your heart, and it will be changed, and I will live to see my
father enjoy life and be happy."

"_When?_" groaned the miserable man, satirically, as if roused by the
sound of the distasteful word "happy." "When I am sittin at the window
o' a prison, thinkin o' my dead Agnes, and lookin at the red settin o'
my sixty-fifth sun?"

These words showed that the struggle had been ineffectual. Released
from the grasp of his daughter, who sat at the side of the bed, he
doggedly and sternly folded his arms, and relapsed into a silent fit
of dejection. No effort would make him open his lips. There seemed to
be no principle of reaction in his moral economy; all was penetrated
by a fatal lethargy, which closed up every issue, broke every spring
of living thought, feeling, or motion. My professional knowledge was
entirely useless, my personal services unavailing. I called to him
loudly to answer me, and got no reply but deep groans. I even shook
him roughly, and tried to bend his head to his weeping daughter. My
efforts were quickened by a sense that bore in upon me with fearful
strength and importunity, that I had, by experimenting on his mind,
and filling it with images of horror, increased the disease I intended
to cure. Pained beyond measure, I was anxious to redeem my fault and
correct my error by getting him again engaged in conversation, whereby
I might have a last opportunity of drawing him into a train of thought
which might lead to a sense of his awful condition, and a prospect of
escaping from its present misery, and its horrible consequences. But
my medicine had operated too powerfully. There he sat, unmoved,
immoveable--a sad and melancholy victim of the worst species of
hypochondria--that which exhibits as one of its pathognomonic
symptoms, the desire, the determination, persevered in through all
difficulties, all oppositions, all wiles and schemes, to commit
self-murder.

I waited for a considerable period, standing at the side of his bed,
to see if he would exhibit any signs of returning moral vitality: but
in vain. My other pressing avocations demanded imperiously my presence
in quarters where I could be of more service. The daughter was herself
buried in despondency, her face being hid in her hands, and broken
ejaculations escaping from her lips. I took up the book which had
produced so much harm, and whispered lowly in her ear, to request
James H---- to call for me next day. At the sound of this name she
starte