Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... TENDER OF RESIGNATION. LIVING in a country where omens and portents are traced in the chirp of a lizard, the cry and flight of a bird, and in innumerable other natural phenomena, what wonder if one should in time be more or less affected by such ideas, and that on the occurrence of any unusual thing the idea of its possibly occult significance should present itself to one's mind? On awaking, on the morning of the 7th October (1885), I received an unpleasant shock. The splendid portrait of one of the Masters lay inverted on the floor, the top downward, having been detached from the nail where it had hung in my room, * at some time during the night. The cord had been cut as if with a knife, and the picture had turned a summersault over a tall bookcase, and leaned itself against the glass doors without injuring them or itself, save at one corner where its heavy gilt frame had been a little crushed. I was amazed at the accident and distressed * Previously to the building of the present picture-annex of the Adyar Library. lest it might indicate the displeasure of the Master for some serious fault that I had committed. I stood there and looked and pondered a long time, trying to recall any sin of omission or commission which had brought upon me so phenomenal a rebuke, but I could find nothing. Yet the clean cut through the cord belied any accidental rupture of the fibres, and the fact that the canvas had not been torn when the picture was falling and striking the tiled floor made the affair mysterious. No one whom I consulted gave me any reasonable explanation, and I was worried all that day. At last the puzzle solved itself; the accident had been caused by the squirrels, which then infested the house and made their nests in the drawers of our..