itten about me. And I have other plans. It is not true that I
have recanted. I still believe that I live in a mechanical universe. It
has not been proved otherwise to me, for all that I have peered over his
shoulder and read his malicious statement to the contrary. He gives me
credit for no less than average stupidity. He thinks I think he is real.
How silly. I know he is a brain-figment, nothing more.

There are such things as hallucinations. Even as I looked over his
shoulder and read, I knew that this was such a thing. If I were only
well it would be interesting. All my life I have wanted to experience
such phenomena. And now it has come to me. I shall make the most of it.
What is imagination? It can make something where there is nothing. How
can anything be something where there is nothing? How can anything be
something and nothing at the same time? I leave it for the
metaphysicians to ponder. I know better. No scholastics for me. This is
a real world, and everything in it is real. What is not real, is not.
Therefore he is not. Yet he tries to fool me into believing that he
is ... when all the time I know he has no existence outside of my own
brain cells.

* * * * *

I saw him to-day, seated at the desk, writing. It gave me quite a shock,
because I had thought he was quite dispelled. Nevertheless, on looking
steadily, I found that he was not there--the old familiar trick of the
brain. I have dwelt too long on what has happened. I am becoming
morbid, and my old indigestion is hinting and muttering. I shall take
exercise. Each day I shall walk for two hours.

* * * * *

It is impossible. I cannot exercise. Each time I return from my walk, he
is sitting in my chair at the desk. It grows more difficult to drive him
away. It is my chair. Upon this I insist. It _was_ his, but he is dead
and it is no longer his. How one can be befooled by the phantoms of his
own imagining! There is nothing real in this apparition. I know it. I am
firmly grounded with my fifty years of study. The dead are dead.

* * * * *

And yet, explain one thing. To-day, before going for my walk, I
carefully put the fountain pen in my pocket before leaving the room. I
remember it distinctly. I looked at the clock at the time. It was twenty
minutes past ten. Yet on my return there was the pen lying on the desk.
Some one had been using it. There was very li