suicides, the lecturer said that self-murder was no escape from the
miseries of the present, but only a preparation of greater sorrow for
the future. Suicides, he declared, cannot shirk their responsibilities
so easily. They must return to take up life exactly where they laid it
so violently down, but with the added pain and punishment of their
weakness. Many of them wander the earth in unspeakable misery till they
can _reclothe_ themselves in the body of some one else--generally a
lunatic or weak-minded person, who cannot resist the hideous obsession.
This is their only means of escape. Surely a weird and horrible idea! I
wish I had slept all the time and not heard it at all. My mind is morbid
enough without such ghastly fancies. Such mischievous propaganda should
be stopped by the police. I'll write to the _Times_ and suggest it. Good
idea!

I walked home through Greek Street, Soho, and imagined that a hundred
years had slipped back into place and De Quincey was still there,
haunting the night with invocations to his "just, subtle, and mighty"
drug. His vast dreams seemed to hover not very far away. Once started in
my brain, the pictures refused to go away; and I saw him sleeping in
that cold, tenantless mansion with the strange little waif who was
afraid of its ghosts, both together in the shadows under a single
horseman's cloak; or wandering in the companionship of the spectral
Anne; or, later still, on his way to the eternal rendezvous she never
was able to keep. What an unutterable gloom, what an untold horror of
sorrow and suffering comes over me as I try to realize something of what
that man--boy he then was--must have taken into his lonely heart.

As I came up the alley I saw a light in the top window, and a head and
shoulders thrown in an exaggerated shadow upon the blind. I wondered
what the son could be doing up there at such an hour.

* * * * *

Nov. 5.--This morning, while writing, some one came up the creaking
stairs and knocked cautiously at my door. Thinking it was the landlady,
I said, "Come in!" The knock was repeated, and I cried louder, "Come in,
come in!" But no one turned the handle, and I continued my writing with
a vexed "Well, stay out, then!" under my breath. Went on writing. I
tried to, but my thoughts had suddenly dried up at their source. I could
not set down a single word. It was a dark, yellow-fog morning, and there
was little enough inspiration in the