Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-07-26
AND HERE 1T CONTINUES

NNHE darkest mood of all his days was
L upon him now. When Rockwell came,
soon after Jim and the nurse left him,
he simulated sleep, for he had no mind
to talk and the doctor. deceived by his
even breathing, had left. contented. At
last he was wholly alone with his own
thoughts, as he desired. From the mo-
ment Jim had read him tho wires which
were the real revelation of the situation
to which he had come, he had been trav-
cling hard on the road leading to a
cul- sac, from which there was no
egress save by breaking through the
wall. Never. it might have seemed, had
his mind been clearer. but it was
clearness belonging to the abnormal. 1t
was straight line of thought which. in
It's intensity, gathering all other thoughts
into its wake. reduced them to the con-
troll of an obsession. 1t was borne in on
his mind that his day was done. that
nothing could right the disorder which
had strewn his path with broken hopes
and shattered ambitions. No life work
left, no schemes to accomplish. no CON
struction to achieve. no wealth to gain,
no public good to be won. no home to
be his, no woman his very own. to be
his counselor and guide in the natural
way.
AS myriad thoughts drove through his
brain on this Indian summer night, they
all merged into the one obsession that he
could no longer stay. The irresistible
logic of the brain stretched to an abnor-
nal tenuity, and an intolerablc bright
ness was with him. He was in the
throes of that intense visualization
which comes with insomnia. when one
fs awake yet apart from the waking
world, where nothing is really real and
nothing normal. He had n call to go
hence, and he must go. Minute after
minute passed, hours passed, and the
fight of the soul to maintain itself
against the disordercd mind went on.
All his past seemed but part of
desert, lonely and barren and strange.
In the previous year he had made a
journey to Arizona with JOwctt. to see
some railway construction there. and at
ranch he had visited he came upon
some verses which had haunted his mind
ever since. They fastened upon his
senses now. They were like a lonesome
monotone which at length gave calm to
his torturing reflections In his dark
ness the verses kept repeating them
selves:
] heard the desert calling and my heart
~, stood still
heart: 80 ''''
breath came from the mesa and a message
And my soul and I arose up to depart.
heard the desert calling; and knew that
over there,
In an Olive sheltered garden where the
Was woman q the sunrise. with the star
And a beauty that the almond blossom
IN the nighttime when the ghost-trees gIim-
mersd in the moon,
Where the mesa by the watercourse was
spanned,
Her loysliness enwrapped me like the bless
And all my life was thrilling in her hand.
hear the desert calling and my heart
There is summer in my world and in my
heart;
breath comes from the mesa and a will
beyond my will
Binds my footsteps 1 rise up to de-
part.
This strange, half mystic song of the
mesa and the olive groves. of the ghost
trees and the moon, kept playing upon
his own heated senses like the spray
from cooling stream. and at last it
quieted him. The dark spirit of self
destruction loosened it's hold.
His brain had been strained beyond
the normal; almost unconsciously his
fingers had fastened on the pistol in
the drawer of the table by his bed. 1t
had been there since the day when he
had Travelled down from Alaska-loaded