For 17 weeks past Dorsen Wells and the Mercury Theatre on the air have brought you Mr. Wells' own dramatizations of literary classic, both of the past and from our own time.

On all broadcasts but one, the presentation has been a single narrative. On one occasion, the Mercury players offered in dramatic form three of the world's great short stories.

The success of that experiment led to nationwide requests for other brief narratives of contrasting emotional appeal.

And so can I, in their 18th broadcast, Orson Wells and the Mercury Theatre on the air bring to life two famous short stories, each dealing with a different fundamental human emotion.

The authors are Joseph Conrad and Clarence Day. Tonight Mr. Wells will not only appear in several parts but will also speak for the two authors as narrators.

And here ladies and gentlemen is the star and director of the Mercury Theatre to tell you about the first presentation. Mr. Orson Wells.

Good evening. There was a man called Kraschenovsky, an agitator for Polish freedom in the fifties, who was exiled by the Tsar. On the journey his child was taken ill and when he begged an official to let him stop on his weight and merciless it, the official said not to bother.

What's one baby's life among all these thousands of the official? If it's dying leave it behind. Luckily this expedient was found unnecessary.

And the happy ending of the story is that little Joseph Conrad Kraschenovsky lived to drop his last name and to learn that careful fortune at English which he practiced for the everlasting glory of our literature.

Tonight we present you with a dramatization of one of the best regarded and most typical of the works of Joseph Conrad.

The heart of darkness could be described as a deliberate masterpiece or a downrighting temptation, a fine piece of prose work at the least.

Its best aspects are an artful compound of sympathy for humankind and a high, tragical disgust.

Its successful contrivance of mood hides its craft as an octopus hides in its own ink.

And almost we are persuaded that there is something after all, something essential, waiting for all of us in the dark alley to the world,

aboriginally loathsome, immeasurable and certainly nameless.

The awe swung to a ranko without a flutter of the sails was at rest.

The flood had made the wind was nearly calm and being bound down the river, the only thing to do was to come and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea reached the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway.

And the offing sea and sky were welded together without a joint.

The air was dark above graves end and farther back still had seemed condensed into a mournful doom, brooding motionless over the biggest and greatest town on earth.

Then in the darkness my friend Marlow spoke.

This also has been one of the dark places on the air.

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