“Do go on, if you’ve found anything exciting,” besought Mrs. Clyde, glancing up with her swift, interrogating smile. “The paper seemed unusually dull to me.”
“Because you didn’t read quite deep enough into it, possibly.” He raised the journal, folded it neatly to a half-page, and holding it before his eyes, began smoothly:—
“Far, far away, as far as your conscience will let you believe, in the Land of Parables—”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Mr. Clyde. “That ‘Land of Parables’ sounds as if we were going to have some Improving Information.” He regarded his friend and adviser with a twinkling eye. “Ought the children to miss this?”
“That is for you to decide later,” said the Health Master gravely. And he resumed:—
“Far, far away, as far as conscience will let you believe, in the Land of Parables, there once stood a prosperous and self-contented city. Men lived therein by rule and rote. Only what their fathers before them had believed and received did they believe and receive. ‘As it hath been, so it is now and ever must and shall be,’ was the principle whereby their lives were governed. Therefore they endured, without hope as without complaint, the depredations of a hideous Monster who preyed upon them unceasingly.
“So loathsome was this Monster that the very thought of him was held to taint the soul. His name was sealed away from the common speech. Only the boldest men spoke of him, and then in paraphrases and by circumlocutions. Fouled, indeed, was the fame of the woman who dared so much as confess to a knowledge of his existence.
“From time to time the wise and strong men of the city banded together and sallied forth to drive back other creatures of prey as they pressed too hard upon the people. Not so with the Monster. Because of the ban of silence no plan could be mooted, no campaign formulated to check his inroads. So he grew great and ever greater, and his blood hunger fierce and ever more fierce, and his scarlet trail wound in and out among the homes of the people, manifest even to those eyes which most sedulously sought to blind themselves against it.
“Seldom did the Monster slay outright. But where his claws clutched or his fangs pierced, a slow venom crept through the veins, and life was corroded at its very wellsprings. Nor was this the worst. Once the blight fell upon one member of a household, it might corrupt, by hidden and subtle ways, the others and innocent, who knew not of the curse overhanging them.
“Upon the foolish, the reckless, and the erring the Monster most readily fastened himself. But man nor woman nor child was exempt. Necessity drove young girls, struggling and shuddering, into the Monster’s very jaws. The purity of a child or of a Galahad could not always save from the serpent-stroke which sped from out the darkness.”