A Good Thing Can't Be

My Heart Is Set, As Firmly As Ever Heart Of Man Was Set On Woman. I Have No Thought, No View, No Hope, In Life Beyond Her; And If You Oppose Me In This Great Stake, You Take My Peace And Happiness In Your Hands, And Cast Them To The Wind.

The Plain Rule Is To Do Nothing In The Dark, To Be A Party To Nothing Underhanded Or Mysterious, And Never To Put His Foot Where He Cannot See The Ground.

They Enter, Locking Themselves In, Descend The Rugged Steps, And Are Down In The Crypt. The Lantern Is Not Wanted, For The Moonlight Strikes In At The Groined Windows, Bare Of Glass, The Broken Frames For Which Cast Patterns On The Ground. The Heavy Pillars Which Support The Roof Engender Masses Of Black Shade, But Between Them There Are Lanes Of Light.

... I Feel Certain That His Tale Is True. Feeling That Certainty, I Befriend Him. As Long As That Certainty Shall Last, I Will Befriend Him. And If Any Consideration Could Shake Me In This Resolve, I Should Be So Ashamed Of Myself For My Meanness, That No Man's Good Opinion - No, Nor No Woman's - So Gained, Could Compensate Me For The Loss Of My Own.

Under None Of The Accredited Ghostly Circumstances, And Environed By None Of The Conventional Ghostly Surroundings, Did I First Make Acquaintance With The House Which Is The Subject Of This Christmas Piece. I Saw It In The Daylight, With The Sun Upon It. There Was No Wind, No Rain, No Lightning, No Thunder, No Awful Or Unwonted Circumstance, Of Any Kind, To Heighten Its Effect.