"Yes; what does it all mean ?" Corliss stretched lazily, and cocked up his feet on the table.

He was not especially interested, but Colonel Trethaway persisted in talking seriously.
"That's it! The very thing--the old and ever young demand which man slaps into the face of the universe." The colonel searched among the scraps in his note-book.

"See," holding up a soiled slip of typed paper, "I copied this out years ago.

Listen.

'What a monstrous spectre is this man, this disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown up with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that glitter in his face; a thing to set children screaming.