The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-09-29
VAMPIRES.
New York Mercury.

New York Mercury.
 Perhaps you think they belong to the "Arabian Nights" alone and have their habitation in those ghoulish graveyards whence they emerge at night to hold high revels, eating rice by way of change of diet with bod kin?
 Not at all. They stalk among us every day. We count few of them among our most intimate friends. Perhaps they are nearer to us still. They never suspect themselves of their blood-sucking propensity. And we ourselves are rarely more enlightened as to their true nature. We live with them in the bonds of the closest con- panionship, perhaps. And they drain us, drop by drop, of our vitality-the wine of life-till we feel it oozing out at our finger tips and wonder what has 80 exhausted us. The more sensi- tive, highly strung and nervous the temperament the more likely is it to be affected by the propinquity of vam- piristic natures. It has happened that very acute organizations have detected the presence of such one in crowded room sometimes and been warned of the nearness by strange sensation of drowsiness, an irresistible impulse to yawn repeatedly. Fortunately these are the exceptions. The majority of mortals are cased in a more secure armor of denseness.
 Fortunately, it is said. For else how would people live who have 8 vampire for husband, wife, mother, father, brother, sister? In those cases there is no escape. The one literally lives on the other; lourishes, fattens, like some huge parasite, and reduces the creature it feeds on to condition such as that of flower might be that was trying to exist under the weight of some enormous stone.
 There is theory that human vam- pires are very restless, emaciated be- ings, full of the vivid will-o'- the- wispish fire. But that is not correct. People of this sort are often filled to overfowing with magnetism that reacts pleasurably on others. They have the odic, the health giving force sometimes. And they are rarely dis agreeable to the senses. The chief vampire among women is limp, sod- den, white faced, helpless, weak and stubborn, selfish and iuvalidish. She hangs her fangs like great polypus on whoever will hold up her dead weight, and the doomed one is never himself or herself again. Among men the vampire is apt to be gusty, blus- tering, noisy parsonage, loud and in- sistent, aggressive and personal. He shuts off the heat when every one else is shivering. He wants fresh air when people have pneumonia, and no open windows when the thermometer stands at ninety in the shade, as he has cold in his head. They wilt under him. He absorbs all the oxygen of the at- mosphere. When he has slammed the door for the last time choked lungs draw deep breath, and the color comes back to bioodless lips.
 Men and women of this sort are gre garious, of course. They want to huddle. They would perish did they not draw their nutriment from other lives. And the poor sensitives who recoil instinctively from personal con- tact, to whom the propinquity of other natures except such as are mag netically attractive may almost be physical pain, suffer in consequence such confused throbs, such indefinite bangs, as no pen has written or tongue spoken.
 Besides the extreme types of vam- pires specified there are many others less obvious that do their work with as much success. Family broils, cases for the divorce court-feuds among friends-all have been caused by oc- cult instances of vampirism. And it generally to be observed that it is the vampire who comes out the winner in such instances. The victims, only partly and obscurely conscious of the incubus upon them, remain the suf- ferers to the end. Their nerves have been shattered by the strain. Their temperament has lost it's boise in the atmosphere to which they have been subjected. They are out of tune and touch with the whole world. But the vampire is more or less blooming in contrast; and easily appears in the right.
 Honeymoon.
 "Say, Perkins, old boy, why don't