"How come? Simply because the thing's impossible—sounds all right, and I'll grant you it might get a laugh—but the simple fact remains that it couldn't be done."
"Bet you a hundred it can!" Judson produced his wallet. "I'll prove that it can!"
"When?" grinned Sam Roberts,
"Just as soon as I finish writing the story," Judson assured him seriously. "I'm going to write up an ante-mortem diary—describe the suicide's sensations hour by hour—right up to the fatal minute. You can leave space for a box to hold that part—and slip it in at the last moment."
"You're batty!" Roberts sniffed at him. "If I didn't know you so well, I'd believe that your love of sensations had gotten your goat to the point where you'd really be willing to do it—simply to make a good story."
"Isn't that a newspaper editors chief usefulness in life?" Judson glared at him. "Wouldn't any dyed-in-the-wool newspaperman give his life to get a story as good as that?"
And, in due course of time, that is just what Judson did. And stranger still was the fact that the editor's grinning head dropped through the Sunday-room skylight upon Sammy Roberts' desk. Somehow it seemed to say, "I win!" and Roberts nodded his head.
Then he lifted the telephone and told a staff photographer to hurry upstairs with his camera.
"Got a knock-out picture here—just dropped down with some busted balloons—right on top of that story Judson ordered in type!"
The Melancholy Pool
Marked by that priesthood of the Night's misrule,
The shadow-cowled, imprecatory trees—
Cypress that guarded woodland secrecies
And graves that waited the delaying ghoul,
Nathless I neared the melancholy pool,
Chief care of all, but closelier sentinelled
By those whose roots were deepest in dead Eld.
Where the thwart-woven boughs were wet and cool,
As with a mist of poison, I drew near,
To mark the tired stars peer dimly down
Through riven branches from the height of space,
And shudder in those waters with quick fear,
Where in black deeps the pale moon seemed to drown—
A haggard girl, with dead, despairing face.
The Crystal Globe
Oh, mystic crystal in whose depths I see
Strange visions—pictures—things that could not be.
And yet, I ponder as I sit and gaze
Into the depth of that transparent maze,
What mental action is it that has wrought,
These fantasies with which my brain is fraught?
For, fantasies they are, and nothing more.
Their mysteries I fain would now explore.
But who can delve the secrets of a dream?
For foolish—simple—complex though they seem
There is that little something, which they hold,
That science unto man has never told.
The Conquest of the Air
"Announcement that the British air ministry soon will establish passenger, mail and freight service with India by air with a fleet of Zeppelins similar to the American 'Shenandoah,' recalls the establishment of many other historic routes to the orient in more than 2,000 years," says a bulletin of the National Geographic society.
"Alexander the Great, Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand de Lesseps and the Berlin-to-Bagdad dreamers are some of the history makers in whose footsteps the British air ministry is stepping. Most of the routes to the Indies have been marked with wars, yet this is planned in the piping times of peace.
"Five days is the schedule the British set for themselves. Vasco da Gama sailed ten months before he touched the shores of India, and even the English packets that followed his route around the Cape of Good Hope took six months. Fastest steamships make Bombay through the Suez canal today in from fourteen to fifteen days. The air ship cuts the time necessary for this journey two-thirds.
"Aviation shrinks the thousands of miles which have caused wasteful and sometimes fatal delay to races of men since the beginning of history. Recent experiments of the American postal service prove the feasibility of twenty-eight-hour service between San Francisco and New York: One hundred years ago it took twice that number of days to transfer mail from coast to coast. Over the caravans toiling slowly across desert trails 4,000 years old between Cairo and Bagdad, swift British mail planes fly, even now making a hundred trips between these ancient centers to one trip made by canal.
"Alexander crossed the Hellespont, where Constantinople now stands, defeated the Persians after marching through Asia Minor, and went on to India. This route was used to some extent by traders, but its long land journey left it exposed to bandit raids. Brilliant Venice could check the Turks by sea with her navy, but she could not defend the land routes against rising Moslem power. The Turkish barrier led Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama to make their historic voyages."
