gination. I am but a bird of passage that lights on the boughs of
different nationalities. I belong to no flock; my home may be among the
palms of Syria, the olives of Italy, the oaks of England, the elms that
shadow the Hudson or the Connecticut; I build no nest; to-day I am here,
to-morrow on the wing.

If I quit my native land before the trees have dropped their leaves I
shall place this manuscript in the safe hands of one whom I feel sure
that I can trust; to do with it as he shall see fit. If it is only
curious and has no bearing on human welfare, he may think it well to let
it remain unread until I shall have passed away. If in his judgment it
throws any light on one of the deeper mysteries of our nature,--the
repulsions which play such a formidable part in social life, and which
must be recognized as the correlatives of the affinities that distribute
the individuals governed by them in the face of impediments which seem to
be impossibilities,--then it may be freely given to the world.

But if I am here when the leaves are all fallen, the programme of my life
will have changed, and this story of the dead past will be illuminated by
the light of a living present which will irradiate all its saddening
features. Who would not pray that my last gleam of light and hope may be
that of dawn and not of departing day?

The reader who finds it hard to accept the reality of a story so far from
the common range of experience is once more requested to suspend his
judgment until he has read the paper which will next be offered for his
consideration.

XIX.

THE REPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL COMMITTEE.

Perhaps it is too much to expect a reader who wishes to be entertained,
excited, amused, and does not want to work his passage through pages
which he cannot understand without some effort of his own, to read the
paper which follows and Dr. Butts's reflections upon it. If he has no
curiosity in the direction of these chapters, he can afford to leave them
to such as relish a slight flavor of science. But if he does so leave
them he will very probably remain sceptical as to the truth of the story
to which they are meant to furnish him with a key.

Of course the case of Maurice Kirkwood is a remarkable and exceptional
one, and it is hardly probable that any reader's experience will furnish
him with its parallel. But let him look back over all his acquaintances,
if he has reached middle life, and see if he cannot recall more