Mystery fiction; Race relations -- Fiction; Southern States -- Fiction
It was then 8 o'clock in the evening. By his order a telephone had been
placed in the house, and he at once rang up the several hotels. Virdow
was found to be at one of these, and he succeeded in getting that
distinguished gentleman to connect himself with the American invention
and explained to him the situation.
"Take any hack and come at once," was the message that concluded their
conversation, and Virdow came! In the impulsive continental style, he
threw himself into Edward's arms when the latter opened the door of the
carriage.
Slender, his thin black clothes hanging awkwardly upon him, his trousers
too short, the breadth of his round German face, the knobs on his
shining bald forehead exaggerated by the puffy gathering of the hair
over his ears, his candid little eyes shining through the round,
double-power glasses, his was a figure one had to know for a long time
in order to look upon it without smiling.
Long the two sat with their cigars and ran over the old days together.
Then the professor told of wondrous experiments in sound, of the advance
knowledge into the regions of psychology, of the marvels of heredity.
His old great theme was still his ruling passion. "If the mind has no
memory, then much of the phenomena of life is worse than bewildering.
Prove its memory," he was wont to say, "and I will prove immortality
through that memory."
It was the same old professor. He was up now and every muscle working as
he struggled and gesticulated, and wrote invisible hieroglyphics in the
air about him and made geometrical figures with palms and fingers. But
the professor had advanced in speculation.
"The time will come, my young friend," he said at last, "when the mind
will give us its memories complete. We shall learn the secrets of
creation by memory. In its perfection we shall place a man yonder and by
vibration get his mind memory to work; theoretically he will first write
of his father and then his grandfather, describing their mental lives.
He will go back along the lines of his ancestry. He will get into Latin,
then Greek, then Hebrew, then Chaldean, then into cuneiform
inscriptions, then into figure representation. He will be an artist or
musician or sculptor, and possibly all if the back trail of his memory
crosses such talents. Aye," he continued, enthusiastically, "lost
nations will live again. The portraits of our ancestors will hang in
view along the corridors of all times! This will come by vibratory
force, but how?"
Edward leaned forward, breathless almost with emotion.
"You say the time is come; what has been done?"
"Little and much! The experiments----"
"Tell me, in all your experiments, have you known where a child,
separated from a parent since infancy, without aid of description, or
photograph, or information derived from a living person, could see in
memory or imagination the face of that parent, see it with such
distinctness as to enable him, an artist, to reproduce it in all
perfection?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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