i6 CANADIAN NIGHTS 



akin to everything external to me that I could 

 sense. 



" Did something snap in my brain ? I don't 

 know. People say I am crazy, ' crazy as a loon,' 

 as your Indian said. Well, maybe I am, but I am 

 sane enough to know it. The Indians think that 

 I and the beasts and birds talk together and 

 understand each other ; and that I hold whispered 

 conversations with the trees and little herbs and 

 flowers of the field, and call me therefore Willie 

 Whisper. That is, of course, all nonsense ; but 

 it is true that the momentary sense of oneness 

 exposed some cord of sensitiveness that vibrates 

 to all the life about me. It developed some sort 

 of community of interest — shall I say of intelli- 

 gence ? — between me and other living things. 

 Some sense other than the ordinary physical 

 senses came into embryonic being and, in some 

 way that I do not in the least understand, I do 

 become conscious of facts and happenings through 

 some medium unconnected with the ordinary 

 means whereby the self becomes aware of pheno- 

 mena external to it. I cannot control it. The 

 relative importance of events appears to have no 

 bearing upon it. For instance, I told you that 



