No, he is not vicious, nor is he in the least demented. His mind is a wonder chamber, from which he can extract treasures that you and I would give years of our life to acquire.

Harold,′ she would say, ‘do you think I’m a fool? If I place the Crimson Diamond in any safe-deposit vault in New York, somebody will steal it, sooner or later.’ Then she would nibble a sprig of catnip and peer cunningly at me.

The laws prohibiting suicide and providing punishment for any attempt at self-destruction have been repealed. The Government has seen fit to acknowledge the right of man to end an existence which may have become intolerable to him, through physical suffering or mental despair.

It is possible that his curiosity was piqued, for with the exception of a hen-turkey, a boy of nineteen is the most openly curious biped alive. From twenty until death he tries to conceal it.

I saw the lake of Hali, thin and blank, without a ripple or wind to stir it, and I saw the towers of Carcosa behind the moon. Aldebaran, the Hyades, Alar, Hastur, glided through the cloud-rifts which fluttered and flapped as they passed like the scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow.

Perfection can be overdone; a rift in a lute relieves melodious monotony, and when discords cease to amuse, one can always have the instrument mended or buy a banjo.

Why should certain chords in music make me think of the brown and golden tints of autumn foliage?

Really, old chap,” he said, “I don’t mean to run down a man you like, but for the life of me I can’t see what the deuce you find in common with Mr. Wilde. He’s not well bred, to put it generously; he is hideously deformed; his head is the head of a criminally insane person. You know yourself he’s been in an asylum –.

He’s a trump!” said Clifford, “and if he swears the world is as good and pure as his own heart, I’ll swear he’s right.

Come and see my rose-coloured bath full of death!