THE STORY-TELLER.

Evening Post, Volume LIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1897, Page 2

THE STORY-TELLER.

• The Terror of It.* It was nbout the time that Rontgen published the wonderful results of his experiments with what he called the X-rays, and the whole world of scientific men felt that they were on the verge of a great event. I was determined to go far beyond the goal reached by Rontgen. I would not vest until the physician should be able to •ac and examine any part of the human organism as the patient lay on his bed, and to study the anatomy of the body in health or in disease as if he had the eye of the Creator. A power of Bight able to see with the Rontgen rays was the first object to be attained, and my researches were directed towards finding the means of gaining that power. My belief in the possibilities of achieving this result was confirmed by the evident and great differences in the sight of animals— differences which seemed to me due less to variations in the mechanism of thtf ere than to the capacity^!, the retina to respond to rays other than those which go to form what to the human eye it light. • • • * • I was satisfied that I had made one of the most wonderful discoveries of modern times, and that by its publication my name ■would be made famous. By means practically as simple as that by which the ■uttNon diltM (he pupil of his patient, I coulanow ntefcc the eye susceptible to those •übtlfl rays of emanations to which fow, perhaps none, of the objects surrounding' us are denso or opaque. I was determined without delay to make the experiment on my own sight.' I took the phial which contained the liquid aud carefully painted •with It the Lasidea of my eyelids. Then I ■aS.Jown in my easy-ohair, with closed •ri*, to give the drug a fair chanco of iflowing its power. I had sat thus for a considerable time, my mind full of the great discovery I had made, and dwelling on all its possible consequences, immense in their neoltt, endless in their variations, 'when it occurred to me to write at once to Professor — — , with whom I was in correspondence on the subject of my researches, to tell him tow far they had gone. I turned to my writing-table for this purpose. Eor a moment 1 thought my brain must have given way, and that my imagination was playing' me a trick. I could see nothing like a table. The whole room had taken a fantastic and ghostly appearance. Instead of the mahogany bureau which held my writing-materials, there was a misty and barely visible outline, which I can only compare to that of a ship looming through a dense fog". Upon the surface of this mint, floating or rather upheld in their places by some magical and invisible support, were the brass handles, ornaments, locks, and keyholes of the drawers. There was nothing else to be seen with a distant and defined outline, except here and there a screw or an angle-iron which has been used in the joining, and a bunch of keys and some gold seals which I kept in one of the drawers. Rising now from my chair, I saw that to my eyes I was a skeleton, with metal buttons and a watch and chain belonging to it in some mysterious way without touching it. I could see that my legs ware nothing but bones without either or llesh, although I was strangely conscious of the presence of both. It was a ghastly and sickening sight to look down at my own legs and body and see the bare bones of my own skeleton, and watoh the motions of the uncovered, or apparently uncovered, joints. Between excitement and over-worry and the negleot to take proper food, rest and exercise, my nerves were no better than t;huse of a drunkard. I oould hardly endure the sights which I had imposed upon myself. It seemed to me that it was near our breakfast-hoar, and I took cut my, watch to see the time. I could see the hands, but the dial was invisible, while the works below it were clearly seen. The feeling of existence and reality conveyed by the sense of touch and the perception of warmth seemed the one barrier left between me and death. My wife's voice at the door recalled me to myself. It was her practice, if I had not left the laboratory, to fetch me to breakfast, and usually our youngest child, a fine, stout little boy, came with her. Prepared •is I was to some extent for what I wan to see, the reality — if anything can be called real in this wonderful world— came upon me with a shock I could hardly bear. I tottered buck, and clutched for support at the misty and uncanny object which I knew to be my table.- I dared for one "moment to look agaiu, and in that one moment I suffered enough to make me regret for ever the ambition to see with the divine eye. Two living skeletons walked in, the larger leading the little one by the hand, two chattering, gibbering skeletons, the smaller dancing and hopping along, and waving his little bony hands. Nearer they came, and although I heard the loved and familiar voices of the mother and child, and knew that they were living creatures of flesh as •well as bone, I could not master the terror and the dreadiful feeling of disgust and repulsion that came over me. . . . I tried to regard her with my usual look. I could not. It was not in my power. No one can imagine the grotesque horror of what I saw. Kemeiaber, it was my wife, the •woman I lovefl above everyone elsjs, in whose beauty Ijrejoiped, the light of whose eyes was the sunshine of my life. I looked, and what did I see ? Instead of the comely face with its loving smile, a grinning skull, all the more dreadful because it was alive. Instead of the shapely figure, a ghastly skeleton, whose bony hands were outstretched to touch me. In the most tragic events there is sometimes an element of the ludicrous, ao there was something of the ridiculous in this horrible travesty of life 1 . There were hairpins hovering, as it were, over the skull, and and a necklace of gold floating round the bones of the neck, moved by the breathing, yet appearing to touch nothing ; the steel Ntiffeaings of the corset showed like bars placed unmeaningly in front of the rib», while a shoe-buckle sat lightly and uncannily above the bony instep of each :foot. The rings she wore encircled without touching the bones of her finger*. It was a skeleton masquerading in the skeleton of a ilrcus.

•From "Rontgen's Cnrae," a powerfnlly written story by hir C. H. T. Crosthwaite, in Longman's Magazine.