[4] The Magic Reciprocals, or Harmonic Responses, were discovered by Gustavus Frankenstein, and are properly drawn in color. The following are extracts from letters received from Mr. Frankenstein, to whom the author is indebted for the drawing which appears at the beginning of this story: "Tomorrow morning I shall send them. They are most lovely. They are halos, if ever there was a halo. So wonderfully magical are they that I think thou wilt modify thy language, and perhaps say that Frankenstein produces halos almost, if not quite, to the very perfection. Why, they seem to dazzle and bewilder like the very sun itself. They do not actually emit light, but they look like the soul of light. More like beautiful thoughts are they, spirits of loveliness, than like anything tangible." ... "I was a long time working out the mathematical problem of the perfectly balanced and completely symmetrical circular harmonic responses; and then the drawings were executed with the greatest care as to perfect precision and accuracy." ... "The little round white spot in the center imparts an animating expression to the whole Response; and now, as I write, it occurs to me very forcibly that the whole Response looks something like—and very much like—the iris of the eye, and the little round spot in the center is the pupil. If the iris were all iris, having no pupil in the center, it would appear expressionless and not vividly suggestive of the soul of life. The spot in the center may be looked upon as the tangible existence or thing which is the source of the surrounding halo. Again: The true and complete Response—the mathematical assertion—has the animating spot in the center."
[5] I follow M. Gaston Paris's spelling of the word.
[6] This is a translation of a Tagalog prose version. The episode of the story appears in metrical form as a beggar's song among the Pampangos.
[7] "Vailima Letters," I., p. 147, quoted by Matthews.
[8] Caballos, horses; Caballeros, gentlemen.
[9] See Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature—Volume 1, page 204.
[10] In the interest of the unusual I can not refrain here from personal reference. As I sit writing this notice of Pliny and old Vesuvius, my house continues being shaken every few minutes by one of the most prolonged series of earthquakes known to science, according to the report of our famous observatory chief, the Jesuit, Father Jose Algue. Taal volcano, fifty miles from Manila, is now in violent eruption, January 29. The microseismographs by 9:15 last night had already recorded one hundred and seventy-two shocks in five minutes less than twenty-four hours, and the shaking still goes on, while a party of scientists from the government bureau is preparing to visit the spot. There should surely be material for a story in that trip.
[11] The reigning Capitan (town President).
[12] Van Dyke's Introduction to Froissart's Chronicles (Colonial Press).