The Nightmare Had Triplets Read Online Free

living flicker by you. You could not change or stop the ever escaping pictures, those highly complex pictures which had in them, not only color and sound, but smell and feeling and taste also.
        That was nonsense, he remembered, as he turned over on the left side, finding a cool place on the pillow: you could not photograph a smell, nor did pictures have feeling and taste in them, either, except in quite another sense. All of it, however, seemed to be nonsense. All of it, all human life, appeared utterly inconsequent ... Yet he enjoyed it, this flickering series of instants, which promised him, somehow, that by-and-by a forthcoming instant would reveal a loveliness, a complete satisfaction, which did not as yet exist. It was this which kept life always interesting, this implied and perhaps untruthful promise of a beauty and of a happiness which did not as yet exist, but to which, by-and-by, he would be attaining.
        For he knew that his own life was different in nature from the lives of his temporary associates. They passed, fritteringly; but he was not thus transient. Even if, as that confounded black dog had said, he had not yet found his suitable audience, his books endured, to delight the cultured and the urbane everywhere, and to delight oncoming ages also. And besides that, he himself endured, with a fixed purpose, which he would presently discover. His living had its determined and lofty goal, if only one could recollect just what it was.
        To the other side (and suiting action to thought, he now turned over again) he had once dreamed, more or less like the philosopher Chuang Tzu, that he was a blue-bottle fly; and the resultant problem had never been straightened out quite satisfactorily… To the other side, even though he did not really desire to have absolutely everybody talking about him at every moment (as that irrational black dog had suggested), and even though “an acute but honorable minority of readers” contented any reasonable sort of writer as an audience, yet he did remain unknown to public at large...
        He jumped now, a little, as he put aside these disturbing reflections. Yes, that wakeful half-hour, in the time before dawn, was troublesome, but there was no need to bother about it on this pleasant afternoon. It was better to continue conscientiously upon one of those therapeutic walks which the family physician recommends, with an affable obstinacy, after you have reached the angina age. It was gratifying, too, to observe that as you passed among your fellow townsmen, in the cool of this pleasant evening, the public at large were all speaking, with appropriate interest and with a hitherto unnoted deference, as to the main glory of Richmond-in-Virginia. It showed that the black dog did not know what he was talking about.

IV. “THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF”
     
        “That is Smirt, the very great author,” an intelligent looking baker remarked to his companions—“yonder tall and dark and superbly handsome gentleman.”
        “He is more beautiful than a Greek god,” declared the butcher, who was plainly a well-read person. “I would describe his appearance as Praxitelean.”
        “But how unimportant, my friends, is his virile comeliness in comparison with his other gifts!” cried the candlestick maker.
        “Born of an old and distinguished family, with an authentic coat of arms,” said Tom, “the genius of Smirt has promoted him to opulence and fame alike.”
        “The books of Smirt,” Dick commented, “are read with deference and a complete lack of understanding, all over the world, in every language. I have seen his picture in two newspapers.”
        Then Harry said, a little enviously: “His morals are by no means what they should be, and all women pursue him. He has dug much in other men’s ditches.”
        “In its every passage his life,” declared Madame Quelquechose, “has been an incredible romance, for Smirt