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rounds. Found him up and humming a tune. He was spreading out his
sugar, which he had saved, in the window, and was manifestly beginning
his fly catching again, and beginning it cheerfully and with a good
grace.

I looked around for his birds, and not seeing them, asked him where
they were. He replied, without turning round, that they had all flown
away. There were a few feathers about the room and on his pillow a
drop of blood. I said nothing, but went and told the keeper to report
to me if there were anything odd about him during the day.


11 am.--The attendant has just been to see me to say that Renfield has
been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot of feathers. "My belief
is, doctor," he said, "that he has eaten his birds, and that he just
took and ate them raw!"


11 pm.--I gave Renfield a strong opiate tonight, enough to make even
him sleep, and took away his pocketbook to look at it. The thought
that has been buzzing about my brain lately is complete, and the
theory proved.

My homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind. I shall have to invent a
new classification for him, and call him a zoophagous (life-eating)
maniac. What he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he
has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way. He gave many
flies to one spider and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a
cat to eat the many birds. What would have been his later steps?

It would almost be worth while to complete the experiment. It might
be done if there were only a sufficient cause. Men sneered at
vivisection, and yet look at its results today! Why not advance
science in its most difficult and vital aspect, the knowledge of the
brain?

Had I even the secret of one such mind, did I hold the key to the
fancy of even one lunatic, I might advance my own branch of science to
a pitch compared with which Burdon-Sanderson's physiology or Ferrier's
brain knowledge would be as nothing. If only there were a sufficient
cause! I must not think too much of this, or I may be tempted. A
good cause might turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an
exceptional brain, congenitally?

How well the man reasoned. Lunatics always do within their own scope.
I wonder at how many lives he values a man, or if at only one. He has
closed the account most accurately, and today begun a new record. How
many of us begin a new record with each day of our lives?

To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new
hope, and that truly I began a new record. So it shall be until the
Great Recorder sums me up and closes my ledger account with a balance
to profit or loss.

Oh, Lucy, Lucy, I cannot be angry with you, nor can I be angry with my
friend whose happiness is yours, but I must only wait on hopeless and
work. Work! Work!

If I could have as strong a cause as my poor mad friend there, a good,
unselfish cause to make me work, that would be indeed happiness.



MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL

26 July.--I am anxious, and it soothes me to express myself here. It

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