New Britain herald., 1922-12-01
THE THING ON THE HEARTH

He was an immense creature. He sat in an upright chair that seemed to lave been provided especially for him. The great bulk of him flowed out and filled the chair. It did not seem to be fat that enveloped hin. It semed rather to be some soft, tough fiber like the pudgy mass making up the body of deep-sea thing. One got an impression of strength.
 The country was before the open window; the clusters of cultivated shrub on the sweep of velvet lawn extending sto the great wall that in- closed the place, then the bend of the river and beyond, the distant noun tains blue and mysterious. blending indiscernibly into the sky A soft sun, clouded with the haze of autumn. shone over 1t.
 You know how the faint moisture ir the bare foot will make an im- pression."
 He paused as though there Was some compelling force in the refec- tion. It was impossible to say, with accuracy, to what race the man b.- longed. He came from some queer
 
 and the cast of his features were Mongolian. But one got always, be- fore him, feeling of the hot East lying low down against the stagnant Suez One felt that he had risen slowly into our world of hard air and sun out of the vast sweltering ooze of 1t.
 He spoke English with a certain care in the selection of the words, but with ease.
 It is necessary to try to understand this, because it explains the concep- tion everybody got of the creature, when they saw him in charge Of Rodman. am using precisely the descriptive words; he was exclusively in charge of Rodman, as jim in an Arabian tale might have been in charge of kings son.
 The creature was servile-with al- most groveling servility. But one felt that this servility resulted from something potent and secret. One looked to see Rodman take Solomons ring out of his waistcoat pocket.
 I suppose there is no longer any doubt about the fact that Rodman was one of those gigantic human intelligences who sometimes appear in the world: and by their immense conceptions dwarf all human knowl- edge-a sort of mental monster that we feel nature has no right to pro- duce. Lord Bayless Truxley said that Rodman was four generations in advance of the time; and Lord Bayless Tr,Ixley was beyond question, the greatest authority on synthetic chemistry in the world
 Rodman was rich and, everybody supposed, indolent; no one ever thought very much about him until he published his brochure on the scientific manufacturt of precious stones. Then instantly everybody with any pretension to knowledge of synthetic chemistry turned toward him.
 The brochure startled the world
 It proposed to adapt the luster and beauty of jewels to commercial uses. We were being content with crude niitation colors in our commercial ,lass, when we could quite as easily have the actual structure and the actual luster of the jewel in 1t. we were painfully hunting over the earth, and in its bowels, for few crystals and prettily- -colored stones which we f.oarded and treasured, when in :, misunderstanding laboratory we could easily produce them, more perfect than nature, and in unlimited quan- tity.
 Now, if you want to understand what I am printing here about Roo- man, you must think about this thing as a scientific possibility and not as a fantastic notion. Take, for example, Rodman's address before the Sor- home. or his report to the Interna- tional Congress of Science in Edin- burgh. and you will begin to see what IT. mean. The Marchese Giovanni, who was a delegate to that congress and Pastreaux, said that the only thing in the way of an actual prac- tical realization of what Rodman out lined was the formulae. If Rodman could work out the formulae, jewell stun could be produced as cheaply as glass, and in any quantity--by the carload. Imagine it; sheet ruby, | sbeet emerald, all the beauty and ,rstre of jewels in the windows of the corner drug store!
 And there is another thing that want you to think about. ThinK about the immense destruction or ,,al,,e--not to US, so greatly, for our stocks, of precious stones are not large; buttthe thing meant, practic. ally. wiping out all the assembled wealth of Asia except the actual earth and it's structures.
 Dit the thing some other way and consider it. Suppose we should sud denly discover that pure gold oeuid he produced by treating common vel low clay with sulphurfc acid, or that somes genius should set up a machine n the border of the Sahara that re- ce,ved sand at one end and turned out so cked wheat at the other! What, then. would our hoarded gold De worth or the wheat-lands of Aus trs,,a Canada or our Northwest
 The illustrations are fantastic. put the thing Roman was after was rra ctical fact. He had 1t on the way. c,ovanni and Lord Bayless Truxiey veye convinced that the man would work out the formulae. They tried. over their signatures, to prepare the world for 1t
 Tbe whole of Asia was appalled,. r,,. raiahs of the native states Tn India prepared memorial ana sent st to the British government.
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