ully, even to such a degree that the thought of self-destruction had
come upon him as a temptation. But here was death in an unexpected and
appalling shape. He did not know before how much he cared to live. All
his old recollections came before him as it were in one long, vivid
flash. The closed vista of memory opened to its far horizon-line, and
past and present were pictured in a single instant of clear vision. The
dread moment which had blighted his life returned in all its terror. He
felt the convulsive spring in the form of a faint, impotent spasm,--the
rush of air,--the thorns of the stinging and lacerating cradle into which
he was precipitated. One after another those paralyzing seizures which
had been like deadening blows on the naked heart seemed to repeat
themselves, as real as at the moment of their occurrence. The pictures
passed in succession with such rapidity that they appeared almost as if
simultaneous. The vision of the "inward eye" was so intensified in this
moment of peril that an instant was like an hour of common existence.
Those who have been very near drowning know well what this description
means. The development of a photograph may not explain it, but it
illustrates the curious and familiar fact of the revived recollections of
the drowning man's experience. The sensitive plate has taken one look at
a scene, and remembers it all,

Every little circumstance is there,--the hoof in air, the wing in flight,
the leaf as it falls, the wave as it breaks. All there, but invisible;
potentially present, but impalpable, inappreciable, as if not existing at
all. A wash is poured over it, and the whole scene comes out in all its
perfection of detail. In those supreme moments when death stares a man
suddenly in the face the rush of unwonted emotion floods the undeveloped
pictures of vanished years, stored away in the memory, the vast panorama
of a lifetime, and in one swift instant the past comes out as vividly as
if it were again the present. So it was at this moment with the sick
man, as he lay helpless and felt that he was left to die. For he saw no
hope of relief: the smoke was drifting in clouds into the room; the
flames were very near; if he was not reached and rescued immediately it
was all over with him.

His past life had flashed before him. Then all at once rose the thought
of his future,--of all its possibilities, of the vague hopes which he had
cherished of late that his mysterious doom would be li