Surely, that should be enough.
The name has served my small need for more than
twenty years of a life of unknown length. True, I
gave it to myself, but lacking another I had the right.
In this world one must have a name; it prevents
confusion, even when it does not establish identity.
Some, though, are known by numbers, which also
seem inadequate distinctions.
One day, for illustration, I was passing along a
street of a city, far from here, when I met two men
in uniform, one of whom, half pausing and looking
curiously into my face, said to his companion, 'That
man looks like 767.' Something in the number
seemed familiar and horrible. Moved by an uncon-
trollable impulse, I sprang into a side street and ran
until I fell exhausted in a country lane.
I have never forgotten that number, and always
it comes to memory attended by gibbering obscenity,
peals of joyless laughter, the clang of iron doors. So
I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than a
number. In the register of the potter's field I shall
soon have both. What wealth!
Of him who shall find this paper I must beg a
little consideration. It is not the history of my life;
the knowledge to write that is denied me. This is only
a record of broken and apparently unrelated memo-
ries, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant
beads upon a thread, others remote and strange,
having the character of crimson dreams with inter-
spaces blank and black--witch-fires glowing still
and red in a great desolation.
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