Mutually possessed with the spirit of mysticism which seemed ever to brood over the moss-grown city, the beautiful lake and its environs, these impressionable children of nature entered into a playful contest to determine who could write the most harrowing story dealing with the supernatural. At least, it is known that Lord Byron, Mary Godwin, and Byron’s physician entered the contest. So supremely terrifying was the story of Mary Godwin that Byron never finished his story, and the story of the physician is unknown to the world of literature. Her story tells of the secret ambition and dreadful realization of a German student of science in the University of Ingolstadt. Pushing his clandestine research into the realm of the unknown until he discovered the secret of human life, ambition kindled in his soul to mimic the master work of God. He created a soulless body of a man, and, by the application of his discovered chemical, infused into the cold, dead form the vital spark. It did not step from his touch as Adam stepped from the Divine Hand--in beauty and in grace--but came groveling into consciousness, a distorted monster. The student fled from his work; but in the silent hours of the night that followed, his horrid creature stood, with bloodshot eyes, above his bed, and, with hideous face and wildly waving arms, cursed the daring intelligence which had called it from the night of nothingness into an unnatural and miserable existence. Again the student fled, and continued to flee from the awful work of his hands; but ever the monster followed, penetrating the barriers of his most secret lodgings, begging death at the hands of its creator, or silently pressing against the pane of his window a face of suffering and rage. It murdered his friends and the members of his family. It pursued him through life, and at last stood and shrieked above his coffin--a terrible witness to the folly of his wisdom. Its work of vengeance ended, it stepped into a self-kindled fire and perished. Could it not have been that this monster was more than a fantastic dream of Mary Godwin’s brain? Did not this imaginary German student, misusing the discoveries of science to ape the power of God, foreshadow the mighty German nation harnessing every art and discovery of civilization for the creation of a monster a thousand times more terrible than that of the strange story--the monster of Militarism? Have we not seen this German-created monster, with body of steel and breath of fire, go forth to terrorize the world? Failing in its unnatural purpose, have we not seen it, like the awful ghost, turn upon its creator and hound a dynasty to its death? And is not this monster, like the other, now perishing in its self-builded fires? Beautiful Mary Shelley! You cannot arise from your long sleep to answer our anxious question and tell us whether your uncommon story was the picture of a dream or the record of a vision!