at one of those trick pictures and suddenly seeing the lion in the
grass. The lines outlining the lion are there all the time, only the
observer has to view them as the outline of a lion. It was the same
with the models of the characters, except the shapes that appeared were
not of lions or other recognizable things. But they did suggest."

_He pressed the coin against his forehead, closed his eyes and appeared
to be thinking deeply. "Yes, impossible to believe. No one can believe
it."_

"In addition to the visual response, the distortions gave me definite
feelings. Not mixtures of feelings, but one definite emotional
experience."

"How do you mean?"

"One character when viewed through the globe gave me a visual image
and, at the same time, a strong feeling of light hilarity."

"I take it then that these distortions seemed to connote meanings,
rather than denote them. You might say that their meaning was conveyed
through a Gestalt experience on the part of the observer."

"Yes, each character gave a definite Gestalt. But, the Gestalt was the
same for each observer. Or at least for thirty-five observers there was
an eighty per cent correlation."

I whistled softly. "And the translation?"

"Doctor, what would you say if I told you the translation was
unbelievable; that it couldn't be seriously entertained by any man?
What if I said that it would take the sanity of any man who believed
it?"

"I would say that it might well be incorrect."

He took some papers from his pocket and laughed excitedly, slumping
down in the chair. "This is the complete translation in idiomatic
English. I'm going to let you read it, but first I want you to consider
a few things."

He hid the papers behind the back of his chair; his face became even
more boyish, almost as if he were deciding on where to put the tipped
over outhouse.

"Consider first, doctor, that there was a total projection of three
hundred and sixty different characters. The same number as the number
of degrees in a circle. Consider also that there were eighteen
different orderings of the characters, or nineteen counting the
alphabetical list. The square root of three hundred and sixty would lie
between eighteen and nineteen."

"Yes," I said. I remembered there was something significant about the
numbers, but I wasn't at all sure that it was this.

"Consider also," he continued, "that the communication was through the
medium of a sphere. Moreover, keep in min