Several weeks had elapsed since the conversation in Reginald Clarke's studio. The spring was now well advanced and had sprinkled the meadows with flowers, and the bookshelves of the reviewers with fiction. The latter Ernest turned to good account, but from the flowers no poem blossomed forth. In writing about other men's books, he almost forgot that the springtide had brought to him no bouquet of song. Only now and then, like a rippling of water, disquietude troubled his soul.

The strange personality of the master of the house had enveloped the lad's thoughts with an impenetrable maze. The day before Jack had come on a flying visit from Harvard, but even he was unable to free Ernest's soul from the obsession of Reginald Clarke.

Ernest was lazily stretching himself on a couch, waving the smoke of his cigarette to Reginald, who was writing at his desk.

"Your friend Jack is delightful," Reginald remarked, looking up from his papers. "And his ebon-coloured hair contrasts prettily with the gold in yours. I should imagine that you are temperamental antipodes."

"So we are; but friendship bridges the chasm between."

"How long have you known him?"

"We have been chums ever since our sophomore year."

"What attracted you in him?"

"It is no simple matter to define exactly one's likes and dislikes. Even a tiny protoplasmic animal appears to be highly complex under the microscope. How can we hope to analyse, with any degree of certitude, our souls, especially when, under the influence of feeling, we see as through a glass darkly."

"It is true that personal feeling colours our spectacles and distorts the perspective. Still, we should not shrink from self-analysis. We must learn to see clearly into our own hearts if we would give vitality to our work. Indiscretion is the better part of literature, and it behooves us to hound down each delicate elusive shadow of emotion, and convert it into copy."

"It is because I am so self-analytical that I realise the complexity of my nature, and am at a loss to define my emotions. Conflicting forces sway us hither and thither without neutralising each other. Physicology isn't physics. There were many things to attract me to Jack. He was subtler, more sympathetic, more feminine, perhaps, than the rest of my college-mates."

"That I have noticed. In fact, his lashes are those of a girl. You still care for him very much?"

"It isn't a matter of caring. We are two beings that live one life."

"A sort of psychic Siamese twins?"

"Almost. Why, the matter is very simple. Our hearts root in the same soil; the same books have nourished us, the same great winds have shaken our being, and the same sunshine called forth the beautiful blossom of friendship."

"He struck me, if you will pardon my saying so, as a rather commonplace companion."

"There is in him a hidden sweetness, and a depth of feeling which only intimate contact reveals. He is now taking his post-graduate course at Harvard, and for well-nigh two months we have not met; yet so many invisible threads of common experience unite us that we could meet after years and still be near each other."

"You are very young," Reginald replied.

"What do you mean?"

"Ah--never mind."

"So you do not believe that two hearts may ever beat as one?"

"No, that is an auditory delusion. Not even two clocks beat in unison. There is always a discrepancy, infinitesimal, perhaps, but a discrepancy nevertheless."

A sharp ring of the bell interrupted the conversation. A moment later a curly head peeped through the door.

"Hello, Ernest! How are you, old man?" the intruder cried, with a laugh in his voice. Then, noticing Clarke, he shook hands with the great man unceremoniously, with the nonchalance of the healthy young animal bred in the atmosphere of an American college.

His touch seemed to thrill Clarke, who breathed heavily and then stepped to the window, as if to conceal the flush of vitality on his cheek.

It was a breath of springtide that Jack had brought with him. Youth is a Prince Charming. To shrivelled veins the pressure of his hand imparts a spark of animation, and middle age unfolds its petals in his presence, as a sunflower gazing at late noon once more upon its lord.

"I have come to take Ernest away from you," said Jack. "He looks a trifle paler than usual, and a day's outing will stir the red corpuscles in his blood."

"I have no doubt that you will take very good care of him," Reginald replied.

"Where shall we go?" Ernest asked, absent-mindedly.

But he did not hear the answer, for Reginald's scepticisms had more deeply impressed him than he cared to confess to himself.

Posted by Vladimir Wed, 06/20/2007 - 15:41

 

FM Cioroianu to consuls: “Let us together put Romania on the map!”

April 23, 2007 (Nine O'Clock / Carmen Criste / SIBIU, Romania) -- Within the speech delivered at the Reunion of Honorary Consuls from Sibiu, Minister of Foreign Affairs Adrian Cioroianu asked the 65 consuls from the 43 countries of the world to help him promote the image of our country worldwide. "Let us together put Romania on the map!" was the message conveyed by Minister Cioroianu to the honorary consuls.

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Vampire son sucks knifed dad's blood

January 22, 2008 (Mirror.co.uk / Jeremy Armstrong) -- A crazed son who stabbed his parents and then drank his stepfather's blood was locked up in a secure hospital yesterday. Thomas Owen, 28, thought he had to kill Joe and Sheena Foster to prevent the murder of a little girl, a court heard.

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Experts say bats are more afraid of us

October 13, 2007 (NorthWest Herald / Geneva White) -- It isn't easy being a bat. Everyone seems to be frightened of you. They accuse you of having rabies and sucking blood. Women are terrified that you'll fly into their hair.

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Powers and Limitations of Vampires

Dracula's powers and weaknesses: This is a series of quotations from the book Dracula by Bram Stoker (the Signet Classic version). I hope through these quotations from the book to help interested parties get some ideas of the powers of vampires, for Stoker basically introduced the myth of the vampire to the masses (in other words, he made it more widespread than it had ever been before).

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Bat-vertising big in Translyvania, Louisiana

October 27, 2007 (AP) -- Thousands of miles from the European mountain forests where vampire legends were cultivated, a depressed economy and a dwindling population stalk the cotton fields of northeast Louisiana. But in the East Carroll Parish community of Transylvania, a new owner may breathe life into an ailing little business that capitalizes on the town's unusual name and its landmark bat-emblazoned water tower.

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