Adventure Magazine Cover — page 170: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

168 calm flags pace none but my brethren in quietude; yet—yet—the cheeks of that young noble were so red, despite his errors; while we who rest from the warfare of the world are become pale almost out of the likeness in which we were created. Certes we are at peace; but is it the peace of victory, or of defeat? Ah, dear friend yet unborn, sweet reader hereof, pity me for that I have labored long and have accomplished nothing. Forgive me that, proposing a treatise upon the suc- cessful conduct of life, I have demon- strated but mine own failure therein, and that now I come to confess perplexity deep as, or deeper than, thine! If happiness doth not reside in the things of this earth, why doth that instinct which is as much part of mortals as arms and legs, send us questing first in the world; aye, first—and last? Why— But questioning is not my office. I have told what hath been commanded. Y FATHER—old Porsini—Stella and her mother—the Duke Ales- sandro—Anita—poor Lucio that I slew with these hands, God rest him— Matteo Scarlatti and his daughter—my son that hath grown to manhood and that I shall never see; all these have I shown as alien figures thrusting me, each in his own fashion, hither and yon from my path through life. O egotism of man! Had they not paths, as clearly marked as mine, from which I did equally lead them away? Were they not, as much as myself, in quest of happiness, and did I not fail END. F. R. Buckley them even as they failed me? Shall they be blamed if, as I struggled to save my soul, they struggled likewise to save their own? Were they not as much my victims, as they were my oppressors? Aye; and most of them are yet in the hurly-burly, suffering still; my son for one— Some do say, and it is coming to be ad- mitted for the greater glory of God, that the stars in the sky are great worlds, and that in the vast of space they do hurtle to and fro, never colliding; each upon a circuit de- scribed in the beginning by the Eternal Wisdom, and kept inviolate by the AIl- mighty Power. Why, when dead planets of rock are thus, is poor frail man, alive and sensitive, con- demned to move in an orbit that must in- tersect not one, but many others? Why, when the universe whirls with such precision, should its crawling lord alone be left to blunder without plane So, so: it is finished; and by way of pen- ance [ have written that for which I might well be burned, were it read (as it may not be) before two hundred years. Perhaps even after such a time they may bring forth my bones to the faggots; it hath been done before. . . . Ah, well! It will be in spring or summer, unless the winter be exceeding mild; and who shall raise me once more from the darkness, hath my present blessing. The earth is vanity; so transient and de- ceitful that it can not provide a dwelling for true joy; but when I have been gone from it so long, meseems my mortal dust will rejoice in the breeze and the sunlight; the bird-songs and the soft, sweet smell of the grass. cCOmiclbool CO