an event
occurred which had nearly stopped my career, and merged all minor points
of solicitude in anxiety for my life. My strength and appetite suddenly
deserted me, and I began to pine and droop. Some said that I had
overgrown myself, and that these were the symptoms of a rapid decline; I
grew worse and worse, and was soon stretched upon my bed, from which it
seemed scarcely probable that I should ever more rise, the physicians
themselves giving but slight hopes of my recovery: as for myself, I made
up my mind to die, and felt quite resigned. I was sadly ignorant at that
time, and, when I thought of death, it appeared to me little else than a
pleasant sleep, and I wished for sleep, of which I got but little. It
was well that I did not die that time, for I repeat that I was sadly
ignorant of many important things. I did not die, for somebody coming
gave me a strange, bitter draught; a decoction, I believe, of a bitter
root which grows on commons and desolate places: and the person who gave
it me was an ancient female, a kind of doctress, who had been my nurse in
my infancy, and who, hearing of my state, had come to see me; so I drank
the draught, and became a little better, and I continued taking draughts
made from the bitter root till I manifested symptoms of convalescence.

But how much more quickly does strength desert the human frame than
return to it! I had become convalescent, it is true, but my state of
feebleness was truly pitiable. I believe it is in that state that the
most remarkable feature of human physiology frequently exhibits itself.
Oh, how dare I mention the dark feeling of mysterious dread which comes
over the mind, and which the lamp of reason, though burning bright the
while, is unable to dispel! Art thou, as leeches say, the concomitant of
disease--the result of shattered nerves? Nay, rather the principle of
woe itself, the fountain-head of all sorrow co-existent with man, whose
influence he feels when yet unborn, and whose workings he testifies with
his earliest cries, when, "drowned in tears," he first beholds the light;
for, as the sparks fly upward, so is man born to trouble, and woe doth he
bring with him into the world, even thyself, dark one, terrible one,
causeless, unbegotten, without a father. Oh, how unfrequently dost thou
break down the barriers which divide thee from the poor soul of man, and
overcast its sunshine with thy gloomy shadow. In the brightest days of
prosperity--