After two years we are turning once more to the morning's news with a sense of appetite and glad expectation. There were thrills at the beginning of the war; the thrill of horror and of a doom that seemed at once incredible and certain; this was when Namur fell and the German host swelled like a flood over the French fields, and drew very near to the walls of Paris. Then we felt the thrill of exultation when the good news came that the awful tide had been turned back, that Paris and the world were safe; for awhile at all events.

It was my privilege, many years ago, to make the acquaintance of the obscure literary hermit, whose talk I have tried to reproduce in the pages that follow. Our first meeting was one of those chance affairs that now and then mitigate the loneliness of the London streets, and a second hazard led to the discovery that we had many interests in common. I think that the Hermit (as I shall call him) had begun to find the perpetual solitude of his years a growing terror, and he was not sorry to have a listener; at first, indeed, he talked almost with the joy of a child, or rather of a prisoner who...

This is a book, my dear Turner, which I had in my heart to write for many years. The thought of it came to me with that other thought that I was growing-rather, grown-old; that the curtain had definitely been rung down on all the days of my youth. And so I got into the way of looking back, of recalling the far gone times and suns of the 'seventies and early 'eighties when the scene of my life was being set. I made up my mind that I would write about it all-some day.

Some years ago I met my old master, Sir Frank Benson-he was Mr. F. R. Benson then-and he asked me in his friendly way what I had been doing lately. "I am just finishing a book," I replied, "a book that everybody will hate." "As usual," said the Don Quixote of our English stage-if I knew any nobler title to bestow upon him, I would, bestow it-"as usual; running your head against a stone wall "

There are strange things lost and forgotten in obscure corners of the newspaper. I often think that the most extraordinary item of intelligence that I have read in print appeared a few years ago in the London Press. It came from a well known and most respected news agency; I imagine it was in all the papers. It was astounding.

Dr. Raymond's ultimate goal is to devise a way to open the mind of man so that he may experience all the world has to offer. He calls this, "seeing the great god Pan." After much study of the human mind he devises an experiment which involves minor brain surgery. He performs this experiment on a young woman named Mary, but when she awakes she is terrified and mentally crippled. Years later, the beautiful but sinister-looking Helen Vaughan is reported to have caused a series of mysterious happenings in a small nameless town. She spends all her days in the woods, scares a boy so much he is...

At once supernatural and vividly realistic, this celebrated novel follows the life of Lucien Taylor, a young man possessed by strange dreams and inner demons. In sublime prose, Arthur Machen evokes the wonder and terror of Lucien's erotic visions, and his eventual succumbing. One of the finest portrayals of the "accursed artist," The Hill of Dreams has influenced such writers as H.P. Lovecraft, Henry Miller, and Stephen King.

Arthur Machen was a Welsh writer and mystic who was best known for supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction.

A woman in Wales has her mind destroyed by a scientist's attempt to enable her to see the god of nature Pan. Years later, a young woman named Helen Vaughan arrives on the London social scene, disturbing many young men and causing some to commit suicide; it transpires that she is the monstrous offspring of the god Pan and the woman in the experiment.