We improved our housekeeping, later in the morning. I showed her over the house. It isn't much—Cape Codder, two rooms up and two down. Every corner interested her, and when she found a shoebox in the bedroom closet, she asked for it. At her direction, I have arranged it on a chest near my bed and the window which shall be always open. She says the mosquitoes will not bother me, and I don't doubt her.
I unearthed a white silk scarf for the bottom of the box. After asking my permission—as if I could want to refuse her anything!—she got her sewing kit and snipped off a piece of the scarf several inches square, folded it on itself several times, and sewed it into a narrow pillow an inch long. So now she has a proper bed and a room of her own. I wish I had something less coarse than silk, but she insists she's pleased with it.
We have not talked very much today. In the afternoon she flew out for an hour's play in the cloud-country. When she returned, she let me know that she needed a long sleep. She is still sleeping, I think. I am writing this downstairs, fearing the light might disturb her.
Is it possible I can have thirty or forty years in her company? I wonder how teachable my mind still is. I seem to be able to assimilate new facts as well as I ever could; this ungainly carcass should be durable, with reasonable care. Of course, facts without a synthesizing imagination are no better than scattered bricks, but perhaps my imagination—
I don't know.
Judy wants out. I shall turn in when she comes back. I wonder if poor Judy's life could be—the word is certainly "saved." I must ask.
June 10
Last night when I stopped writing I did go to bed, but I was restless, refusing sleep. At some time in the small hours—there was light from a single moon—she flew over to me. The tensions dissolved away like an illness and my mind was able to respond with a certain calm.
I made plain that I would never willingly part company with her, which I am sure she already knew, and she gave me to understand that there are two alternatives for the remainder of my life. The choice, she says, is altogether mine, and I must take time to be sure of my decision.
I can live out my natural span, whatever it proves to be, and she will not leave me for long at any time. She will be there to advise, teach, help me in anything good I care to undertake. She says she would enjoy this; for some reason she is, as we'd say in our language, fond of me.
Lord, the books I could write! I fumble for words now, in the usual human way. Whatever I put on paper is a miserable fraction, of the potential; the words themselves are rarely the right ones. But under her guidance—
I could take a fair part in shaking the world. With words alone. I could preach to my own people. Before long, I would be heard.
I could study and explore. What small nibblings we have made at the sum of available knowledge! Suppose I brought in one leaf from outdoors, or one common little bug—in a few hours of studying it with her, I'd know more of my own specialty than a flood of the best textbooks could tell me.
She has also let me know that when she and those who came with her have learned a little more about humanity, it should be possible to improve my health greatly, and probably my life expectancy. I don't imagine my back could ever straighten, but she thinks the pain might be cleared away, entirely without drugs. I could have a clearer mind, in a body that would neither fail nor torment me.
Then there is the other alternative.
It seems they have developed a technique by means of which any unresisting living subject, whose brain is capable of memory at all, can experiencetotal recall. It is a by-product, I understand, of their silent speech, and a very recent one. They have practiced it for only a few thousand years, and since their own understanding of the phenomenon is very incomplete, they classify it among their experimental techniques.
In a general way, it may somewhat resemble that reliving of the past which psychoanalysis can sometimes bring about in a limited way for therapeutic purposes. But you must imagine that sort of thing tremendously magnified and clarified, capable of including every detail which has ever registered on the subject's brain.
The purpose is not therapeutic, as we would understand it; quite the opposite. The end result is—death.
Whatever is recalled, by this process is transmitted to the receiving mind, which can retain it, and record any or all of it, if such a record is desired; but to the subject who recalls, it is a flowing away, without return. Thus it is not a true "remembering," but a giving. The mind is swept clear, naked of all its past, and, along with memory, life withdraws also. Very quietly.
At the end, I suppose it must be like standing without resistance in the engulfment of a flood tide, until finally the waters close over.
