I am Darrell Standing, born and raised on a quarter section of land in
Minnesota, erstwhile professor of agronomy, a prisoner incorrigible in
San Quentin, and at present a death-sentenced man in Folsom. I do not
know, of Darrell Standing's experience, these things of which I write and
which I have dug from out my store-houses of subconsciousness. I,
Darrell Standing, born in Minnesota and soon to die by the rope in
California, surely never loved daughters of kings in the courts of kings;
nor fought cutlass to cutlass on the swaying decks of ships; nor drowned
in the spirit-rooms of ships, guzzling raw liquor to the wassail-shouting
and death-singing of seamen, while the ship lifted and crashed on the
black-toothed rocks and the water bubbled overhead, beneath, and all
about.

Such things are not of Darrell Standing's experience in the world. Yet
I, Darrell Standing, found these things within myself in solitary in San
Quentin by means of mechanical self-hypnosis. No more were these
experiences Darrell Standing's than was the word "Samaria" Darrell
Standing's when it leapt to his child lips at sight of a photograph.

One cannot make anything out of nothing. In solitary I could not so make
thirty-five pounds of dynamite. Nor in solitary, out of nothing in
Darrell Standing's experience, could I make these wide, far visions of
time and space. These things were in the content of my mind, and in my
mind I was just beginning to learn my way about.




CHAPTER VII