This creature finished speaking, and fixed his looks upon me in expectation of a reply. But I was bewildered, perplexed and unable to collect my thoughts sufficiently to understand the full extent of what he asked of me. He continued-

"You must create a female for me, with whom I can live as a real and feeling human being. This you alone can do; and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to grant to me."

The latter part of his tale has rekindled in me the anger that had died away while he told me about his peaceful life among the cottagers, and, as he said this, I could no longer suppress the rage that burned within me.

"I do refuse," I replied; "and no torture you inflict shall ever make me change my mind. You may make me the most miserable of men, but you shall never make me dishonorable in my own eyes. If I were to create another like yourself, together your wickedness night desolate the world! Be gone! I have answered you; you may torture me, but I will never do what you aks."

"You are in wrong," replied the fiend; "and, instead of threatening, I am content to reason with you. I am hateful because I am miserable. Does not all mankind shun me and hate me? Even you, my creator, would tear me to pieces, and think it a victory; remeber thay, and tell me why I should feel sorry for man more than he feels sorry for me? You would not call it murder if you could force me beneath the ice into the water below and destroy my being, the work of your own hands. Shall I respect man when he despises me? Is others were able to live with me in mutual kindness, then, instead of injury, I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. But that can't be; the human senses are impossible barriers to living in this mutual kindness. Yet I will not submit to their hatred and be their slave. I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear; and chiefly towards you my greatest enemy, because my creator, do I swear everlasting hatred. Be careful: I will work at your destruction, and not stop until I destroy your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth."

A fiendish rage animated him as he said this; his face was wrinkled into contortions too horrible for human eyes to behold; but presently he calmed himself and proceeded-

"I intended to reason. These human feelings cause me great harm, and you don't realize that you have caused them. Is any human being felt emotions of kindness towards me, I should return them an hundred and an hundred fold; for that one human being's sake, I would make peace with the whole kind! But I now indulge in dreams of happiness that can never come. What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature of another sex, as hideous as mysefl; this satisfaction is small, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless, and free from the misery I now feel.Oh! my creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for this one benefit! Let me see that I can share these feelings with dome existing thing; do not deny my request!"

I was moved. I shuddered when I thought of the possible consequences of granting his request; but I felt that there was some justice  in his argument. His tale, and the feelings he now expressed, proved him to be a creature of fine sensations; and did I not as his maker owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to give to him?