eak was torture. I
thought and felt that my senses were gradually yielding beneath me, and
a cold shuddering at my heart told me that the hand of death was upon
me. The exertion now made to repel the fatal lethargy must have been
great, for a cold, clammy perspiration broke profusely over my body;
a rushing sound, as if of water, filled my ears; a succession of short
convulsive spasms, as if given by an electric machine, shook my limbs.
I grasped the doctor's hand firmly in mine, and starting to the sitting
posture I looked wildly about me. My breathing became shorter and
shorter, my grasp relaxed, my eyes swam, and I fell back heavily in the
bed. The last recollection of that moment was the muttered expression of
my poor friend G------, saying, "It is over at last."

'Many hours must have elapsed ere I returned to any consciousness. My
first sensation was feeling the cold wind across my face, which seemed
to come from an open window. My eyes were closed, and the lids felt as
if pressed down by a weight. My arms lay along my side, and though the
position in which I lay was constrained and unpleasant, I could make no
effort to alter it; I tried to speak, but I could not.

'As I lay thus, the footsteps of many persons traversing the apartment
broke upon my ear, followed by a heavy dull sound, as if some weighty
body had been laid upon the floor; a harsh voice of one near me now
said, as if reading, "William H------, aged thirty-eight years; I
thought him much more." The words rushed through my brain, and with
the rapidity of a lightning flash every circumstance of my illness came
before me; and I now knew that I had died, and that for my interment
were intended the awful preparations about me. Was this then death?
Could it be that though coldness wrapped the suffering clay, passion and
sense should still survive, and that while every external trace of life
had fled, consciousness should still cling to the cold corpse destined
for the earth? Oh, how horrible, how more than horrible, the terror of
the thought! Then I thought it might be what is termed a trance; but
that poor hope deserted me as I brought to mind the words of the doctor,
who knew too well all the unerring signs of death to be deceived by its
counterfeit, and my heart sank as they lifted me into the coffin, and I
felt that my limbs had stiffened, as I knew this never took place in a
trance. How shall I tell the heart-cutting anguish of that moment, as
my min