------------------------------------------------------------------------ Transcriber’s Note: This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects. Italics are delimited as _italic_. Bold font is delimited as =bold=. Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ =The Island of Fantasy= A Romance ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ By FERGUS HUME ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _Author of “When I Lived In Bohemia,” “The Mystery of a Hansom Cab,” “The Man Who Vanished,” etc_. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sorrow and weariness, Heartache and dreariness, None should endure; Scale ye the mountain peak, Vale ’o the fountain seek, There is the cure. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _R. F. FENNO & COMPANY_ 9 and 11 East Sixteenth Street, New York 1905 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY --- [_All rights reserved_] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE ISLAND OF FANTASY. ------------------------------------ CHAPTER I. A MIND DISEASED. Your Eastern drugs, your spices, your perfumes, Are all in vain; They cannot snatch my soul from out its glooms, Nor soothe the brain. My mind is dark as cycle-sealèd tombs, And must remain In darkness till the light of God illumes Its black inane.