Avon Fantasy Reader No. 14 — page 43: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

thousand in the air we breathe; but we did not know it was there till Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay iscovered it toward the end of the last century. That discovery makes me hopeful. Sometimes—sometimes | think that in the days to come, we might have instruments so delicate that we could measure the spiritual intensity of places like this temple. Measure the degree of faith, of hope, of longing for a better world. [ would like to measure the holy dreams that fill the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, that was built in about 1300, or the air of St. Paul’s and St. Peter’s, or that place in the Mosque ot Saint Sophia at Stamboul that is called “Che Holy Wisdom.’ ” For a long interval the big naturalist remained quiet; then with a strange eagerness in his voice he went on: “If such an instrument were perfected, one might also be able to measure the devilish quality of places. Of demon-filled places that I have visited in the Malay.” In silence we sat and stared at Tjandi Bororboedoer. The sun had set; and a soft rose tint spread slowly over the porous trachyte and lava blocks of which the temple is constructed. This tint deepened to a gorgeous crimson, changed to a dark red; then with a fierce suddenness the tropic night plunged upon the building and blotted it out. Filled with black gloom now were the interminable galleries with their two hundred scenes of Buddha’s spiritual experiences. Invisible were the thrilling bas-reliefs beginning with that of Maya, the mother of Buddha, watching the white elephant descending on a lotus flower from heaven to symbolize the conception of her son, and ending with the last thrilling scenes that show the weapons of the Prince of Darkness turning into flower petals as they fall upon the head of the saint. From the soft dusk came the voice of Jan Kromhout. The great Buddhist sanctuary seemed to be nearer now. It was, I thought, squatting just beyond the row of fame trees whose red flowers perfumed the night. “At times,” said the big Dutchman, “the East frightens me. I become the victim of terrors. Then I pack my things and take a trip home to Amsterdam, so that | can get my courage back. There is sanity in Holland. Much sanity. f aim nearer to God when | put my feet on Kalver Straat. I go and sit in the Oude Kerk, and those stained-glass windows of the Lady Chapel make me feel clean and good. There ts a lot of faith in stained glass. And I go to the Ryks Museum and look at the fine pictures by Frans Hals and Rembrandt and Rubens, and so I cure myself. Ja, ya. I cure myself, “Five years ago I went back to see my sister and her husband. I stayed a month; then the East came in the night and whispered to me. I thought that the whimperings of little animals came up to my room from the Leidsche Kade. My sister cried and begged me to stay, but I could not. “On the ship that brought me to Batavia, 1 made friends with a strange man. He was a Russian named Andrey Ilyin, and he was an archeologist. He was but thirty-four years of age, and he was big and strong and bold- looking. And he was a dreamer. A preat dreamer. Some one has said that there is no rest for the man who is both a dreamer and a man of action, and this Russian was of that type. He knew the East. He thought it the cradle of lite, the home of all the mysteries. He had many ideas that were disturbing; 41 comiclsooks.com —_——_~=