That, it seems, is how Camilla's life was "saved." When I finally grasped that, I laughed, and the angel of course caught the reason. I was thinking about my neighbor Steele, who boarded Camilla for me in his henhouse for a couple of winters.
Somewhere safe in the angelic records there must be a hen's-eye image of the patch in the seat of Steele's pants. And naturally Camilla's view of me too; not too unkind, I hope. She couldn't help the expression on her rigid little face, and I don't believe it ever meant anything.
At the other end of the scale is the saved life of my angel's father. Recall can be a long process, she says, depending on the intricacy and richness of the mind recalling; and in all but the last stages it can be halted at will. Her father's recall was begun when they were still far out in space and he knew that he could not long survive the journey.
When that journey ended, the recall had progressed so far that very little actual memory remained to him of his life on that other planet. He had what must be called a deductive memory—from the material of the years not yet given away, he could reconstruct what must have been, and I assume the other adult who survived the passage must have been able to shelter him from errors that loss of memory might involve. This, I infer, is why he could not show me a two-moon night.
I forgot to ask her whether the images he did send me were from actual or deductive memory. Deductive, I think, for there was a certain dimness about them not present when my angel gives me a picture of something seen with her own eyes.
Jade-green eyes, by the way. Were you wondering?
In the same fashion, my own life could be saved. Every aspect of existence that I ever touched, that ever touched me, could be transmitted to some perfect record—the nature of the written record is beyond me, but I have no doubt of its relative perfection. Nothing important, good or bad, would be lost. And they need a knowledge of humanity, if they are to carry out whatever it is they have in mind.
It would be difficult, she tells me, and sometimes painful. Most of the effort would be hers, but some of it would have to be mine. In her period of infantile education, she elected what we should call zoology as her life work; for that reason she was given intensive theoretical training in this technique. Right now I guess she knows more than anyone else on this planet not only about what makes a hen tick, but how it feels to be a hen.
Though a beginner, she is in all essentials already an expert. She can help me, she thinks, if I choose this alternative. At any rate, she could ease me over the toughest spots, keep my courage from flagging.
For it seems that this process of recall is painful to an advanced intellect—without condescension, she calls us very advanced—because, while all pretense and self-delusion are stripped away, there remains conscience, still functioning by whatever standards of good and bad the individual has developed in his lifetime. Our present knowledge of our own motives is such a pathetically small beginning! Hardly stronger than an infant's first effort to focus his eyes.
I am merely wondering how much of my life, if I choose this way, will seem to me altogether hideous. Certainly plenty of the "good deeds" which I still cherish in memory like so many well-behaved cherubs will turn up with the leering aspect of greed or petty vanity or worse.
Not that I am a bad man, in any reasonable sense of the term. I respect myself; no occasion to grovel and beat my chest. I'm not ashamed to stand comparison with any other fair sample of the species. But there you are: Iamhuman, and under the aspect of eternity so far, plus this afternoon's newspaper, that is a rather serious thing.
Without real knowledge, I think of this total recall as something like a passage down a corridor of a myriad images, now dark, now brilliant, now pleasant, now horrible—guided by no certainty except an awareness of the open blind door at the end of it. It could have its pleasing moments and its consolations. I don't see how it could ever approximate the delight and satisfaction of living a few more years in this world with the angel lighting on my shoulder when she wishes, and talking to me.
I had to ask her how great a value such a record would be to them. Obvious enough—they can be of little use to us, by their standards, until they understand us, and they came here to be of use to us as well as to themselves. And understanding us, to them, means knowing us inside out with a completeness such as our most dedicated and laborious scholars could never imagine. I remember, about those twelve million years: they will not touch us until they are certain no harm will come of it.
On our tortured planet, however, there is a time factor. They know that well enough, of course....
Recall cannot begin unless the subject is willing or unresisting; to them, that has to mean willing, for any being with intellect enough to make a considered choice. Now, I wonder how many they could find who would be honestly willing to make that uneasy journey into death, for no reward except an assurance that they were serving their own kind and the angels.
