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Page 103 of 1061929 · PDF PAGE 374
…the same sort of thing keeps on happening and when, furthermore, I find myself able to predict, as experience has taught me to do in the last three years, that they will happen, and even how the pieces will fit into the puzzle, I am justified in assuming a causal connection. As any billiard player knows, while a ten-shot might be fluked by a novice, or even that he might run up a break of twenty or thirty now and again, a consistent sequence of breaks averaging twenty- five over a series of months cannot possibly happen by chance; this proves i…
1929 · PDF PAGE 274
…e was no sense in risking a shot till moonrise. I could hardly see my own hands, much less the sights of my rifle. When the moon rose at last, the few animals that had arrived vanished with equal stealth. There was a great silence in the jungle and the roars of the tigers (there were several all round the compass) became less frequent and less near. All of a sudden I became aware of a tremendous disturbance. It was not exactly a noise --- I'm inclined to think that it may have been a smell. I cannot say definitely more than this, that I had the…
1929 · PDF PAGE 518
… two or three less important essays; some short stories, of which I may mention "Every Precaution" for its local colour; and all but the last two or three chapters of my first serious attempt at a long novel, The Net. I also began from the very depths of my spiritual misery a very strange book of an entirely new kind; so much so that I describe it as "A Novelissim".1 Its title is Not the Life and Adventure of Sir Roger Bloxam. It remains unfinished to this day; in fact it is hardly theoretically possible to finish it, strictly speaking. I have …
1929 · PDF PAGE 169
…h me across China. His subordinates were all good men in their way and we had not trouble with them. Our transport as far as Askole, the last village, depended on local coolies or ponies, a hundred and fifty of one or fifty of the other. Occasionally the same set would make two or three marches with us, but as a rule they were changed every day. Except on one or two occasions when the ignorance and bad manners of the Austrians let to misunderstanding, everything went smoothly. The naivety of the natives was sometimes very amusing. The regular r…
1929 · PDF PAGE 546
…hat she should live. Her helplessness only inflamed my love. I clutched the broken straw of hope more desperately every day, and when at last the axe fell it was as if my own neck had been upon the block. For over a week I could not trust myself to speak. I fought my anguish in silence. The agony of my earlier bereavement came back with tenfold terror. I cannot tell why, insane as I was with grief, I escaped being tempted to revenge myself upon the gods by betraying their trust and breaking my oath of allegiance. It was indeed my most poignant …
1929 · PDF PAGE 393
…Scottish, Memphis and Mizraim Rites of Freemasonry. I remembered that I had been made a Sovereign Grand Inspector General of the 33° and last degree of the Scottish Rite in Mexico ten years before, but I had never bothered my head about it, it being evident that all freemasonry was either vain pretence, tomfollery, an excuse for drunken rowdiness, or a sinister association for political intrigues and commercial pirates. Reuss told me a {628} good deal of the history of the various rites, which is just as confused and criminal as any other branc…
1929 · PDF PAGE 506
… implacable pain. Through it all I stuck to my guns; I never forgot that I loved the other woman and all that she stood for. But when at last exhaustion ended the orgy, twelve hours or more of indescribably insane intoxication, I sank into a sleep deeper than death --- and woke at dawn to find myself inscrutably purged of iniquity. I knew myself innocent {799} in a sense more sublime than any imagination can conceive, and from this state I came mysteriously into a trance of a kind which I had never experienced. Its occurrence marks a definite s…
1929 · PDF PAGE 548
…ion were her own. She dropped the sword every time my eye was off her, but I always made her pick it up and do some more damage, till at last she found out that killing falsehoods, never so smiling and so like her idea of herself, did not hurt her, but on the contrary freed her, and she also found that the harder she struck at truth the stronger it stood. So in the end, she learnt the value of the critical spirit and made it one of her regular weapons. Besides this intellectual trouble she suffered from moral maladies of a similar sort. She had…
1929 · PDF PAGE 125
…n mortal terror. The felling that the ground was slipping under his feed drove him almost insane. I hardly know how he got down to us at last, except that on those loose slopes he could hardly help it. Having put our man through the mill, we became seriously friendly. He took his lesson like a good sportsman and made his {219} apologies in the Mexican Herald, by writing a long account of his adventure in the style of the then famous Mr. Dooley. Eckenstein and I lived in an American apartment house, from the roof of which one could see a great d…
1929 · PDF PAGE 524
…nt step in this direction, the thin end of the wedge, was an article "The Revival of Magick" which ran serially, ending in November. The last paragraph, a mere coxcombical flourish, though written with the quite serious idea of indicating to some person of adequate intelligence, the direction in which to seek for a Master, provided an element in an incident of the utmost complexity. I propose to recount this in great detail, because it gives an idea of the extraordinary strength and subtlety of the proof that I am in communication with some int…
