And the Yeah, Beyond the Wall by Ambrose Beers.

Many years ago on my way from Hong Kong to New York. I passed a week in San Francisco A long time had gone by since I'd been in that city, during which my

ventures in the Orient had prospered beyond my hope. I was rich and could afford to

revisit my own country to renew my friendship with such of the companions of my youth as still lived and remembered

me with the old affection.

Chief of these I hoped was Mohan Dampere, an old schoolmate, with whom I had held a desultory correspondence which had

long ceased, as is the way of correspondence between men.

You may have observed that the indisposition to write a merely social letter is in the ratio of the square of the distance between you and your correspondent.

It is a law.

I remember Dampier is a handsome, strong young fellow of scholarly taste, with an aversion

to work and a marked indifference to many of the things that the world cares for, including

wealth, of which, however, he had inherited enough to

put him beyond the reach of want. In his family, one of the oldest and most

aristocratic in the country, it was, I think, a matter of pride that no member of it had ever been in trade, nor politics, nor suffered any kind of distinction.

Mohan was a trifle sentimental, and had in him a singular element of superstition which led him to the study of all manner of occult subjects

although his sane mental health safeguarded him against fantastic and perilous faiths.

He made daring incursions into the realm of the unreal without renouncing his residence in the

partly surveyed and charted region of what we are pleased to call certitude.

The night of my visit to him was stormy.

The Californian winter was on and the incessant rains flashed in the deserted streets or lifted by irregular

gusts of wind was hurled against the houses with incredible fury.

With no small difficulty my cab man found the right place, a way out toward the ocean beach in a sparsely populated suburb.

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