More to the point, I wonder if I would be able to achieve such willingness myself, even with her help.
When this had been explained to me, she urged me again to make no hasty decision. And she pointed out to me what my thoughts were already groping at—why not both alternatives, within a reasonable limit of time? Why couldn't I have ten or fifteen years or more with her, and then undertake the total recall, perhaps not until my physical powers had started toward senility? I thought that over.
This morning I had almost decided to choose that most welcome and comfortable solution. Then my daily paper was delivered. Not that I needed any such reminder.
In the afternoon I asked her if she knew whether, in the present state of human technology, it would be possible for our folly to actually destroy this planet. She did not know, for certain. Three of the other children have gone away to different parts of the world, to learn what they can about that. But she had to tell me that such a thing has happened before, elsewhere in the Universe. I guess I won't write a letter to the papers advancing an explanation for the occasional appearance of a nova among the stars. Doubtless others have hit on the same hypothesis without the aid of angels.
And that is not all I must consider. I could die by accident or sudden disease before I had begun to give my life.
Only now, at this very late moment, rubbing my sweaty forehead and gazing into the lights of that wonderful ring, have I been able to put together some obvious facts in the required synthesis.
I don't know, of course, what forms their assistance to us will take. I suspect human beings won't see or hear much of the angels for a long time to come. Now and then disastrous decisions may be altered, and those who believe themselves wholly responsible won't realize why their minds worked that way. Here and there, maybe an influential mind will be rather strangely nudged into a better course. Something like that. There may be new discoveries and inventions of kinds that will tend to neutralize the menace of our nastiest playthings.
But whatever the angels decide to do, the record and analysis of my fairly typical life will be an aid. It could even be the small weight deciding the balance between triumph and failure. That is Fact One.
Two: my angel and her brothers and sisters, for all their amazing level of advancement, are also of perishable protoplasm. Therefore, if this ball of mud becomes a ball of flame, they also will be destroyed. Even if they have the means to use their spaceship again or to build another, it might easily happen that they would not learn their danger in time to escape. And for all I know, this could be tomorrow. Or tonight.
So there can no longer be any doubt as to my choice, and I will tell her when she wakes.
July 9
Tonight[2]there is no recall; I am to rest a while. I see it is almost a month since I last wrote in this journal. My total recall began three weeks ago, and already the first twenty-eight years of my life have been saved.
It was a week after I told the angel my decision before she was prepared to start the recall. During that week she searched my present mind more closely than I should have imagined was possible: she had to be sure.
During that week, of hard questions, I dare say she learned more about my kind than has ever gone on record even in a physician's office; I hope she did. To any psychiatrist who might question that, I offer a naturalist's suggestion. It is easy to imagine, after some laborious time, that we have noticed everything a given patch of ground can show us. But alter the view-point only a little—dig down a foot with a spade, say, or climb a tree-branch and look downward—it's a whole new world.
When the angel was not exploring me in this fashion, she took pains to make me glimpse the satisfactions and million rewarding experiences I might have if I chose the other way. I see how necessary that was; at the time it seemed almost cruel. She had to do it, for my own sake, and I am glad that I was somehow able to stand fast to my original choice. So was she, in the end; she has even said she loves me for it. What that troubling word means to her is not within my mind. I am satisfied to take it in the human sense.
Since I no longer require normal sleep, the recall begins at night, as soon as the lights begin to go out in the village and there is little danger of interruption. Daytimes, I putter about in my usual fashion. I have sold Steele my hens, and Judy's life was saved a week ago. That practically winds up my affairs, except that I went to write a codicil to my will. I might as well do that now, right here in this journal, instead of bothering my lawyer. It should be legal.
