ntly; a parched and
swollen feeling came about my throat; I endeavored to open my collar
and undo my stock, but my disabled arm prevented me. I tried to call
my servant, but my utterance was thick and my words would not come; a
frightful suspicion crossed me that my reason was tottering. I made towards
the door; but as I did so, the objects around me became confused and
mingled, my limbs trembled, and I fell heavily upon the floor. A pang of
dreadful pain shot through me as I fell; my arm was rebroken. After this I
knew no more; all the accumulated excitement of the evening bore down with
one fell swoop upon my brain. Ere day broke, I was delirious.

I have a vague and indistinct remembrance of hurried and anxious faces
around my bed, of whispered words and sorrowful looks; but my own thoughts
careered over the bold hills of the far west as I trod them in my
boyhood, free and high of heart, or recurred to the din and crash of the
battle-field, with the mad bounding of the war-horse, and the loud clang of
the trumpet. Perhaps the acute pain of my swollen and suffering arm gave
the character to my mental aberration; for I have more than once observed
among the wounded in battle, that even when torn and mangled by grape
from a howitzer, their ravings have partaken of a high feature of
enthusiasm,--shouts of triumph and exclamations of pleasure, even
songs have I heard, but never once the low muttering of despair or the
half-stifled cry of sorrow and affliction.

Such were the few gleams of consciousness which visited me; and even to
such as these I soon became insensible.

Few like to chronicle, fewer still to read, the sad history of a sick-bed.
Of mine, I know but little. The throbbing pulses of the erring brain, the
wild fancies of lunacy, take no note of time. There is no past nor future;
a dreadful present, full of its hurried and confused impressions, is all
that the mind beholds; and even when some gleams of returning reason flash
upon the mad confusion of the brain, they come like sunbeams through a
cloud, dimmed, darkened, and perverted.

It is the restless activity of the mind in fever that constitutes its
most painful anguish; the fast-flitting thoughts that rush ever onwards,
crowding sensation on sensation, an endless train of exciting images
without purpose or repose; or even worse, the straining effort to pursue
some vague and shadowy conception which evades us ever as we follow, but
which mingles with al