Chapter V

My uncle recovered the power of speech rapidly. Before I had been a week in his house he was able to talk with comparative ease. He seemed to enjoy my companionship, and I spent most of my time in his library, conversing with him or conning the musty books that had long lain unread. To me this room was a fascinating and restful place. Somehow it reminded me of an old cemetery. The time-worn books upon its shelves stood in solemn rows, like headstones, sacred to the memory of the men who wrote them--their titles like inscriptions half obliterated. I did not see Rayel for days after the midnight episode that gave me such a startling revelation of his power.

"Do you think that Rayel knows everything that passes in one's mind--a vivid dream, for instance?" I asked my uncle one day when we were alone together.

Yes, except when he is himself asleep. His command of my dreams puzzled me at first. I thought I had put the past completely out of my mind. But I could not hide it from him. Little by little he learned everything in my history. One day I saw him at work on a picture. It startled me. The canvas showed a man lying on a surgeon's table. The knife had just severed an artery in his thigh. There were four men working over him--I was one of them. Gradually the features took on a familiar expression. His face grew paler under the brush. A few touches--the scene was complete. The man was dead--his eyes wide open, staring at me.

My uncle paused and looked earnestly into my face.

"It was a bit of your professional experience," said I. "Something had reminded you of it."

"The night before I dreamed about it" he answered. "My mind, released from the command of my will, betrayed me."

"A strange power!" I exclaimed.

"Incredible to you! Impossible to acquire unless the work begins at birth, and then the possibilities are infinite," said he, drawing his chair closer to mine. "You know what I have done. Start the new-born mind on any highway and see how it hurries along. You can do more, working a little while over the cradle, than all the preachers under heaven, after its occupant has grown beyond your ministry. I tell you, sir, the world is indifferent to its children. Neglected by their parents, subject to hired tenderness or none at all; left to the care of ignorant or depraved nurses, and often taught little but selfishness and greed of gain, the children of men are surrounded by destructive agencies. Can we wonder that the human mind loses in infancy so much of its native power? But so the generations of earth are growing up, bearing embittered fruit and sowing its seed to the four winds. Who cares for the mind and body of a child has the highest possible mission--the most sacred of all trusts. He must give it all his time and strength. He must lead its mind into green pastures; he must share its joys; he