← I used to keep it lying carelessly on the table in my room, and whenever a friend took it up and asked what it was about, I would say: "Oh, it's rather a remarkable book. 🔊
← Nor not strange forms and epicene Lie bleeding in the dust, 🔊
← Then I look'd him in the eyes And I laugh'd full shrill at the lie he told And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise. 🔊
← I rocked to and fro; I lay back aching; I behaved deplorably. 🔊
← For a few moments the devil let his hand rest where it lay, gazing at me out of the corners of his eyes, vulgarly triumphant. 🔊
← I remember pausing before a wide door-step and wondering if perchance it was on this very one that the young De Quincey lay ill and faint while poor Ann flew as fast as her feet would carry her to Oxford Street, the "stony-hearted stepmother" of them both, and came back bearing that "glass of port wine and spices" but for which he might, so he thought, actually have died. 🔊