Thomas Mann
[Writer, b. 1875, Lübeck, Germany, d. 1955, Zurich, Switzerland.]
The process of decay was forestalled by the powers of the light-ray, the flesh in which he walked disintegrated, annihilated, dissolved in vacant mist, and there within it was the finely turned skeleton of his own hand, the seal ring he had inherited from his grandfather hanging loose and black on the joint of his ring-finger—a hard, material object with which man adorns the body that is fated to melt away beneath it, when it passes on to another flesh that can wear it yet a little while.
