The past enveloped him. It possessed him completely.
He saw himself in the remote, untamed youth of his race. The past came to him, a record of the measure of his vision. A portion of his brain—very sane, very active—caused him to perceive himself as he had been before the Migration of Peoples, the earth-wide wanderings of Celt, Tartar, Visigoth and Scythian, and the subsequent crossing and mingling of races had tempered and changed the original germ which was his Ego into Professor Barker Harrison, Christian, Aryan, Anglo-Saxon, American.
He beheld himself on the banks of the Volga. He saw himself a warrior among warriors, fighting, riding, looting, burning; then, in the scanty shelter of a black felt tent, which was surmounted by a standard of buffalo hide bearing the rough cognizance of his chief, he saw himself at meal, tearing like a mastiff at raw lumps of horseflesh and quaffing down curdled milk poured into human skulls.
Shadowy figures were about him. Some of them reminded him of the high-cheeked foreigners, Finns and Letts, who worked in the factories of the town.