To Whom It May Concern: I hereby bequeath to my friend Lester Morse, M.D., of Augusta, Maine, the ring which will be found at my death on the fifth finger of my left hand. I would urge Dr. Morse to retain this ring in his private possession at all times, and to make provision for its disposal, in the event of his own death, to some person in whose character he places the utmost faith.(Signed) David Bannerman[3]
To Whom It May Concern: I hereby bequeath to my friend Lester Morse, M.D., of Augusta, Maine, the ring which will be found at my death on the fifth finger of my left hand. I would urge Dr. Morse to retain this ring in his private possession at all times, and to make provision for its disposal, in the event of his own death, to some person in whose character he places the utmost faith.
(Signed) David Bannerman[3]
Tonight she has gone away for a while, and I am to rest and do as I please till she returns. I shall spend the time filling in some blanks in this record, but I am afraid it will be a spotty job, because there is so much I no longer care about.
Except for the lack of desire for sleep, and a bodily weariness which is not at all unpleasant, I notice no physical effects thus far. I have no faintest recollection of anything that happened earlier than my twenty-eighth birthday. My deductive memory seems rather efficient, and I am sure I could reconstruct most of the story if it were worth the bother. This afternoon I grubbed around among some old letters of that period, but they weren't very interesting.
My knowledge of English is unaffected; I can still read scientific German and some French, because I had occasion to use those languages fairly often after I was twenty-eight. The scraps of Latin dating from high school are gone. So are algebra and all but the simplest proposition of high school geometry: I never needed them.
I can remember thinking of my mother after twenty-eight, but I do not know whether the image this provides really resembles her. My father died when I was thirty-one, so I remember him as a sick old man. I believe I had a younger brother, but he must have died in childhood.[4]
Judy's passing was tranquil—pleasant for her, I think. It took the better part of a day. We went out to an abandoned field I know, and she lay blinking in the sunshine with the angel sitting by her, while I dug a grave and then rambled off after wild raspberries. Toward evening the angel came and told me I could bury Judy—it was finished. And most interesting, she said. I don't see how there can have been anything distressing about it for Judy. After all, what hurts us worst is to have our favorite self-deceptions stripped away, and I don't think Judy had any.
I have not found the recall painful, at least not in retrospect. There must have been sharp moments, mercifully forgotten along with their causes, as if the process had gone on under anesthesia. Certainly there were plenty of incidents in my first twenty-eight years which I should not care to offer to the understanding of any but the angels. Quite often I must have been mean, selfish, base in any number of ways, if only to judge by the record since twenty-eight. Those old letters touch on a few of these things. To me, they now matter only as material for a record which is safely out of my hands.
However, to any person I may have harmed, I wish to say this: you were hurt by aspects of my humanity which may not, in a few million years, be quite so common among us. Against these darker elements I struggled, in my human fashion, as you do yourselves. The effort is not wasted.
One evening—I think it was June 12—Lester dropped around for sherry and chess. Hadn't seen him in quite a while, and haven't since. There is a moderate polio scare this summer and it keeps him on the jump.
The angel retired behind some books on an upper shelf—I'm afraid it was dusty—and had fun with our chess. She had a fair view of your bald spot, Lester. Later she remarked that she liked your looks, but can't you do something about that weight? She suggested an odd expedient, which I believe has occurred to your medical self from time to time—eating less.
Maybe she shouldn't have done what she did with those chess games. Nothing more than my usual blundering happened until after my first ten moves; by that time I suppose she had absorbed the principles, and she took over. I was not fully aware of it until I saw you looking like a boiled duck. I had imagined my astonishing moves were the result of my own damn cleverness.
Seriously, Lester, think back to that evening. You've played in stiff amateur tournaments; you know your own abilities and you know mine. Ask yourself whether I could have done anything like that without help. I tell you again I didn't study the game in the interval when you weren't here. I've never even had a chess book in the library, and if I had, no amount of study would take me into your class. I haven't that sort of mentality; just your humble sparring partner, and I've enjoyed it on that basis, as you might enjoy watching a prima donna surgeon pull off some miracle you wouldn't dream of attempting yourself. Even if your game had been away below par that evening, and I don't think it was, I could never have pinned your ears back three times running, without help. That evening you were a long way out ofyourclass, that's all.
