THE SHEARS OF ATROPOS
WILL you please tell me why it is, Doctor," said Leyden, "that when you and I are foregathered in this part of the ship at this hour of the evening we must immediately proceed to rake the lockers of our recollection for the morbid and anomalous?"
I told him that it was perhaps because the accent of a man's mind was largely influenced by his profession, and that as the morbid was my source of livelihood and his the rare and sui generis of Nature, our interests touched these topics.
"Ach! there is something in that," said Leyden, "but not all. It is that only in these violent upheavals do we get to see the hidden things of life, the more superficial of which are evident to a man who can translate the
[ 80 ]
