he doctor who comes around every
day, and thumps me, and listens to my chest with as much pleasure as
if I were music all through--I say, if I really believed him, I should
suppose I was going to die. The fact is, I don't believe him at
all. Some of these days I shall take a turn and get about again; but
meanwhile it is rather dull for a stirring, active person like me to
have to lie still and watch myself getting big brown and yellow spots
all over me, like a map that has taken to growing.

The man on my right has consumption--smells of cod-liver oil, and coughs
all night. The man on my left is a down-easter with a liver which has
struck work; looks like a human pumpkin; and how he contrives to whittle
jackstraws all day, and eat as he does, I can't understand. I have tried
reading and tried whittling, but they don't either of them satisfy me,
so that yesterday I concluded to ask the doctor if he couldn't suggest
some other amusement.

I waited until he had gone through the ward, and then seized my chance,
and asked him to stop a moment.

"Well, my man," said he, "what do you want!"

I thought him rather disrespectful, but I replied, "Something to do,
doctor."

He thought a little, and then said: "I'll tell you what to do. I think
if you were to write out a plain account of your life it would be pretty
well worth reading. If half of what you told me last week be true, you
must be about as clever a scamp as there is to be met with. I suppose
you would just as lief put it on paper as talk it."

"Pretty nearly," said I. "I think I will try it, doctor."

After he left I lay awhile thinking over the matter. I knew well that I
was what the world calls a scamp, and I knew also that I had got little
good out of the fact. If a man is what people call virtuous, and fails
in life, he gets credit at least for the virtue; but when a man is
a--is--well, one of liberal views, and breaks down, somehow or other
people don't credit him with even the intelligence he has put into the
business. This I call hard. If I did not recall with satisfaction the
energy and skill with which I did my work, I should be nothing but
disgusted at the melancholy spectacle of my failure. I suppose that
I shall at least find occupation in reviewing all this, and I
think, therefore, for my own satisfaction, I shall try to amuse my
convalescence by writing a plain, straightforward account of the life I
have led, and the various devices by which I have