Difficulty opening a particular file

[Haines Brown <haines@engels.histomat.net>]

I have no trouble having find file open .basrc, but to open .balance.bal
consistently must be done twice, and trying to do it with a bookmark
hangs emacs permanently. The problem seems to be in emacs
configuration.

This emacs uses as its configuration a ~/.emacs file. However, this file
add-to-list load-library ~/.emacs.d/elist/basic.el where configuration
for this particular emacs session is located. In that file there is a
stanza:

  (autoload 'balance-mode "balance")
    (setq auto-mode-alist
     (append '(("\\.bal$" . balance-mode)) auto-mode-alist))

This work earlier this year, but for some reason not now. If I open 
balance.bal manually rather than by bookmark the balance mode works
properly.