Life Is A Hideous Thing.

Thus I Began My Systematic Though Half-bewildered Tour Of Innsmouth's Narrow, Shadow-blighted Ways. Crossing The Bridge And Turning Toward The Roar Of The Lower Falls, I Passed Close To The Marsh Refinery, Which Seemed To Be Oddly Free From The Noise Of Industry. The Building Stood On The Steep River Bluff Near A Bridge And An Open Confluence Of Streets Which I Took To Be The Earliest Civic Center, Displaced After The Revolution By The Present Town Square.

The Ignorant And The Deluded Are, I Think, In A Strange Way To Be Envied. That Which Is Not Known Of Does Not Trouble Us, While An Imagined But Insubstantial Peril Does Not Harm Us. To Know The Truths Behind Reality Is A Far Greater Burden.

Despite My Solitary Life, I Have Found Infinite Joy In Books And Writing, And Am By Far Too Much Interested In The Affairs Of The World To Quit The Scene Before Nature Shall Claim Me.

Truly, There Are Terrible Primal Arcana Of Earth Which Had Better Be Left Unknown And Unevoked; Dread Secrets Which Have Nothing To Do With Man, And Which Man May Learn Only In Exchange For Peace And Sanity; Cryptic Truths Which Make The Knower Evermore An Alien Among His Kind, And Cause Him To Walk Alone On Earth.

As Human Beings, Our Only Sensible Scale Of Values Is One Based On Lessening The Agony Of Existence.