The Water Ghost and Others by John Kendrick Bangs (good novels to read in english .txt) 📖

me in my grave, and I do not want to die without imparting to the world the news of a marvellous discovery I have made--the details of a wonderful invention that I have not only conceived, but have actually put into working order. _I_, an unknown man--too old to be able to refute the charge of senility were any one disposed to question the value of my statements--could announce to the world my great discovery a thousand times a day, and very properly the world would decline to believe in me. The world would cry humbug, and I should have been unable, had I failed to find you, to convince the world that I was not a humbug. With the discovery of your eye, all that is changed. I shall have an ally in you, and that is valuable for the reason that your statements, whatever they may be, will always be entitled to and will receive respectful attention. Here in this box is my invention. I shall let you discover its marvellous power for yourself, hoping that when you have discovered its power, you will tell the world of it, and of its inventor.'

"With that," said the doctor, "the old fellow handed me the tin box, which I opened with considerable misgivings as to possible results. There was no explosion, however. The cover came off easily enough, and on the inside was a curiously shaped telescope, not a drinking-cup, as I had at first surmised.

"'Why, it's a telescope, isn't it?' I said.

"'Yes. What did you suppose it was?' he asked.

"'I hadn't an idea,' I replied, not exactly truthfully. 'But it can't be good for much in this shape,' I added, for, as I pulled the parts out and got it to its full length, I found that each section was curved, and that the whole formed an arc, which, though scarcely perceptible, nevertheless should, it seemed to me, have interfered with the utility of the instrument.

"'That's the point I want you to establish one way or the other,' said my visitor, getting up out of the hammock, and pacing nervously up and down the lawn. 'To my eye that telescope is a marvel, and is the result of years of experiment. It fulfils my expectations, and if your eye is what I think it is, I shall at last have found another to whom it will appear the treasure it appears to me to be. You have a tower on your house, I see. Let us go up on the roof of the tower, and test the glass. Then we shall see if I claim too much for it.'

"The earnestness of the old gentleman interested me hugely, and I led the way through the garden to the house, up the tower stairs to the roof, and then standing there, looking across the river at the Palisades looming up like a huge fortress before me, I put the telescope to my eye.

"'I see absolutely nothing,' I said, after vainly trying to fathom the depths of the instrument.

"'Alas!' began the old gentleman; and then he laughed, nervously. 'You are using the wrong eye. Try the other one. It is your left eye that has the power to show the virtues of this glass.'

"I obeyed his order, and then a most singular thing happened. Strange sights met my gaze. At first I could see nothing but the Palisades opposite me, but in an instant my horizon seemed to broaden, the vista through the telescope deepened, and before I knew it my sight was speeding, now through a beautiful country, over fields, hills, and valleys; then on through great cities, out to and over a broad, gently undulating stretch which I at once recognized as the prairie lands of the west. In a minute more I began to catch the idea of this wonderful glass, for I now saw rising up before me the wonderful beauties of the Yosemite, and then, like a flash of the lightning, my vision passed over the Sierra Nevada range, my eye swept down upon San Francisco, and was soon speeding over the waters of the Pacific.

"Two minutes later I saw the strange pagodas of the Chinese rising before me. Sweeping my glass to the north, bleak Siberia met my gaze; then to the south I saw India, her jungles, her waste places. Not long after, a most awful sight met my gaze. I saw a huge ship at the moment of foundering in the Indian Ocean. Horrified, I turned my glass again to the north, and the minarets of Stamboul rose up before me; then the dome of St. Peter's at Rome; then Paris; then London; then the Atlantic Ocean. I levelled my glass due west, and finally I could see nothing but one small, black speck--as like to a fleck of dust as to anything else--on the lens at the other end. With a movement of my hand, I tried to wipe it off, but it still remained, and, in answer to a chuckle at my side, I put the glass down.

"'It is the most extraordinary thing I ever saw,' I said.

"'Yes, it is,' said the other.

"'One can almost see around the world with it,' I cried, breathless nearly with enthusiasm.

"'One can--quite,' said the inventor, calmly.

"'Nonsense!' I said. 'Don't claim too much, my friend.'

"'It is true,' said he. 'Did you notice a speck on the glass? I am sure you did, for you tried to remove it.'

"'Yes,' said I, 'I did. But what of it? What does that signify?'

"'It proves what I said,' he answered. 'You did see all the way around the world with that glass. The black spot on the lens that you thought was a piece of dust was the back of your own head.'

