The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX aged saint was due directly to an access of this malady, whose peculiar danger is that the patient tends to seek relief in the very things which have caused the trouble. Poor Waite was reaching up to a bookshelf in the library of his seat at South Ealing for a copy of his Strange Houses of Sleep when his aged but saintly legs gave way. The aged saint clutched at the bookshelf for support, and a copy of Azoth fell, and narrowly missing the inflamed organ, struck the nobler portions of his body, bruising both great toes severely. So critical did the condition of the aged saint become that Sir Coote O. Key Coote was called in, and found himself obliged to resort to amputation, for unluckily a friend of the aged saint had been offered a copy of Paracelsus for 3s. 8d., and mortification had set in. The operation was fortunately a complete success, and the physicians announced that their distinguished patient might very well live for another four-and-twenty hours. The aged saint’s one desire was of course to see Crowley, to offer the last homage, to confess his ingratitude for the benefits with which the Master had loaded him, and to receive the final benediction. Needless to say Crowley responded to the call. To an explorer of the Himalayas the perils of a journey to South Ealing are as nothing: had they been everything, he would still have come. It was half a day later that the writer arrived, owing to his Daimler backfiring, missing a dead-centre, and eventually trying to climb a tree on Clapham Common. After being announced, he was ushered into the death- 220