AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3148, 15 July 1914, Page 75

AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY.

(By William J. Gallagher, in Chambers ’ s Jo urnal.)

Through the speeding mass of men and women who thread our streets, by broad thoroughfares and narrow and tortuous turnings, one seems to see the image of an unexpressed thought, a suppressed desire, an unformulated quest. If language were given us to conceal our thoughts, the looks we wear also endeavour, to hide what, is uppermost in our mind: The busy rush, the hasty greeting, the expressed resolve to do such and such a task, hides another thought. Below” the mere, work of life there is a “ castle in the air’ 5 in each mind, “and that representgpfthe true character of the person. This is so deep and so concealed that it will for ever remain a mystery to the average crowd. There are “ mysteries ” which the daily newspapers have got hold of —at least a, portion of such mystery; but this other that walks the street, concealed under hat, cap, or bonnet, who shall fathom it? And yet that very thought which passes, concealed, is moulding history, is making the character of the drama, is solving the eugenics and the sanitation of the age, is winning streets, is removing "the shims ’ —is, indeed, the whole of life in embryo. Just occasionally the quick-sighted may perceive the "tense brow, the knitted forehead ; as a certain point in the determination is reached the eyes glow , for a moment, and look “ far away.” We have all, at times, seen that “ far-off ” expression. Then the mask is put on again, for the face must w r ear the “ business look.” Behind comes a bicycle; in front and to each side are waggons and motors and everything to avoid—it is so hard to exist at all in the streets, —and the thought, as it was for that tense moment, is locked up; locked, perchance, until the quiet sanctum of one’s room is reached — perhaps locked up for ever. The sadness of it! One may even forget one’s castle. intended to be built with such- scrupulous care, such beauty. Its pillars were to be of silver and gold; its cornices were to be of all manner of precious and glittering gems. Alas for the genius that, to save himself from the oncoming of a wheel, turned away from the ?>plendid drama, and perchance became for ever an ordinary unit in the great an ass of unsentimental

mankind! Traces remain, we will suppose; but the splendid edifice was never built.

A mystery ! Are you fond of unravelling such? Whore did that splendid dream exactly die down? What was the particular impediment that began the “crushing-out” process, and left the golden butterfly, saddest of sights,* wingless, a mere crawling insect? Such revolutions, such terrible mysteries, are happening daily, hourly, weekly, momentarily, on our streets. There are lost treasures which no man may regain, vast as those splendid treasures of the lost Incas, about which so much has been written from time to time. The horror of lost thought! Try to think of it! In a minor sense, in the midst of rush and traffic, one is for ever brought face to face with it. You are talking, perhaps, with a triend, running over old family connections, recounting the names of those you knew in youthful days. As you speak, for a time each name, and the abode of its owner, come before you in a quick mental flash ! Then suddenly you have forgotten. A puzzled look is on the brow, and enters the eyes. “What was the name of So-and-so? She knew the S -s<’’ Ah, it is gone! Just in this way splendid lines of poetry, splendid turns of rare and rich description, come to you on the street, and pass. At night you do remember the golden and rich archaeological or literary fields you meant to traverse; you do know somewhat of the method in which you intended to cast the description; but the “ golden moment ’ ’ (never returns;. the “silver bowl” is “broken at the fountain.”

