Excerpt from The Republic of the Southern Cross: And Other Stories He says in his preface to the second edition of that collection which bears the title The Axis of the Earth, the stories are written to show, in various ways, that there is no fixed boundary line between the world of reality and that of the imagination, between the dream ing and the waking world, life and fantasy that what we commonly call 'imaginary may be the greatest reality of the world, and that which all call reality the most dreadful delirium. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.