es of the mind. After such a
spree as the one just mentioned, it has generally been out of my power to
sleep for a week or longer after getting sober. I have tossed for hours and
nights upon a bed of remorse, and had hell with all its flames burning in
my heart and brain. Often have I prayed for death, and as often, when I
thought the final hour had come, have I shrunk back from the mysterious
shadow in which flesh has no more motion. Often have I felt that I would
lose my reason forever, but after a period of madness, nature would be
merciful and restore me my lost senses. Often have I pressed my hands
tightly over my mouth, fearing that I would scream, and as often would a
low groan sound in my blistered throat, the pent up echo of a long maniacal
wail. Often have I contemplated suicide, but as often has some benign power
held back my desperate hand; once, indeed, I tried to force the gates of
death by an attempt to take my own life, but, heaven be forever praised! I
did not succeed, for the knife refused to cut as deep as I would have had
it. I thought I would be justifiable in throwing off by any means such a
load of horror and pain as I was weighed down with. Who would not escape
from misery if he could? I argued. If the grave, self-sought, would hide
every error, blot out every pang, and shield from every storm, why not seek
it?

They have in certain lands of the tropics a game which the people are said
to watch with absorbing interest. It is this: A scorpion is caught. With
cruel eagerness the boys and girls of the street assemble and place the
reptile on a board, surrounded with a rim of tow saturated with some
inflammable spirit. This ignited, the torture of the scorpion begins.
Maddened by the heat, the detested thing approaches the fiery barrier and
attempts to find some passage of escape, but vain the endeavor! It retreats
toward the center of the ring, and as the heat increases and it begins to
writhe under it, the children cry out with pleasure--a cry in which, I
fancy, there is a cadence of the sound which sends a thrill of delight
through hell--the sound of exultation which rises from the tongues of
bigots when the martyr's soul mounts upward from the flames in which his
body is consumed. Again the scorpion attempts to escape, and again it is
turned back by that impassable barrier of fire. The shouts of the children
deepen. At last, finding that there is no way by which to fly, the hated
thing retreats to