on blue water in the morning of the world!

Then I walked round the situation.

Obviously if I used my knowledge I should stand alone and unapproachable
until all men were as wise as myself. That would be something, but manlike
I was ungrateful. It seemed bitterly unfair that Charlie's memory should
fail me when I needed it most. Great Powers above--I looked up at them
through the fog smoke--did the Lords of Life and Death know what this
meant to me? Nothing less than eternal fame of the best kind, that comes
from One, and is shared by one alone. I would be content--remembering
Clive, I stood astounded at my own moderation,--with the mere right to
tell one story, to work out one little contribution to the light
literature of the day. If Charlie were permitted full recollection for one
hour--for sixty short minutes--of existences that had extended over a
thousand years--I would forego all profit and honor from all that I should
make of his speech. I would take no share in the commotion that would
follow throughout the particular corner of the earth that calls itself
"the world." The thing should be put forth anonymously. Nay, I would make
other men believe that they had written it. They would hire bull-hided
self-advertising Englishmen to bellow it abroad. Preachers would found a
fresh conduct of life upon it, swearing that it was new and that they had
lifted the fear of death from all mankind. Every Orientalist in Europe
would patronize it discursively with Sanskrit and Pali texts. Terrible
women would invent unclean variants of the men's belief for the elevation
of their sisters. Churches and religions would war over it. Between the
hailing and re-starting of an omnibus I foresaw the scuffles that would
arise among half a dozen denominations all professing "the doctrine of the
True Metempsychosis as applied to the world and the New Era"; and saw,
too, the respectable English newspapers shying, like frightened kine, over