things known of man—each one distorted, degraded, 
blasphemed.  
Things innocent, things happy, things holy! every 
one unspeakably defiled, loathsome, sickening! During 
the vigil of the day following I recognized one group. I 
saw Italy. First the Italy of the map, a booted leg. But 
this leg changed rapidly through myriad phases. It was 
in turn the leg of every beast and bird, and in every case 
each leg was suffering with all diseases from leprosy and 
elephantiasis to scrofula and syphilis. There was also the 
consciousness that this was inalienably and for ever part 
of Arthur.  
Then Italy itself, in every detail foul. Then I myself, 
seen as every woman that has ever been, each one with 
every disease and torture that Nature and man have 
plotted in their hellish brains, each ended with a death, 
a death like Arthur's, whose infinite pangs were added 
to his own, recognized and accepted as his own.  
The same with our child that never was. All children 
of all nations, incredibly aborted, deformed, tortured, 
torn in pieces, abused by every foulness that the imagi-
nation of an arch-devil could devise.  
And so for every thought. I realized that the putre-
factive changes in the dead man's brain were setting in 
motion every memory of his, and smearing them with 
hell's own paint.  
I timed one thought: despite its myriad million de-
tails, each one clear, vivid and prolonged, it occupied 
but three seconds of earthly time.  
I considered the incalculable array of the thoughts in 
his well-furnished mind; I saw that thousands of years 
would not exhaust them.  
But, perhaps, when the brain was destroyed beyond 
recognition of its component parts——  
We have always casually assumed that conscious-
ness depends upon a proper flow of blood in the vessels 
of the brain; we have never stopped to think whether 
the records might not be excited in some other manner.