great, fat, laughing baby with bunch of jing- ling keys.
 Then there are times, too, when worn with work and I find my pen dabbling by the waysde in sluggish blots of ink, that delight to take up the old guitar which leans here in the corner, and twang among the waltzes that l used to know or lift a most unlovely voice in half-forgotten songs whose withered notes of melody fall on me like dead leaves. but whose crisp rustling still has power to waken from the dusty crypt of darkened forms and faces" the glad
 
 about me in the wayward past and made my young life one long peal of empty merriment Someway, I've lost the knack of wholesome laughter now, and for this reason. maybe, l so often find my fingers tangled in the strings or my guitar; for, after all, there is an in dehnable something in the tone of a guitar that is not all of earth. l have often fancied that departed friends came back to hide themselves away in this old husk of song that we might pluck them forth to live again in quavering tones of tenderness and love and minor voices of remembrance that coax us on to heaven. Pardon my vagaries.-Fm m practical enough at times; at times fail. But l must be clear to night; l must be, and I will
 This night three weeks ago I had work ed late though on task involving noth- ing that could possibly have warped my mind to an unnatural state, other than that of peculiar wakefulness; for al- though physically needful of rest, felt that it was useless to retire; and so wheeled my sofa in a cosy position near the stove, lighted cigar (my chum Hays had left me four hours previous) and, Ringing myself down in languid pose best suiting the requirements of an aimless reverie, I resigned an serious complex lties of thought and was wholly com fortable.
 The silence of the night without was deep Not footstep in the street below. and not sound of any living earthly thing fell on the hearing. though that sense was whetted to such acuteness could plainly hear the ticking of clock som,where across the street.
 All things about the room were in their usual order. My letters on the desk were folded as I answered them, and filed away; my books were ranged in order, my manuscripts tucked out of sight and mind and no scrap of paper to remind me of my never-ended work. save the blank sheet that always lies in readiness for me to bounce upon with any vagrant thought that comes along. and close be- side it the open inkstand and the idle pen.
 1 had reclined thus in utter passive ness of mind for half an hour. perhaps when suddenly I heard or thought heard, below me in the street the sound of some stringed instrument I rose up on my elbow and listened. Some serenader l guessed. Yes. l could hear it faintly, but so far away 1t seemed, and indistinct was uncertain. l arose. went to the