May 30, 2025

Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe – A Haunting Tale of Obsession and Madness

Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe – A Haunting Tale of Obsession and Madness
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Step into the shadowy corridors of Gothic horror with this dramatic reading of Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe. A chilling tale of obsession, decay, and madness, Berenice stands as one of Poe’s most disturbing works. In this episode, we bring the story to life through a vivid narration that captures the eerie atmosphere and tragic descent of its narrator.

Whether you’re a longtime fan of Poe or just discovering his twisted brilliance, this reading is sure to haunt your imagination.

🔪 Featuring themes of:

  • Mental illness
  • Morbid obsession
  • Death and decay
  • Classic 19th-century horror
📚 Perfect for fans of Gothic fiction, dark literature, and psychological horror.
Listen now and explore the terrifying beauty of Poe’s prose!

🎉 Unlock exclusive bonus episodes and support the show on Patreon!
👉 WeeklySpooky.com/Join

📬 Contact Us / Submit Your Horror Story!

🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Mark Shields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
🌐 Explore more terrifying tales at: WeeklySpooky.com

🎧 LISTEN NOW and subscribe for spine-tingling horror stories every week!

🎉 Unlock exclusive bonus episodes and support the show on Patreon!
👉 WeeklySpooky.com/Join

📬 Contact Us / Submit Your Horror Story!

🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
🌐 Explore more terrifying tales at: WeeklySpooky.com
WEBVTT

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One of my favorite memories of scaring myself as a

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child was getting a compilation book of Edgar Allan Poe's

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stories from my elementary school library. It brought me so

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much fear and so much excitement. I remember running home

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from school with that book in my backpack as the

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sky was dark and a storm was coming. I was

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in my childhood living room, but I wasn't alone. I

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had a pizza and the books of Poe. Every so

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often I'll bring you a tale of Poe, and I

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hope it gives you that scary fun sense, just the

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same as it does for me. When the clock strikes midnight,

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the story will begin. Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe. Dis

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bond me. He's so Dallas si spectaculum amikai visitarum curras

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MIAs aluquantulum for eh levatas aben zaiat. Misery is manifold.

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The wretchedness of Earth is multiform, overreaching the wide horizon

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as the rainbow. Its hues are various as the hues

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of that arch, as distinct too, yet as intimately blended,

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overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow. How is it

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that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness,

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from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow. But

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as in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so

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in fact out of joy is sorrow born. Either the

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memory of past bliss is the anguish of to day,

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or the agonies which are have their origin in the

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ecstasies which might have been My baptismal name is Eegeus.

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That of my family I will not mention. Yet there

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are no towers in the land more time honored than

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my gloomy, gray hereditary halls. Our line has been called

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a race of visionaries, and in many striking particulars in

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the character of the family mansion, in the frescoes of

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the chief saloon, in the tapestries of the dormitories, in

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the chiseling of some buttresses in the armory, but more

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especially in the gallery of antique paintings, in the fashion

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of the library chamber, and lastly, in the very peculiar

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nature of the library's contents. There is more than sufficient

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evidence to warrant the belief the recollections of my earliest

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years are connected with that chamber and with its volumes,

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of which latter I will say no more here died

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my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere

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idleness to say that I had not lived before, that

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the soul has no previous existence. You deny it. Let

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us not argue the matter. Convinced myself, I seek not

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to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms,

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of spiritual and meaning, eyes, of sounds musical yet sad,

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A remembrance which will not be excluded, a memory like

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a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady, and like a shadow

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too in the impossibility of my getting rid of it,

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while the sunlight of my reason shall exist in that chamber.

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Was I born? Thus, awaking from the long night of

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what seemed but was not nonentity, at once into the

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very regions of fairyland, into a palace of imagination, into

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the wild dominions of monastic thought and iradation. It is

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not singular that I gazed around me with a startled

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and ardent eye, that I loitered away my boyhood in

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books and dissipated my youth in reverie. But it is

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singular that, as years rolled away and the noon of

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manhood found me still in the mansion of my father's.

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It is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs

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of my life. Wonderful how total and inversion took place

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in the character of my commonest thought. The realities of

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the world affected me as visions, and as visions only,

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while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became

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in turn not the material of my every day existence,

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but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.

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Bearonice and I were cousins, and we grew up together

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in my paternal halls. Y differently we grew I ill

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of health and buried in gloom. She agile, graceful, and

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overflowing with energy. Hers the ramble on the hillside, mine

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the studies of the cloister. I living within my own heart,

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and addicted body and soul to the most intense and

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painful meditation. She roaming carelessly through life, with no thought

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of the shadows in her path or the silent flight

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of the raven winged hours. Berenice. I call upon her, Berenice,

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and from the gray ruins of memory, a thousand tumultuous

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recollections are startled at the sound ah. Vividly is her

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image before me, now as in the early days of

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her light heartedness and joy, Oh gorgeous yet fantastic beauty,

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oh sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim, oh n did

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among its fountains. And then then all is mystery and terror,

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and a tale which should not be told. Disease, a

