Devil, Do You Dare Approach Me? And

Our Feelings Probably Are Not Less Strong At Fifty Than They Were Ten Or Fifteen Years Before; But They Have Changed Their Objects, And Dwell On Far Different Prospects. At Five-and-thirty A Man Thinks Of What His Own Existence Is; When The Maturity Of Age Has Grown Into Its Autumn, He Is Wrapt Up In That Of Others. The Loss Of Wife Or Child Then Becomes More Deplorable, As Being Impossible To Repair; For No Fresh Connection Can Give Us Back The Companion Of Our Earlier Years, Nor A "new-sprung Race" Compensate For That, Whose Career We Hoped To See Run.

What Is There So Fearful As The Expectation Of Evil Tidings Delayed? ... Misery Is A More Welcome Visitant When She Comes In Her Darkest Guise And Wraps Us In Perpetual Black, For Then The Heart No Longer Sickens With Disappointed Hope.

The World Was To Me A Secret Which I Desired To Devine.

Beware; For I Am Fearless, And Therefore Powerful.

I Saw And Heard Of None Like Me. Was I Then A Monster, A Blot Upon The Earth, From Which All Men Fled, And Whom All Men Disowned?