Harper’s Weekly/The Man Who Knew Gods

The Man Who Knew Gods
By CLARENCE DAY Jr.

HHIS case illustrated the risks explorers run. Not the physical sort, which are apt to be overestimated, hut the psychological dangers. He had lived so long among savages, studying their ways, that he had fallen into a completely detached mental habit; and when he finally returned to civilization, he couldn't quite get back into touch with it—he remained an outsider.
I met him but once myself. I was in the publishing business at the time, and, hearing that this man was in New York, I thought I might as well see him about his next book. Telephoning him, therefore, at his hotel, I asked him to dine with me on the following Friday.
"What is 'Friday'?" said he. He spoke English perfectly.
"It is the twenty-sixth," I answered.
He said: "The twenty-sixth what? Oh, I know," he continued; "Friday is
a day of the week. Thank you very much, but I do not keep track of my dinners as carefully as that."
This rather odd answer I passed over, at the moment, thinking I had misunderstood him; and we arranged that he would come some day to my office, instead—"after lunch."
The next that I heard, he had called there at a quarter to five, the hour at which

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