distractions, bred of their own inherent or acquired weakness, must
arise to confound them. Remorse, for example, is always a first step
to discovery, if not to confession; and any lesser uneasiness
similarly tends to trouble of mind and consequent danger of body.
Those who hang, in truth deserve to do so; but they who strike,
like myself, for reasons that success cannot shake and from a
settled, farsighted resolution beyond the power of any emotion to
assail, should be safe enough. We rejoice in the sublime mental
gratification that follows success: it is our spiritual support, our
sustenance and our reward.

What can offer an experience so tremendous as murder? What has
science, philosophy, religion to give us comparable with the
mysteries, dangers and triumphs of great crime? All are childish
toys compared to it; and since, in any case, the next world will
surely stultify our knowledge, confound our accepted truths, and
reduce the wisdom of this earth to the prattle of childhood, I
turned from physics and from metaphysics to action--and happening to
taste blood early, tingled with the joy of it.

At fifteen years of age I killed a man, and found, in a murder
undertaken for very definite reasons, a thrill beyond expectation.
It was as though I had drunk at a wayside spring and found an
elixir. That incident is unknown; the death of my father's foreman,
Job Trevose, has not been understood till now. He lived at Paul, a
village upon the heights nigh Penzance, and his walk to his work
took him by the coast-guard track along lofty cliffs. Among the
fish-curing sheds one day, unseen, I chanced to hear Trevose speak
of my mother to another man and declare that she did evil and
dishonoured my father.