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36 reflect upon your scholarly authority, and am confident that you will coincide with me, as men accustomed to conscientious scientific thought.

. . . At last that fellow has ceased bawling. It is simply unendurable.

During the period that my plan still remained a project, a thought struck me, which hardly could have penetrated an insane mind. This thought was concerning the danger of my experiment. Do you comprehend? Madness is a fire dangerous for jesting. Having thrown a match into a powder magazine, one may feel greater safety than if but the slightest thought of madness should steal into one's head. And I knew this, I knew—yet did danger ever daunt a brave man?

Moreover, was I not conscious of my thought, firm and clear, as of hammered steel, and absolutely obedient to me? As a rapier of keen edge, it bent, pricked, bit, pierced through the web of facts; truly, as a serpent it glided noiselessly in unexplored and dark depths, concealed for ages from