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fatal disease, fell like the simoom upon her frame. And

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even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change

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swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character,

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and in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing

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even the identity of her person Alas the destroyer came

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and went, and the victim where was she? I knew

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her not, or knew her no longer as Berenice. Among

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the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal and

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primary one which affected a revolution of so horrible a

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kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin,

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may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in

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its nature, a species of epilepsy, not unfrequently terminating in

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trance itself, trance very nearly resembling positive disillusion, and from

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which her manner of recovery was in mo most instances

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startlingly abrupt in the meantime my own disease, for I

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have been told that I should call it by no

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other appellation. My own disease then grew rapidly upon me

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and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and

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extraordinary form, hourly and momently gaining vigor, and at length

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obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy. This monomania, if

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I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability

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of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed

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the attentive. It is more than just probable that I

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am not understood, but I fear indeed that it is

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in no manner possible to convey to the mind of

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the merely general reader an adequate idea of that nervous

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intensity of interest with which, in my case the powers

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of meditation, not to speak, technically busied and buried themselves

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in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of

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the universe, to muse for long, unwearied hours with my

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attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin or

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in the topography of a book, to become absorbed for

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the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow,

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falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the door, To

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lose myself for an entire night, in watching the steady

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flame of a lamp or the embers of a fire,

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To dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower,

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To repeat monotonously some common word until the sound, by

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dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever

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to the mind. To lose all sense of motion or

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physical existence by means of absolute bodily quiescence, long and

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obstinately persevered in Such were a few of the most

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common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of

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the mental faculties, not indeed altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding

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defiance to anything like analysis or explanation. Yet, let me

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not be misapprehended. The un do earnest and morbid attention

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thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must

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not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common

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to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons

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of ardent imagination. It was not even as might be

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at first supposed an extreme condition or exaggeration of such propensity,

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but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance,

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the dreamer or enthusiast, being interested by an object, usually

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not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a

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wilderness of deductions and suggestions, issuing therefrom until at the

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conclusion of a day dream, all replete with luxury, he

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finds the incedimentum, or first cause of his musings entirely

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vanished and forgotten. In my case, the primary object was

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invariably frivolous, although assuming through the medium of my distempered vision,

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a refracted and unreal importance, few deductions, if any, were made,

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and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the original object

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as a center. The meditations were never pleasurable, and at

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the termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far

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from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated

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interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In

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a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised, were

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with me, as I have said before, the attentive and

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r with the day dreamer, the speculative. My books at

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this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate

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the disorder partook, it will be perceived largely in their

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imaginative and inconsequential nature of the characteristic qualities of the

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disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise of

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the noble Italian Colius Secundus Curio de amplitudine b te

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Regi d. Saint Austin's great work The City of God,

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the Tertullian de Carne Criste, in which the paradoxical sentence

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more to U S. S. D. Philus kredible estkia ineptum

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est et sypultus resurrects it sertem eskia impossibility est occupied

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my undivided time for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation.

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Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only

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by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean

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crag spoken by Teloami hefeshin which, steadily resisting the attacks

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of human violence and the fiercer fury of the waters

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and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the

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flower called asvadl, and although to a careless thinker, it

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might appear a matter beyond doubt that the altar toration

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produced by her unhappy malady in the moral condition of

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Berenice would afford me many objects for the exercise of

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that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been

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at some trouble in explaining. Yet such was not in

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any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity.

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Her calamity indeed gave me pain, and taking deeply to

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heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life,

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I did not fall to ponder frequently and bitterly upon

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the wonder working means by which so strange a revolution

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had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections

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partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were

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such as would have occurred under similar circumstances to the

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ordinary mass of mankind, true to its own character. My

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disorder reveled in the less important, but more startling changes

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wrought in the physical frame of Berenice, in the singular

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and most appalling distortion of her personal identity during the

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brightest days of her unparalleled beauty. Most surely I had

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never loved her in the strange anomaly of my existence.

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Feelings with me had never been of the heart, and

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my passions always were of the mind. Through the gray

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of the early morning, among the trellised shadows of the

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forest at noonday, and in the silence of my library

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at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and I

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had seen her not as the living and breathing Berenice,

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but as the baronice of a dream. Not as a

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being of the earth earthy, but not as the abstraction

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of such a being. Not as a thing to admire

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but to analyze, not as an object of love, but

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as the theme of the more abstruse although desultory speculation.

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And now now I shuddered in her presence, and grew

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pale at her approach. Yet bitterly lamenting her fallen and

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desolate condition, I called to mind that she had loved

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me long, and in in an evil moment, I spoke

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to her of marriage, and at length the period of

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our nuptials was approaching. When upon an afternoon in the

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winter of the year, one of those unseasonably warm, calm

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and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful

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halcyon one, I sat and sat as I thought, alone

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in the inner apartment of the library, But uplifting my eyes,

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I saw that Berenice stood before me. Was it my

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own excited imagination or the misty influence of the atmosphere,

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or the uncertain twilight of the chamber, or the gray

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draperies which fell around her figure that caused in it

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so vacillating and indistinct an outline I could not tell.