I couldn't tell you anything about it at the time—she was clear on that point—so I could only bumble and preen myself and leave you mystified. But she wants me to write anything I choose in this journal, and somehow, Lester, I think you may find the next few decades pretty interesting. You're still young, some ten years younger than I. I think you'll see many things that I wish I might see come to pass—or I would so wish if I were not convinced that my choice was the right one.
Most of those new events will not be spectacular, I'd guess. Many of the turns to a better way will hardly be recognized at the time for what they are, by you or anyone else. Obviously, our nature being what it is, we shall not change overnight. To hope for that would be as absurd as it is to imagine that any formula, ideology, theory of social pattern can bring us into Utopia. As I see it, Lester—and I think your consulting room would have told you the same even if your own intuition were not enough—there is only one battle of importance: Armageddon. And Armageddon field is within each individual.
At the moment I believe I am the happiest man who ever lived.
July 20
All but the last ten years are now given away. The physical fatigue, though still pleasant, is quite overwhelming. I am not troubled by the weeds in my garden patch—merely a different sort of flowers where I had planned something else. An hour ago she brought me the seed of a blown dandelion, to show me how lovely it was. I don't suppose I had ever noticed. I hope whoever takes over this place will bring it back to farming; they say the ten acres below the house used to be good potato land, nice early ground.
It is delightful to sit in the sun, as if I were old.
After thumbing over earlier entries in this journal, I see I have often felt quite bitter toward my own kind. I deduce that I must have been a lonely man, with much of the loneliness self-imposed. A great part of my bitterness must have been no more than one ugly by-product of a life spent too much apart. Some of it doubtless came from objective causes, yet I don't believe I ever had more cause than any moderately intelligent man who would like to see his world a pleasanter place than it has been. My angel tells me that the scar on my back is due to an injury received in some early stage of the war that still goes on. That could have soured me, perhaps. It's all right; it's in the record.
She is racing with a hummingbird—holding back, I think, to give the swift little green fluff a break.
Another note for you, Lester. I have already indicated my ring is to be yours. I don't want to tell you what I have discovered of its properties, for fear it might not give you the same pleasure and interest that it has given me. Of course, like any spot of shifting light and color, it is an aid to self-hypnosis. It is more, much more than that, but—find out for yourself, at some time when you are a little protected from everyday distractions.
I know it can't harm you, because I know its source.
By the way, I wish you would convey to my publishers my request that they either discontinue printing myIntroductory Biologyor else bring out a new edition revised in accordance with some notes you will find in the top left drawer of my library desk. I glanced through that book after my angel assured me that I wrote it, and I was amazed. However, I'm afraid my notes are messy—I call them mine by a poetic license—and they may be too advanced for the present day, though the revision is mainly a matter of leaving out certain generalities that aren't so. Use your best judgment. It's a very minor textbook, and the thing isn't too important.
A last wriggle of my vanishing personal vanity.
July 27
I have seen a two-moon night. It was given to me by that remaining grown-up, at the end of a wonderful visit, when he and six of those nine other children came to see me. It was last night, I think—yes, must have been. First there was a murmur of wings above the house; my angel flew in laughing. Then they were here, all about me, full of gaiety and colored fire, showing off in every way they knew would please me. Each one had something graceful and friendly to say to me. One brought me a moving image of the St. Lawrence seen at morning from half a mile up—clouds, eagles—now how could he know that would delight me so much?
And each one thanked me for what I had done.
But it's been so easy!
And at the end the old one—his skin is quite black, and his down is white and gray—gave the remembered image of a two-moon night. He saw it some sixty years ago.
