The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-07-10

aware that his once lofty reason was
tottering upon it's throne. 1t was that
weird but exquisite poem, since SO well
known under the name of 1.-The Haunted
| Palace" few stanzas will recall 1t to
those who have already perused It and
will give to those who have not an Idea
of its character 1t was thus In that
| dim-lit studio with the high, tall windows
through which the faint red beams pene-
trated-that gloomy apartment with the
tattered hangings and the high, carved
ceiling, In that grim and crumbling house
that Roderick sang to his friend:
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted.
Once a fair and stately palace
Radiant palace-reared its head.
In the monarch thoughts dominion
1t stood there.
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving unsteady
To a lute's well tuned law.
But evil things in robes of sorrow
Assailed that monarchs high estate
(Ah. let us mourn, for meyer morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate)
And travellers now within that valley
Through the red-Iiten windows see
Vast forms that move Enthusiastically
To a discordant melody.
While, like rapid CHASTITY river
Through the pale door,
hdeous throng rush out forever
And laugh-but smile no more
The paintings which Roderick produced
defy description. But IL ever a man
painted an idea he did. Yet the ideas.
while not exactly part and parcel of that
lettering brain, were all so tinged by the
weirdness of his mental condition as to
defy reproduction In words As his elab-
crate fancy brooded over his work his
paintings grew little by little into a
| vagueness which was nevertheless an in
| creased reproduction Of the idea he was
| striving to convey by his brush. One of
his phantasmagor1c conceptions which
partook so rigidly of the spirit of abstrac-
ton may be Swallowed forth. although
l
representing a long. rectangular vault or
tunnel, with low walls. smooth, white and
without interruption or device. Certain
| accessory points of the device served to
| show that this excavation lay at an ex-
ceeding depth below the surface of the
earth. No outlet was seen in any por-
ton of its vast extent and no torch or
other means of artificial light. Yet a
| flood of intense white light rolled through
! the place, bathing the whole in a ghast-
| ly splendor.
| While Roderick Usher and his friend
were thus employed, the one striving in
| vain to improve the mental condition Of
| the master of the house and the other
awaiting in terror the final catastrophe
which his morbid, half-crazed senses told
him was somehow, how, he could not tell,
but with circumstances of terror, impend-
| ing-whle they were thus employed the
name of the Lady Madeline was not men
toned between them.
| The visitor felt instfnctively that to
mention her name would but increase the
affliction under which her brother was
laboring, and he waited for Roderick to
speak. But Roderick spoke not Of her
who was in the minds Of both, naturally
most of the time. During this period the
visitor obtained many glmpses of the
strange Authorizations which were ever
clustering thicker and thicker, about the
doomed reason Of Roderick.
| The opinion in its general form that
there is sentence in all vegetable things
is no novelty. It has been advanced and
! maintained by many eminent scientists
But in the dsordered mind of Roderick