sed the yard
an officer stopped me. To my disgust, it was the captain of my old Rhode
Island company.

"Hello!" said he; "keep that fellow safe. I know him."

To cut short a long story, I was tried, convicted, and forced to refund
the Rhode Island bounty, for by ill luck they found my bank-book among
my papers. I was finally sent to Fort Delaware and kept at hard
labor, handling and carrying shot, policing the ground, picking up
cigar-stumps, and other light, unpleasant occupations.

When the war was over I was released. I went at once to Boston, where I
had about four hundred dollars in bank. I spent nearly all of this sum
before I could satisfy the accumulated cravings of a year and a half
without drink or tobacco, or a decent meal. I was about to engage in a
little business as a vender of lottery policies when I first began to
feel a strange sense of lassitude, which soon increased so as quite to
disable me from work of any kind. Month after month passed away, while
my money lessened, and this terrible sense of weariness went on from bad
to worse. At last one day, after nearly a year had elapsed, I perceived
on my face a large brown patch of color, in consequence of which I went
in some alarm to consult a well-known physician. He asked me a multitude
of tiresome questions, and at last wrote off a prescription, which I
immediately read. It was a preparation of arsenic.

"What do you think," said I, "is the matter with me, doctor?"

"I am afraid," said he, "that you have a very serious trouble--what we
call Addison's disease."

"What's that?" said I.

"I do not think you would comprehend it," he replied; "it is an
affection of the suprarenal capsules."

I dimly remembered that there were such organs, and that nobody knew
what they were meant for. It seemed that doctors had found a use for
them at last.

"Is it a dangerous disease?" I said.

"I fear so," he answered.

"Don't you really know," I asked, "what's the truth about it?"

"Well," he returned gravely, "I'm sorry to tell you it is a very
dangerous malady."

"Nonsense!" said I; "I don't believe it"; for I thought it was only a
doctor's trick, and one I had tried often enough myself.

"Thank you," said he; "you are a very ill man, and a fool besides. Good
morning." He forgot to ask for a fee, and I did not therefore find it
necessary to escape payment by telling him I was a doctor.

Several weeks went by; my money was gone, my clothes were ragged