"'Nonsense, my boy! The back of my head is bigger than that,' I said.

"'Certainly it is,' he responded; 'but you must make some allowance for perspective. The back of your head is a trifle less than twenty-four thousand miles from the end of your nose the way you were looking at it.'"

"You mean to say--" began the lieutenant, as the doctor paused to chalk his cue.

"Never mind what I mean to say," said the doctor. "Reflect upon what I have said."

"But the man and the telescope--what became of them?" asked the lieutenant.

"I was about to tell you that. The old fellow who had made this marvellous glass, which to two eyes that he knew of, and to only two, would work as was desired, feeling that he was about to die, had come to me to offer the glass for sale on two considerations. One was a consideration of $25. The other was that I would leave no stone unturned to discover a possible third person younger than myself with an eye similar to those we had, to whom at my death the glass should be transmitted, exacting from him the promise that he too would see that it was passed along in the same manner into the hands of posterity. I was also to acquaint the world with the story of the glass and the name of its inventor to the fullest extent possible."

"And you, of course, accepted?"

"I did," said the doctor; "but having no money in my pocket, I went down into the house to borrow it of my wife, and upon my return to the roof, found no trace of the glass, the old man, or the roof either."

"What!" cried the lieutenant. "Are you crazy?"

"No," smiled the doctor. "Not at all. For the moment I reached the roof of the house, I opened my eyes, and found myself still swinging in the hammock under the trees."

"And the moral?" queried the lieutenant. "You promised a moral, or I should not have listened."

"Always have money in your pocket," replied the doctor, pocketing the last ball, and putting up his cue. "Then you are not apt to lose great bargains such as I lost for the want of $25."

"It's a good idea," returned the lieutenant. "And you live up to it, I suppose?"

"I do," returned the oculist, tapping his pocket significantly. "Always!"

"Then," said the lieutenant, earnestly, "I wish you'd lend me a tenner, for really, doctor, I have gone clean broke."



A MIDNIGHT VISITOR

I do not assert that what I am about to relate is in all its particulars absolutely true. Not, understand me, that it is not true, but I do not feel that I care to make an assertion that is more than likely to be received by a sceptical age with sneers of incredulity. I will content myself with a simple narration of the events of that evening, the memory of which is so indelibly impressed upon my mind, and which, were I able to do so, I should forget without any sentiments of regret whatsoever.

The affair happened on the night before I fell ill of typhoid fever, and is about the sole remaining remembrance of that immediate period left to me. Briefly the story is as follows:

Notwithstanding the fact that I was overworked in the practice of my profession--it was early in March, and I was preparing my contributions for the coming Christmas issues of the periodicals for which I write--I had accepted the highly honorable position of Entertainment Committeeman at one of the small clubs to which I belonged. I accepted the office, supposing that the duties connected with it were easy of performance, and with absolutely no notion that the faith of my fellow-committeemen in my judgment was so strong that they would ultimately manifest a desire to leave the whole programme for the club's diversion in my hands. This, however, they did; and when the month of March assumed command of the calendar I found myself utterly fagged out and at my wits' end to know what style of entertainment to provide for the club meeting to be held on the evening of the 15th of that month. I had provided already an unusually taking variety of evenings, of which one in particular, called the "Martyrs' Night," in which living authors writhed through selections from their own works, while an inhuman audience, every man of whom had suffered even as the victims then suffered, sat on tenscore of camp-stools puffing the smoke of twenty-five score of free cigars into their faces, and gloating over their misery, was extremely successful, and had gained for me among my professional brethren the enviable title of "Machiavelli Junior." This performance, in fact, was the one now uppermost in the minds of the club members, having been the most recent of the series; and it had been prophesied by many men whose judgment was unassailable that no man, not even I, could ever conceive of anything that could surpass it. Disposed at first to question the accuracy of a prophecy to the effect that I was, like most others of my kind, possessed of limitations, I came finally to believe that perhaps, after all, these male Cassandras with whom I was thrown were right. Indeed, the more I racked my brains to think of something better than the "Martyrs' Night," the more I became convinced that in that achievement I had reached the zenith of my powers. The thing for me to do now was to hook myself securely on to the zenith and stay there. But how to do it? That was the question which drove sleep from my eyes, and deprived me for a period of six weeks of my reason, my hair departing immediately upon the restoration thereof--a