I have not even considered making an effort to describe it. My fingers will not hold this pencil much longer tonight. Oh, soaring buildings of white and amber, untroubled countryside, silver on curling rivers, a glimpse of open sea. A moon rising in clarity, another setting in a wreath of cloud, between them a wide wandering of unfamiliar stars. Here and there the angels, worthy after fifty million years to live in such night.
No, I cannot describe anything like that. But you human kindred of mine, I can do something better. I can tell you that this two-moon night, glorious as it was, was no more beautiful than a night under a single moon on this ancient and familiar Earth might be—if you will imagine that human evil has been cleared away, and that our own people have started at last on the greatest of all explorations, themselves.
July 29
Nothing now remains to give away but the memory of the time that has passed since the angel came. I am to rest as long as I wish, write whatever I want. Then I shall get myself over to the bed and lie down as if for sleep. She tells me that I can keep my eyes open; she will close them for me when I no longer see her.
I remain convinced that our human case is hopeful. I feel sure that in only a few thousand years we may be able to perform some of the simpler preparatory tasks, such as casting out evil and loving our neighbors. And if that should prove to be so, who can doubt that in another few million years, or even less, we might be only a little lower than the angels?
LIBRARIAN'S NOTE: As is generally known, the original of theBannerman Journalis said to have been in the possession of Dr. Lester Morse at the time of the latter's disappearance in 1964, and that disappearance has remained an unsolved mystery to the present day. McCarran is known to have visited Capt. Garrison Blaine in October, 1951, but no record remains of that visit. Capt. Blaine appears to have been a bachelor who lived alone. He was killed in line of duty, December, 1951. McCarran is believed not to have written about nor discussed the Bannerman affair with anyone else. It is almost certain that he himself removed the extract and related papers from the files—unofficially, it would seem—when he severed his connection with the FBI in 1957. At any rate, they were found among his effects after his assassination, and were released to the public, considerably later, by Mrs. McCarran.
The following memorandum was originally attached to the extract from theBannerman Journal. It carries the McCarran initialing.
Aug. 11, 1951
The original letter of complaint written by Stephen Clyde, M.D., and mentioned in the accompanying letter of Captain Blaine, has unfortunately been lost, owing perhaps to an error in filing.
Personnel presumed responsible have been instructed not to allow such error to be repeated except if, as and/or when necessary.C.McC.
Personnel presumed responsible have been instructed not to allow such error to be repeated except if, as and/or when necessary.
C.McC.
On the margin of this memorandum there was a penciled notation, later erased. Iodine vapor has been used to bring out the unmistakable McCarran script. The notation read in part as follows:Far be it from a McC. to lose his job except if, as and or—the rest is undecipherable, except for a terminal word which is regrettably unparliamentary.
STATEMENT BYLESTER MORSE, M.D.DATED AUGUST 9, 1951
On the afternoon of July 30, 1951, acting on what I am obliged to describe as an unexpected impulse, I drove out to the country for the purpose of calling on my friend Dr. David Bannerman. I had not seen him nor had word from him since the evening of June 12 of this year, 1951.
After knocking, calling to him and hearing no response, I went upstairs to his bedroom and found him dead. From superficial indications I judged that death must have taken place during the previous night. He was lying on his bed on his left side, comfortably disposed as if for sleep, but fully dressed, with a fresh shirt and clean summer slacks. His eyes and mouth were closed, and there was no trace of the disorder to be expected at even the easiest death.
Because of these signs I assumed, soon as I had determined the absence of breath and heartbeat and noted the chill of the body, that some neighbor must have already found him, performed these simple rites of respect for him, and probably notified a local physician or other responsible person. I therefore waited, Dr. Bannerman had no telephone, expecting that someone would soon call.
Dr. Bannerman's journal was on a table near his bed, open to that page on which he had written a codicil to his will. I read that part. Later, while I was waiting for others to come, I read the remainder of the journal, as he apparently wished me to do. The ring he mentions was on the fifth finger of his left hand, and it is now in my possession.
