Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/75

70 is attached to certain peculiar, fantastic beings,—half human, half demon, of Oriental and German story. These beings emerge from deep darkness in the middle of the night; open new-made graves, take out the bodies therein, eat the flesh, and then, the horrid banquet over, stealthily return whence they came, surfeited to plethora with the dreadful repast. But it sometimes happens—so goes the legend—that no new-made graves offer their temptations, and still the ghouls must live; wherefore they gain access to houses and drain the veins of whomsoever they possibly can. These harpies are, however, vulnerable to shot and death; but if you kill one, be sure to bury him five feet or a fathom, beneath the solid earth; and be sure you run a stake through his breast, with a cross on top; and if possible, at a cross-roads; for if you neglect to do this, and the vampyre's body remains above ground, just as soon, and as surely as the moon's beams shine upon it, just so surely will its life return and it go scot free to continue its ravages through successive lives and deaths. All these horrid things, whether creative of nature in some of her dark moods, or whether some of them are the offspring of perverted imagination, the reality, if of life or of legend, alike are all bad enough, and we turn from the bare contemplation of each with a shudder, begotten of horror on the body of disgust; and yet, fearful as they are, not one of them, or all combined, can equal the horrible reality—the absolutely unmistakable genuine, living human ghouls, right in our very midst; devouring gorgons, who are everywhere about us; who go up and down our streets, and in and out before us, clad in fine raiment; faces decked with smiles; and who only enter our houses, and partake of our hospitality, to betray our trust, and fatten on the lives of us and ours—for where of the male gender their sole aim is to gratify their own infernal morbidity of passion at anybody's expense whatever; and the wives and daughters of our friends become the prey of wretches, for whom no punishment is too severe;—doubly-dyed vampires, from whom conscience has forever taken its flight, and to whom gratitude is unknown. The ghoul originates in such marriages as have no love to cement the union. The father is a coarse, selfish, material surface man, without tenderness, affection,—anything wholly human; and his