47 Ebb Tide

Sushin, malaria man, there is a simple word. A word of only six letters, but one fraught with more portentant and undercurrent than all the words in the modern lexicon.

E-S-C-A-P-E. Escape. They're running away from the here to the there, from the known into the unknown, when the present is a knife twisting in a wound and the pain is beyond bearing. Escape is an anesthesia, a snare, and a delusion, a pitfall into which so many run afoul.

In a moment you'll hear this story of a man who ran away from himself, a thousand miles, ten thousand miles, yet could not be one inch from his point of embarkation. The title is Eptide, starring Neil Page and Eddie Lewis, a narrative of a strange and mind-leaching obsession.

It is the inexorable order of the universe that, as the mystic magnetic forces of the moon, sweep the tides of earth into the high mark of flood. So again are they swept out to that shelving reach that is known as the Ed.

It is of this that we speak. The low level in which man, in his equation of life, occasionally finds himself. In the forces of hope and courage and ambition and faith are swept up beyond sight by a strange, inextricable toss of fate.

To quote the Master, as the tide goes clear out so must it always come clear in that the line of failure and success is so fine that man scarcely knows when he's apart. And thus, in a great hospital, a small group of men are gathered.

Let us call them, men in white. This scene is one of the dignity, of scholarship and learning. White-haired Dr. John Cummings, Chief Surgeon, is speaking. Gentlemen, we are gathered here this afternoon to pay tribute and respect to a colleague, a gentleman who's skilled in the surgical theater and who is keen understanding of human