The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-06-09
The White Night
By DIR. FRANK CRANE

Coffee did it all. I admit it. Alcohol may be bad for some people, but for me (coffee, after the sun crosses the yard-arm," is rank poison. But I like it. took it. fell. Hence the white night"
 A coffee night to me is a curious thing. My ordinary powers of common sense, of which I flatter myself I have considerable, are paralyzed. Every uncommon sense, secret superstition, lurking in my blood, every overcome delusion of childhood, every con uuered fear rises and masters me.
 There's a general jail-delivery of all the nonsense that have kept locked up.
 I am afraid. I am not afraid of any, thing, but of nothing. Do you understand what just plain fear is, without any object, just the essence of fear?
 My heart beats very loud. I remember. how frightened I was when I first studied physiology at school, and learned what a fragile thing a heart is. That old dread comes back. find myself wondering if the thump, thump, in my breast is going to stop.
 What if should die? Before me rolls cinematographic scroll of the whole perform ance. The last breath. The discovery of my lifeless remains. The funeral. A cricket chirps. Perhaps that is the death-watch. People have believed in shat. What if they are right?
 The window curtain moves. Doubtless breath of air, says my feeble common sense. But my strong insanity sweeps this banal ex- ;planation aside.
 That may be the dead trying to return to me. I have heard they make such efforts to communicate with the living. have seen ''The Return of Peter Grimm" and have read Mrs. Oliphant
 Which of my dead is it? What would they say? Some calamity it is they would warn me of. Else why should they trouble to come?
 What calamity? Perhaps it menaces me now Perhaps burglars are in the house. l listen intently. There! That sounded like q step on the stairs. Was not that the sound of a plank of the floor creaking? l try to think how I should act if burglars came. Some of them, I have heard, shoot anyhow; {; murder just for the pleasure of cruelty, no matter how submissive the victim may be.
 A dog suddenly yelps under my window. l am rigid with fear The. sound goes through me like a knife.
 He had as well bitten me. It cannot be much worse to have hydrophobia than to be scared to, death.
 I grow quieter and sink into half sleep:
 Humping Jerusalem! What was that? l knou if ia all over with me now. In sheer l desperation I leap up and turn on the light The wind had pushed the curtain and the curtain had knocked a glass from the. table, It lies shattered on the floor
 But as far as am concerned Attila and all his men might just as well have pillaged fine town. For I am all in cold sweat.
 Then, no one being nigh to hear, l stand in my paiamas in the middle of the floor and solemnIy curse coffee and all its works the wicked Arab that invented it, the ships that carry it, the merchant that sells it, the cooks that brew it, and myself that guzzles it. l execrate and consign to the lowest circle of Dante's pit all coffees, coffee with cream, coffee with bot milk, coffee blonde and bru- nette, mazagran and demi-tasse; may they all be sunk in the Seven Seas, or burned and their ashes scattered to the four winds of heaven. that no trace nor remembrance may remain of so vile and guilty a thing Ana thema, anathema, anathema!
 The next morning the first thing want ' is coffee.