While her
description of any real occurrence is, as we have seen, homely, graphic,
and forcible, when she gives way to her powers of creation, her fancy and
her language alike run riot, sometimes to the very borders of apparent
delirium. Of this wild weird writing, a single example will suffice. It
is a letter to the editor of one of the "Little Magazines."
"Sir,--It is well known that the Genii have declared that unless they
perform certain arduous duties every year, of a mysterious nature, all
the worlds in the firmament will be burnt up, and gathered together in
one mighty globe, which will roll in solitary grandeur through the
vast wilderness of space, inhabited only by the four high princes of
the Genii, till time shall be succeeded by Eternity; and the impudence
of this is only to be paralleled by another of their assertions,
namely, that by their magic might they can reduce the world to a
desert, the purest waters to streams of livid poison, and the clearest
lakes to stagnant waters, the pestilential vapours of which shall slay
all living creatures, except the blood-thirsty beast of the forest,
and the ravenous bird of the rock. But that in the midst of this
desolation the palace of the Chief Genii shall rise sparkling in the
wilderness, and the horrible howl of their war-cry shall spread over
the land at morning, at noontide and night; but that they shall have
their annual feast over the bones of the dead, and shall yearly
rejoice with the joy of victors.
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