Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1919-05-29
THE TWICE. AN
By Eleanor NJ. In4ram -s4Aathor o From the Car Behind,

ary; the season OF rain In tn6t IN.
terror of Brazil where Corey Bruce
had made an end of life with as
shocking s~uddenness as If he had
stepped from the brink Of a precipice.
That shock was now a year old, yet
he was still striving to accustom him.
self to its fact. He sat with his ell
bows on his knees, his forehead rest
ing in his palms, his thin fingers
clutched into the bush of his red hair.
His angular figure had. grown stopped
from hours. days spent in this atti-
tude. His eyes were closed, because
there was nothing in his cell he wish
ed to see and much that he did not;
also, because he was trying to concen-
trate thought. In his ability to with
draw into the retreat of imagination
lay his only amusement, his only oc-
cupation. his only refuge from stark
panic and madness.
Lest he lose that ability, he. set
himself mental tasks to be done He
recalled books that he had read,
chapter by chapter, and continued
their narrative through additional
episodes Of his own creation. He re-
hearsed plays he had seen; his COL
l%ege-days; his life at home in Phila-
delphia. Sometimes this latter form
of discipline took on the torture of
the unattainable, but he persisted; he
believed that he had to persist. This
afternoon he had set himself to
t~ataloguing the things he would first
demand, s%upposing he should find
himself free and at liberty to have his
desires. Eyes shut, he strove to at
tain the art of self -hypnotism.
What would he have first? His hot.
dirty body Moderated the answer. He
would have a bath, a long-drawnout,
ceremonious bath; with u%nscented
soap and piles Of clean, ~agreeably
rough Turkish towels. A savagely
hot bath, followed by a cold shower.
Fresh clothing next-with shoes.
Somehow, it always had seemed to
him the last degradation to be bare
foot. And then, after that orgy of
cleanliness, food, real food! For
thirteen months he had been either
sickened or hungry, as a permanent
condition; he was free TO choose
which he would endure. No doubt,
the food was edible from a native
point of view, but not from his. He
was too badly out of condition for ap-
petite to rouse before bowls of black
beans and nlanioc. He craved air and
exercise. Inaction, mental and phys
ical. was killing him. Sometimes he
Numbered into black alleys of
AAoo6hts al u AAIoAl SoNAo az
mad from such things. without his
own knowledge, and If insane men
really are unconscious of their sur
roundings. Suppose a man should
live thirty OF forty years as an UNI
kempt mailman in a lost village-in-
sane men were said to be long-lived-
would not such a man have done bet
ter to refuse food and die, while his
last remnant of sanity remained ?
Vac-h,,f h4rv Grory CyharH ~ St@4d
at that last outpost of hope? What If
one fingered too long? Or if n died
too soon; just. perhaps. as rescue ar
rived and arrived too late? Yet what
rescue could be hoped for a con-
demned, and justly condemned, con-
vict? Corey Bruce had killed his
man. He never had denied it. he did
not pretend to regret it. But he
could not evade the payment.
foot and startled him. He sat up and
saw the dark thing retreating as a
moving blotch across the earth floor
ing. The effort to trace the loath-
some creatures course recalled to
him his greatest material desire. How
had he come to forget in his reverie
that which in reality he most desired !?
At the head of his list, should have
stood his eyeglasses. Only one who
SAllcFs like IIIl 1EOIil ucdIS
could conceive the captive's misery of
blurred sight: a misery that had been
his since the day Of his arrest. To be
in a place SO ~repugnant; to hear a
swarming life about him or feel its
creatures brush past him in the cell
and be unable to see them or judge. of
their quality: to live, as it were, in a
twilight, tortured by violent head
aches all these had been unwilling
ly melted out to the prisoner by the
zambo who had snatched his spec
tacles from his nose, on the mem
orable day when. he had been made
captive. Bruce thought Of those tor
toise-shell trimmed spectacles by day
and woke in the night to long for
them.
When he could no longer see the
spider, he fell to specializing as to the
insects method of attaining its place
in hi. cell. Had it come from a tree