When writing that codicil, Dr. Bannerman must have overlooked or forgotten the fact that in his formal will, written some months earlier, he had appointed me executor. If there are legal technicalities involved, I shall be pleased to co-operate fully with the proper authorities.
The ring, however, will remain in my keeping, since that was Dr. Bannerman's expressed wish, and I am not prepared to offer it for examination or discussion under any circumstances.
The notes for a revision of one of his textbooks were in his desk, as indicated in the journal. They are by no means "messy," nor are they particularly revolutionary except in so far as he wished to re-phrase, as theory or hypothesis, certain statements which I would have regarded as axiomatic. This is not my field, and I am not competent to judge. I shall take up the matter with his publishers at the earliest opportunity.[5]
So far as I can determine, and bearing in mind the results of the autopsy performed by Stephen Clyde, M.D., the death of Dr. David Bannerman was not inconsistent with the presence of an embolism of some type not distinguishable on post mortem. I have so stated on the certificate of death. I am compelled to add one other item of medical opinion for what it may be worth:
I am not a psychiatrist, but, owing to the demands of general practise, I have found it advisable to keep as up to date as possible with current findings and opinion in this branch of medicine. Dr. Bannerman possessed, in my opinion, emotional and intellectual stability to a higher degree than anyone else of comparable intelligence in the entire field of my acquaintance, personal and professional.
If it is suggested that he was suffering from a hallucinatory psychosis, I can only say that it must have been of a type quite outside my experience and not described, so far as I know, anywhere in the literature of psychopathology.
Dr. Bannerman's house, on the afternoon of July 30, was in good order. Near the open, unscreened window of his bedroom there was a coverless shoebox with a folded silk scarf in the bottom. I found no pillow such as Dr. Bannerman describes in the journal, but observed that a small section had been cut from the scarf. In this box, and near it, there was a peculiar fragrance, faint, aromatic, very sweet, such as I have never encountered before and therefore cannot describe.
It may or may not have any bearing on the case that, while I remained in his house that afternoon, I felt no sense of grief or personal loss, although Dr. Bannerman had been a loved and honored friend for a number of years. I merely had, and have, a conviction that after the completion of some very great undertaking, he had found peace.
The ring he bequeathed to me has confirmed that.
[1]Dr. Bannerman's dog, mentioned often earlier in the journal, a nine-year-old English setter. According to an entry of May 15, 1951, she was then beginning to go blind—BLAINE
[1]Dr. Bannerman's dog, mentioned often earlier in the journal, a nine-year-old English setter. According to an entry of May 15, 1951, she was then beginning to go blind—BLAINE
[2]At this point Dr. Bannerman's handwriting alters curiously. From here on he used a soft pencil instead of a pen, and the script shows signs of haste. In spite of this, however, it is actually much clearer, steadier and easier to read than the earlier entries in his normal hand.—BLAINE
[2]At this point Dr. Bannerman's handwriting alters curiously. From here on he used a soft pencil instead of a pen, and the script shows signs of haste. In spite of this, however, it is actually much clearer, steadier and easier to read than the earlier entries in his normal hand.—BLAINE
[3]In spite of superficial changes in the handwriting, this signature has been certified genuine by an expert graphologist.—BLAINE
[3]In spite of superficial changes in the handwriting, this signature has been certified genuine by an expert graphologist.—BLAINE
[4]Dr. Bannerman's mother died in 1918 of influenza. His brother (three years older, not younger) died of pneumonia, 1906.—BLAINE
[4]Dr. Bannerman's mother died in 1918 of influenza. His brother (three years older, not younger) died of pneumonia, 1906.—BLAINE
[5]LIBRARIAN'S NOTE: But it seems he never did. No new edition of "Introductory Biology" was ever brought out, and the textbook has been out of print since 1952.
[5]LIBRARIAN'S NOTE: But it seems he never did. No new edition of "Introductory Biology" was ever brought out, and the textbook has been out of print since 1952.