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She spoke no word, I not for words could I

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have uttered a syllable. An icy chill ran through my frame,

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A sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me, A consuming curiosity

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pervaded my soul, and, sinking back upon the chair, I

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remained for some time, breathless and motionless, with my eyes

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riveted upon her person alas its emaciation was excessive, and

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not one vestige of the former being lurked in any

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single line of the contour. My burning glances at length

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fell upon the face. The forehead was high and very

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pale and singularly placid, and the once jetty hair fell

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partially over it and overshadowed. The hollow temples with innumerable

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ringlets now of vivid yellow and jarring discordantly in their

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fantastic character with the raining melancholy of the countenance. The

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eyes were lifeless and lustreless, and seemingly pupilless, and I

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shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of

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the thin and shrunken lips. They parted it, and in

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a smile of peculiar meath, the teeth of the changed

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Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God

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that I had never beheld them, or that having done so,

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I had died, For as Jove during the winter season

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gives twice seven days of warmth, men have called this

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clement and temperate time the nurse of the beautiful Halcion Simonides.

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The shutting of a door disturbed me, and looking up,

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I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber,

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but from the disordered chamber of my brain had not

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alas departed, and would not be driven away the white

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and ghastly spectrum of the teeth, not a speck on

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their surface, not a shade on their enamel, not an

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indenture in their edges. But what that period of her

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smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory? I

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saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them.

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Then the teeth, the teeth, they were here and there

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and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me, long, narrow

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and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them,

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as in the very moment of their first terrible development.

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Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I

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struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence in

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the multiplied objects of the external world world, I had

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no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed

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with a frenzied desire. All other matters and all different

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interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They, they alone,

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were present to the mental eye, and they, in their

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soul individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I

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held them in every light, I turned them in every attitude.

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I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I

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pondered upon their confirmation. I mused upon the alteration in

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their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them in

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imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and, even when unassisted

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by the lips, a capability of moral expression of mad

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Sali salis. It had been well said Ktu sa pa

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etuiene des sentiments, and of Berenice I more seriously believed

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Caetus say tense etteninte de idis de IDs ah. Here

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was the idiotic thought that destroyed me death idees ah.

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Therefore it was that I coveted them so madly. I

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felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace,

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in giving me back to reason. And the evening closed

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in upon me. Thus, and then the darkness came and

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tarried and went, and the day again dawned, and the

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mists of a second night were now gathering around. And

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still I sat motionless in that solitary room, and still

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I sat buried in meditation, And still the phantasma of

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the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy, as with the most vivid,

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hideous distinctness. It floated about amid the changing lights and

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shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon

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my dreams a cry as of horror and dismay. And thereunto,

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after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled

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with many low moanings of sorrow or of pain. I

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arose from my seat, and, throwing open one of the

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doors of the library, saw standing out in the antechamber

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a servant maiden, all in tears, who told me that

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Berenice was no more. She had been seized with epilepsy

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in the early morning, and now at the closing in

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of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant,

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and all the preparations for the burial were completed. I

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found myself sitting in the library, and again, sitting there alone,

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it seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused

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and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight,

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and I was well aware that since the setting of

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the sun Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary

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period which intervened, I had no positive, at least no

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definitive comprehension. Its memory was replete with horror, horror more

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horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity.

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It was a fearful page in the record, my existence,

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written all over with dim and hideous and unintelligible recollections.

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I strived to decipher them, but in vain while ever

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and anon like the spirit of a departed sound the

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shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to

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be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed.

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What was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and

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the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me, what was it?

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On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near

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it lay a little box. It was of no remarkable character,

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and I had seen it frequently before, for it was

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the property of the family physician. But how came it

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there upon my table? And why did I shudder in

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regarding it? These things were in no manner to be

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accounted for. And my eyes at length dropped to the

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open pages of a book and to a sentence. Underscored

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therein the words were the singular but simple ones of

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the poet eben zayat di sebont mihi sodales si sepulchurum

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I machai visitarum curras MIAs ali quantulum fori levatas. Why then,

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as I perused them, did the hairs of my head

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erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body

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become congealed within my veins. There came a light tap

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at the library door, and pale as the tenant of

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a tomb a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were

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wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a

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voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he? Some

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broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry,

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disturbing the silence of the night, of the gathering together

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of the household, of a search in the direction of

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the sound. And then his tones grew thrillingly distinct, as

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he whispered to me of a violated grave, of a

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disfigured body, and shrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive.

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He pointed to garments. They were muddy and clotted with gore.

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I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand.

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It was indented with the impress of human nails. He

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directed my attention to some object against the wall. I

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looked at it for some minutes. It was a spade

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with a shriek. I bounded to the table and grasped

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the box that lay upon it, but I could not

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force it open, and in my tremor, it slipped from

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my hands and fell heavily and burst into pieces. And

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from it with a rattling sound. There rolled out some

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instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty two small, white

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and ivory looking substances that were scattered to and fro

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about the floor