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The Human Chord
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Human Chord, by Algernon Blackwood This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Human Chord
Author: Algernon Blackwood
Release Date: April 11, 2004 [EBook #11988]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE HUMAN CHORD
BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
1910
_To those who hear._
Chapter I
I
As a boy he constructed so vividly in imagination that he came to believe in the living reality of his creations: for everybody and everything he found names--real names. Inside him somewhere stretched immense playgrounds, compared to which the hay-fields and lawns of his father's estate seemed trivial: plains without horizon, seas deep enough to float the planets like corks, and "such tremendous forests" with "trees like tall pointed hilltops." He had only to close his eyes, drop his thoughts inwards, sink after them himself, call aloud and--see.
His imagination conceived and bore--worlds; but nothing in these worlds became alive until he discovered its true and living name. The name was the breath of life; and, sooner or later, he invariably found it.
Once, having terrified his sister by affirming that a little man he had created would come through her window at night and weave a peaked cap for himself by pulling out all h