Thee present writer, sitting in the reference department of a public library, ■in the town of his whilom habitation, had got thus far when a friend called. He waved him “ off.” Thoughts were much too dear and too secret to be disturbed; but no, that friend would talk, and the writer has been able to put in the fact by way of illustration. But, oh, what treasures were lost —founts of imagination—during those few “gossipy” moments! Dear friends, please do keep away from the student’s den! If you have any love for the artistry of words, if you have any conception of how “golden” is “silence,” leave the “ lion in his lair,’’ leave the author to bridge over the vast chasms of thought with new thoughts, let him work his rare gift into chaplets of amaranthine sweetness and rounded form. The gift is not yours perhaps, and the atmosphere he is creating is more than worlds to you. Have you ever got up in the morning “ seedy,” so to speak, unrefreshed after a night of more or less broken sleep, and gone to the newspapers or magazines afterwards, finding the rare and precious thought which compensated you for all the weariness, the want of natural rest? Yes,, you have! Such thoughts are being born somewhere in the crowd that passes —in every town and village, hourly, daily, and weekly! The great poem is being evolved, built up of frass and trees, flowers, men, and women; uilt of the look in a child’s eyes, of the pathos in some toiler’s face. The cause of that sad look which-the dreamer seizes is a vast mystery; the evolution of a smile or a tear is a greater puzzle than the fate of some missing steamer which left port gaily but'which never returned, and was never heard of again! The daily happenings, the accidents, the crimes, formulated in mind or at this moment' taking place; the advent of the “ psychological moment ” —these are mysteries as strange as anything recorded on the printed page, events which make us stare in wonderment, which *tnake our bosoms heave with true human sympathy; for man is so gregarious, and nothing can happen to any unit without in some degree affecting rhe 'race. That “ missing ” man or woman 1 How it appeals to the human crowd! What speculations, what tender feelings, what an upheaval of general human emotions! The sadness of “ might-have-beens ” strikes us here, the sadness of the raven’s “ Nevermore ” in the great effort of Edgar Allan Poe! To stand on the seashore, and to think of the wonderful things which the mighty deep contains; to know that, save for the rush of the mighty breaker and the sight of the lesser “ rollers that dissolve in pearls ” along the shore, nothing of the mysterious and hidden thought can ever come to us—this is surely* a sad lesson as to our limitations. But even here there is the great law of compensation at work, as it is everywhere throughout the universe. Just because we do not know we draw imaginary pictures; and these are so grand, and have sometimes been so nigh the truth, that fiction’s page has afterwards proved to be the fact. Over and over again have the exact facts almost tallied with the dreamer’s structure of thought. It was so in the case of Stevenson’s “Treasure Island ”; it was so in the creations of some of’H. Eider Haggard’s works. We assume no psychological knowledge as to these facts; nor will we treat of what is called the far-reaching will, a kind of telepathy with worlds unseen, which some discuss at present. All we do know is that conjecture itself is grand.; that the “ solutions,” which may not be solutions at all in any real sense, have a beauty of their own; they are the work of that ceaselessly working and wonderful mind of man, which is greater than even it thinks, which has such reserves of power, such vast latitudes of fancy and romance, from which to draw. Truly the “well” of knowledge is “ deep,” but the mind will ever bring up something worth having. There are many mysteries, all as yet unsolved. By what peculiar mental process does a man fail to remember, the while he holds it, the pen in his hand; searching all the while for it, as if ft was lost; never relaxing his grasp on the article the whereabouts of which is so bewildering ? By what strange process does he come to sober fact, and know that he holds it; know, too, before he has once dropped it or put it aside? Or that poem-arrangement, verse after verse,

in mind? ■ He loses the exact structure, but its leading thought is remembered! Without much grief tor that which he cannot recollect, he builds up a new “tower of beauty.” Is it better; is* it equal to the first idea? We are inclined to believe the first conception the true, pure idea. But from the very fact of what has “ gone ” for ever he gets something which can be used, and which a keen-sighted man would almost perceive in the new creation, something that enriches, as pin manufacturers are enriched by the loss of pins, and mustard manufacturers by the amount of condiment we leave unused and wasted on our plates! Then is waste or wreckage of thought by distractions gain? In some cases. There are gems lost for ever, no doubt; but as in the case of losirig the beloved object which was the very soul of our existence, it is better to have “ loved and lost than never to have loved at all ” ; and, in like manner, it is better to’ have had a dream, the exact form,of which has perished, hut the very loss of which has made us think. The worst of it is that the thought cannot return in the same form; the occasional rose of October or December cannot be the same as June’s roses! But the former is a rose. W e must be content with the treasure which has remained.

Another mystery comes up to us at this moment: why should we have written of this subject at all? It is really a subject about Nothing, because the thing lost, the thing which is a mystery beyond knowledge, cannot be said to exist. This reasoning would, however, kill all poetry, all the beauty which delights children, and sometimes their elders. The fact of the mystery itself—the mystery as a great force—has been present with us as we wrote. And the mystery also is greater as we think how or when we shall end, there is so much to say. The world is largely made up of mysteries; and it is now a mystery to us whether we should continue indefinitely or put the pen away. But there! enough. We have lost the thread of what we were about to say. Someone has entered, the room; thought has retired. Will this subject engross us to-morrow? Alas for the “ unfinished ” window in “Aladdin’s Tower”!