` ` ` ` Seven years ago we all went through the flames. And the happiness of ` ` some of us since then is, we think, well worth the pain we endured. ` ` It is an added joy to Mina and to me that our boy's birthday is the ` ` same day as that on which Quincey Morris died. His mother holds, I ` ` know, the secret belief that some of our brave friend's spirit has ` ` passed into him. His bundle of names links all our little band of men ` ` together. But we call him Quincey. ` ` ` ` In the summer of this year we made a journey to Transylvania, and went ` ` over the old ground which was, and is, to us so full of vivid and ` ` terrible memories. It was almost impossible to believe that the ` ` things which we had seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears ` ` were living truths. Every trace of all that had been was blotted ` ` out. The castle stood as before, reared high above a waste of ` ` desolation. ` ` ` ` When we got home we were talking of the old time, which we could all ` ` look back on without despair, for Godalming and Seward are both ` ` happily married. I took the papers from the safe where they had been ` ` ever since our return so long ago. We were struck with the fact, that ` ` in all the mass of material of which the record is composed, there is ` ` hardly one authentic document. Nothing but a mass of typewriting, ` ` except the later notebooks of Mina and Seward and myself, and Van ` ` Helsing's memorandum. We could hardly ask any one, even did we wish ` ` to, to accept these as proofs of so wild a story. Van Helsing summed ` ` it all up as he said, with our boy on his knee. ` ` ` ` "We want no proofs. We ask none to believe us! This boy will some ` ` day know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. Already he ` ` knows her sweetness and loving care. Later on he will understand how ` ` some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake." ` ` ` ` JONATHAN HARKER ` ` ` ` ` `
