The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-03-29

mOueuI, puZZlcu, duU dS Breed turned the corner Dr. \ Zelphan came from a room op- ! posite. He, too, looked at the retiring form of Breed and then turned his thick spectacles in Kelvin's direction. "Did he borrow any money of you" he asked abruptly, every hair of his flaming beard apparently pointing out ward in indignant query.
 sOne hundred and fourteen dollars," replied Kelvin, smiling.
 "I knew it." declared Zelphan. Don't let him have any more. The man has gone money mad. Every time he sees a dollar of cash he must have it. He borrows my salary from | me regularly, sometimes the very day | he pays it to me. He borrOws money | from Mrs. Rensselaer,, from Rollins, from Herbert, even from the servants. | and every penny of 1t he hoards. When any of them protests he reluc- | tantly pays it back by check"
 ''I did not know that he was so weak" said Kelvin, shocked. t'I have been aware that the condition was | growing upon him, but had no idea that he had gone so far with his ec- centricities."
 "Eccentricitiesv' snorted the doctor. "He's crazy-crazy as a loon. You're all crazy, the whole crowd of you, vic tins of the American craving for what you call success. Breed is mad | for money; Mrs. Rensselaer, is mad 1 for social position; her nephew is mad for military conquest; Blagg is mad for notoriety. You are the maddest of them .all-mad with the thirst for power. It is going to end in crash, with all your institutions, all your ideals, all your ends and aims and am- bitions clattering down about your ears, the most thoroughly shattered and crumbled wreck and ruin of so- cial structure in the history of the world As nations have risen, so have they fallen. Those that have been the most rapid in their rise to supremacy have been the most rapid in disinte- grafton. Already your pro rata birth rate is decreasing, and century will see America as sterile as France" | Kelvin nodded his head with an em- phatic jerk. ''That is precisely why there must be an utter change in our entire social system. But did not know that you had devoted so much thought to these things"
 "Bahw exploded the doctor, snap ping the fingers of both hands. ''I don't talk all I think. I have talked too much now, but in my desk I have | manuscripts so thick" and with his hands he indicated a pile nearly foot high. 'It is ray great book on national neuroticism. I came to America to study it. Do you suppose that would have taken the position of house phy- sician to MT. Breed if had not found clustered about him exactly the mate No! have spent a lifetime on neural deterioration considered from a racial standpoint. I spent a year and half in China, one in Japan, one in Russia, three in France, two in England and l five years scattered about in other | parts of Europe and Asia. Now am nearly four years in America. I shall | wait till Henry Breed dies. He will die in year or possibly two. Then I shall go back to Switzerland to pub- fish my great work I shall die my self soon after that. I, too, have a fatal nervous disease, but it cannot kill me before five years, and cannot live beyond seven. But my book will live. That will be the valuable part of pr. Zelphan. Immortality of the soul No. Immortality of the body? No. Immortality of the brain? Yes. For ever!'
 Possibly, agreed Phillip dryly. "No doubt, doctor, your work will be accepted as a standard. Five years afterward some other savant will write another four volume work upset ting all your theories, and five years after that somebody will mention your name to a noted alienist or student of neurotics and he will say: 'Zelphan- pr. Zelphan? Um-m-m-m-the name seems trife familiar. Didn't he dis cover one of those exploded serum treatments or something?'''
 Bah" snapped the doctor, and his beard, now beginning to streak with gray, seemed to turn redder from the redness of bis face behind it. "Bah!'' he repeated. but this time the exclama- | tiOn was weaker and PhilliD as he