The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. - H. G. Wells

By this time I was no
longer very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it were, passed the
limit of terror and despair. I felt now that my life was practically lost,
and that persuasion made me capable of daring anything

The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand.

[The invisible man said: ]"After a time I crawled home, took some food and a strong dose of strychnine, and went to sleep in my clothes on my unmade bed. Strychnine is a grand tonic, Kemp, to take the flabbiness out of a man."
----"It's the devil," said Kemp. "It's the palaeolithic in a bottle."
--"I awoke vastly invigorated and rather irritable. You know?"
----"I know the stuff."