the effulgent valleys. It is not permitted me to tell your waking

earth-self of your real self, but we are all roamers of vast spaces and

travelers in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in the Egypt which you

call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsan Chan which is to come three

thousand years hence. You and I have drifted to the worlds that reel about

the red Arcturus, and dwelt in the bodies of the insect-philosophers that

crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter. How little does the earth

self know life and its extent! How little, indeed, ought it to know for

its own tranquility!

"Of the oppressor I cannot speak. You on earth have unwittingly felt its

distant presence - you who without knowing idly gave the blinking beacon

the name of Algol, the Demon-Star. It is to meet and conquer the oppressor

that I have vainly striven for eons, held back by bodily encumbrances.

Tonight I go as a Nemesis bearing just and blazingly cataclysmic

vengeance. Watch me in the sky close by the Demon-Star.

"I cannot speak longer, for the body of Joe Slater grows cold and rigid,

and the coarse brains are ceasing to vibrate as I wish. You have been my

only friend on this planet - the only soul to sense and seek for me within

the repellent form which lies on this couch. We shall meet again - perhaps

in the shining mists of Orion's Sword, perhaps on a bleak plateau in

prehistoric Asia, perhaps in unremembered dreams tonight, perhaps in some

other form an eon hence, when the solar system shall have been swept