Fletcher Pratt Read Online Free

abstract passions of love, grief and hate that there is little left with which to carry on an ordinary conversation. And in this technical age one would find amazing gaps if he were to try to discuss things, using only the words found in "The Merchant of Venice."
    Even worse than his paucity of English words was the. wealth of metaphor with which Ashembe found it necessary to clothe the most simple statements, and the archaic character of Elizabethan English as a medium for expressing just what he wanted. "Leaden casket" was the best phrase he could find to describe his vehicle (whatever it was) and he kept referring to the place from which he had come as a "moon" or a "deed," doubtless remembering the "so shines a good deed in a naughty world" line in the play.
    Unraveling these difficulties consumed the greater part-of the day. What we finally made out of it all was that he had come from another planet; and that he wished to exchange valuable formulae for "gabo." What "gabo" was, neither of us had any idea, except that it was apparently some metal, judging from Ashembe's description of it as "glittering more than gold."
    He confirmed that his radio helmet in some mysterious way enabled him to learn things while asleep, helping him' appraise ideas as well as words, and thus enabling him to learn a new language in remarkably quick time. He was particularly anxious to have us read more to him on scientific and technical subjects.
    Fortunately, there was, among the few books we maintained at Joyous Gard, an old set of the International Encyclopedia that Merrick had once purchased in a moment of aberration, and had brought up here to help us identify various plants and insects. When we managed to communicate to Ashembe that we had a compendium of worldly knowledge, he was off on the instant for his helmet, explaining in a good many splurges of oratorical blank verse that he wanted to begin absorbing it at once.
    That evening Merrick took up the task of reading to him, while I set about the obtruding necessity of food, and from then far into the night we kept at is ceaselessly, skipping all the articles that were historical, literary or merely of interest to the curious, and confining ourselves to technical and scientific matters—which, it must be admitted, we understood very badly ourselves. In the morning Ashembe put us at it again, this time discarding his helmet and trying to learn to read by the ordinary method.
    "My father's people have for long and long unable been to extract attainments (knowledge?) by images of the glittering eye. So thoroughly have we become imbued with the use of the Tensal (his helmet, apparently) that the method of the printed page to us is lost. But in reading from your book, the children of your thought creep feebly on their hands and knees, and I would even follow the book myself, gramercy."
    "The children of your thought?" repeated Merrick. "The image of the mind whereof you speak," said Ashembe. "You read to me, 'the brontosaurusis a sauropod' but in my mind I see you have in yours no picture of the brontosaurus, nor of sauropods. All, all is words, beyond the ken of vacant heads."
    "I like that," murmured Merrick. "Vacant heads!" "Have I unwitting wrought your senses harm?" queried Ashembe, with anxious courtesy. "I crave forgiveness. Read me further." And that evening, like the previous one, saw us alternating at the International Encyclopedia while our guest from another planet slumbered before the fireplace.
    "Your information-book is faithless," Ashembe told us the next morning. "It halteth always at the verge—I would dig deeper in your mines of knowledge. Do you sense more?"
    "Not much more than the encyclopedia, I'm afraid," I-said. "Neither of us is well posted on science, except for a little corner of knowledge. I have looked into the fungi some, and Merrick understands birds."
    A light seemed to dawn on our visitor. "My friends, I have not asked you of your argosies," he said. "What