1929 · PDF PAGE 67
…ties required to allow a man to stand on his head and shoulders with sharp spikes! We now found that so far from this obstacle being the last, it was the first! I take a good deal of credit to myself for finding the way to the top through the tangled pinnacles of ice. I began to be not a little alarmed; the sracs stretched line after line above us. There was no way of getting out of them and at any moment the sun might strike the glacier and overthrow their pride and our temerity. We climbed with desperate haste and managed to reach the snow-c…
1929 · PDF PAGE 210
… the whole of my early morning's activities were a mere wish phantasm; being too sleepy to do my duty, I dreamt that I had done so. This last incident is very typical. Not once nor twice in my fair island story have I hound myself in honest doubt which, believe me, is worth half the creeds, as to whether any given incident took place in sleep or waking. It may be thought that my accounts of various magical incidents are under suspicion; but being aware of my peculiarities, I have naturally been at great pains to eliminate any such source of err…
1929 · PDF PAGE 537
…ss. This preparation was now practically complete. With the appearance of the cynocephalus my journey through the Desert had reached its last stage. I went on struggling for some months to get things done, not understanding that I was attempting what was not impossible but undesirable. But at least my impotence was only too evident; and I returned to Europe in December. Even at the time, I felt more or less clearly that I had come to a definite turning-place in my career. It is still difficult to interpret the next period, if only because, for …
1906 · PDF PAGE 212
…s country?” and on being told ‘‘ Yes,” instantly replied, ‘‘ Then I’m agin it.” For after some years of consistent Agnosticism, being at last asked to contribute to an Agnostic organ, for the life of me I can think of nothing better than to attack my hosts! Insidious cuckoo! Ungrateful Banyan ! My shame drives me to Semitic analogy, and I sadly reflect that if I had been Balaam, [ should not have needed an ass other than myself to tell me to do the precise contrary of what is expected of me. For this is my position; while the postulates of Agno…
1929 · PDF PAGE 401
…ompanion for a chat in a club over a glass of lemonade as one {640} could have found between Swiss Cottage and Streatham Common, but the last man in the world to scrap with a ruffian who had no idea of fair fighting. He briefed a barrister who had only recently been admitted, having previously been a solicitor. This man had to face some of the most formidable talent at the Bar. The case occupied two days. I sat in court hardly able to contain my laughter. The farcical folly of the proceedings eclipsed Gilbert's Trial by Jury. Mr. Schiller, an a…
1929 · PDF PAGE 377
… "More money for more work." One ought to have an independent income or another profession. There is hardly one first-rate writer in the last century who has not been starved, persecuted, slandered, bullied, exiled, imprisoned or driven to drink or drowning. To return to The Equinox, there was no question of selling even that small edition even at that pitiful price. I have never had any idea of how to do business. I can make plans, both sound and brilliant; but I cannot force myself to take the necessary steps to put them into practice. My gre…
1929 · PDF PAGE 312
…of the word. Their aspiration to be absorbed in his essence depends on the thesis that "Everything is Sorrow." {510} The Buddha took the last logical step, rejected Brahman as a mere metaphysical figment and replaced the idea of union with him by that of absorption in Nibbana, a state of cessation pure and simple. This is certainly a step forward; but it still throws no light on the subject of how things came to be such that only cessation can relieve their intolerable sorrow; though it is clear enough that the nature of any separate existence …
1929 · PDF PAGE 48
…ue grimness to the story. The widow begged Travers, who was a member of the rescue party (I had left the valley), to allow her to take a last look at her husband. She had been brought up to fancy pictures of people lying in state --- "calm and grand in Death", and that sort of thing . As a matter of fact, all the remains had been brought down in one sack; no one could tell what was whose. This difficulty in understanding that professed climbers could be incurably incompetent culminated in the one great mistake of my mountaineering career. Despi…
1929 · PDF PAGE 359
…l and a very heaven of repose. On the third day we completed the one hundred and fifty kilometres on the road from Logrono to Soria. The last few hours of the walk were made splendid by the thunderstorm which I have already described. I should have liked to stay in Soria for an unlimited time. The town is a stupendous relic of the rugged grandeur of the past. The people were, beyond all praise, sympathetic, and I cannot even begin to describe my appreciation of the cook in our hotel. It may have been that he was benefited by the proverb, "Hunge…
1929 · PDF PAGE 557
…race. He had chosen to try to find an overland route, stark naked on sharp rough rocks --- and there really wasn't a way. He reached, at last, a cave, which possessed a fairly broad opening above water, so that I could throw him his sandals. He had merely to walk home on a broad flat shelf which would not have asked him to wade more than waist high. But he insisted on the most excoriating and dangerous scramble across slimy crags. An hour or so later, he finally got to his clothes. The unfortunate wretch was bleeding all over. We then walked ho…