Weird Tales/Volume 30/Issue 6/The Black Stone Statue

"The droning voice ringing in his ears issued from this nightmare creature."
The Black Stone Statue
By MARY ELIZABETH COUNSELMAN
An amazing tale of weird sculpture—the story of a weird deception practised on the world by an obscure artist—by the author of "The Three Marked Pennies"

DIRECTORS,
Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, Mass.
Gentlemen:
Today I have just received aboard the S. S. Madrigal your most kind cable, praising my work and asking— humbly, acclaim, weariness with poverty and the as one might ask it of a true genius!—if I would do a statue of myself to be placed among the great in your illustrious museum. Ah, gentlemen, that cablegram was to me the last turn of the screw!
I despise myself for what I have done in the name of art. Greed for money and ​contempt of my inferiors, hatred for a world that refused to see any merit in my work: these things have driven me to commit a series of strange and terrible crimes.
In these days I have thought often of suicide as a way out—a coward's way, leaving me the fame I do not deserve. But since receiving your cablegram, lauding me for what I am not and never could be, I am determined to write this letter for the world to read. It

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