Bram Stoker

, what a wealth of sor­row in a few words! Poor Mrs. Westenra! poor Lucy!

But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things

What I saw was the Count’s head com­ing out from the win­dow. I did not

I was not alone. The room was the same, un­changed in any way since I came into it; I could see along the floor, in the bril­liant moon­light, my own foot­step

Some of the “New Wo­men” writers will some day start an idea that men and wo­men should be al­lowed to see each other asleep be­fore pro­pos­ing or ac­cept­ing. But I sup­pose the New Wo­man won’t con­des­cend in fu­ture to ac­cept; she will do the pro­pos­ing her­self. And a nice job she will make of it, too! There’s some con­sol­a­tion in that.

I have been more touched than I can say by your grief. That is a won­der­ful ma­chine, but it is cruelly true. It told me, in its very tones, the an­guish of your heart. It was like a soul cry­ing out to Almighty God. No one must hear them spoken ever again! See, I have tried to be use­ful. I have copied out the words on my type­writer, and none other need now hear your heart beat, as I did.”

Good night, every­body.

I am alone in the castle with those aw­ful wo­men. Faugh! Mina is a wo­man, and there is nought in com­mon. They are dev­ils of the Pit!

I gave Ren­field a strong opi­ate to­night, enough to make even him sleep, and took away his pock­et­book to look at it. The thought that has been buzz­ing about my brain lately is com­plete, and the the­ory proved. My hom­icidal ma­niac is of a pe­cu­liar kind. I shall have to in­vent a new clas­si­fic­a­tion for him, and call him a zoöphag­ous (life-eat­ing) ma­niac; what he de­sires is to ab­sorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid him­self out to achieve it in a cu­mu­lat­ive way. He gave many flies to one spider and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a cat to eat the many birds. What would have been his later steps? It would al­most be worth while to com­plete the ex­per­i­ment. It might be done if there were only a suf­fi­cient cause. Men sneered at vi­vi­sec­tion, and yet look at its res­ults today! Why not ad­vance sci­ence in its most dif­fi­cult and vi­tal as­pect—the know­ledge of the brain? Had I even the secret of one such mind—did I hold the key to the fancy of even one lun­atic—I might ad­vance my own branch of sci­ence to a pitch com­pared with which Bur­don-Sander­son’s physiology or Fer­rier’s brain-know­ledge would be as noth­ing. If only there were a suf­fi­cient cause! I must not think too much of this, or I may be temp­ted; a good cause might turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an ex­cep­tional brain, con­gen­it­ally?

How well the man reasoned; lun­at­ics al­ways do within their own scope. I won­der at how many lives he val­ues a man, or if at only one. He has closed the ac­count most ac­cur­ately, and today be­gun a new re­cord. How many of us be­gin a new re­cord with each day of our lives?

To me it seems only yes­ter­day that my whole life ended with my new hope, and that truly I began a new re­cord. So it will be un­til the Great Re­corder sums me up and closes my ledger ac­count with a bal­ance to profit or loss. Oh, Lucy, Lucy, I can­not be angry with you, nor can I be angry with my friend whose hap­pi­ness is yours; but I must only wait on hope­less and work. Work! work!

If I only could have as strong a cause as my poor mad friend there—a good, un­selfish cause to make me work—that would be in­deed hap­pi­ness.

I know there is sun­rise be­cause I am a sailor, why else I know not. I dared not go be­low, I dared not leave the helm; so here all night I stayed, and in the dim­ness of the night I saw It—Him! God for­give me, but the mate was right to jump over­board. It was bet­ter to die like a man; to die like a sailor in blue wa­ter no man can ob­ject. But I am cap­tain, and I must not leave my ship. But I shall baffle this fiend or mon­ster, for I shall tie my hands to the wheel when my strength be­gins to fail, and along with them I shall tie that which He—It!—dare not touch; and then, come good wind or foul, I shall save my soul, and my hon­our as a cap­tain. I am grow­ing weaker, and the night is com­ing on. If He can look me in the face again, I may not have time to act. … If we are wrecked, may­hap this bottle may be found, and those who find it may un­der­stand; if not, … well, then all men shall know that I have been true to my trust. God and the Blessed Vir­gin and the saints help a poor ig­nor­ant soul try­ing to do his duty.