disturbed.
May I come also? asked Lord Godalming.
Me too? said Quincey Morris. May I come? said Harker. I nodded, and
we all went down the passage together.
We found him in a state of considerable excitement, but far more
rational in his speech and manner than I had ever seen him. There was an
unusual understanding of himself, which was unlike anything I had ever
met with in a lunatic; and he took it for granted that his reasons would
prevail with others entirely sane. We all four went into the room, but
none of the others at first said anything. His request was that I would
at once release him from the asylum and send him home. This he backed up
with arguments regarding his complete recovery, and adduced his own
existing sanity. I appeal to your friends, he said, they will,
perhaps, not mind sitting in judgment on my case. By the way, you have
not introduced me. I was so much astonished, that the oddness of
introducing a madman in an asylum did not strike me at the moment; and,
besides, there was a certain dignity in the man s manner, so much of
the habit of equality, that I at once made the introduction: Lord
Godalming; Professor Van Helsing; Mr. Quincey Morris, of Texas; Mr.
Renfield. He shook hands with each of them, saying in turn:--
Lord Godalming, I had the honour of seconding your father at the
Windham; I grieve to know, by your holding the title, that he is no
more. He was a man loved and honoured by all who knew him; and in his
youth was, I have heard, the inventor of a burnt rum punch, much
patronised on Derby night. Mr. Morris, you should be proud of your great
state. Its reception into the Union was a precedent which may have
far-reaching effects hereafter, when the Pole and the Tropics may hold
alliance to the Stars and Stripes. The power of Treaty may yet prove a
vast engine of enlargement, when the Monroe doctrine takes its true
place as a political fable. What shall any man say of his pleasure at
meeting Van Helsing? Sir, I make no apology for dropping all forms of
conventional prefix. When an individual has revolutionised therapeutics
by his discovery of the continuous evolution of brain-matter,
conventional forms are unfitting, since they would seem to limit him to
one of a class. You, gentlemen, who by nationality, by heredity, or by
the possession of natural gifts, are fitted to hold your respective
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