ud screams; mother
stood by my bed, with the vial labeled "laudanum" in one hand, my
letter in the other. Father rushed into the room.

"Father, John's committed suicide. Oh! bring the tartar-emetic quick!
Make some coffee as strong as lye! Oh! send for a stomach-pump. Tell
Mary to bring the things and put the coffee on; and you come here, an'
we'll walk him up and down--keep him a-going--that's his only
salvation! Oh! John, John! that ever your bashfulness should drive you
into this! Up with him, father! Oh! he's dying! He ain't able to help
himself one bit!"

They dragged me off the bed, and marched me up and down the room.
Supposing, as a matter of course, that I ought to be expiring, I felt
that I was expiring. My knees tottered under me; they only hauled me
around the more violently. They forced a spoonful of tartar-emetic
down my throat; Mary, the servant-girl, poured a quart of black coffee
down me, half outside and half in; then they jerked me about the floor
again, as if we were dancing a Virginia reel.

The doctor came and poked a long rubber tube down and converted me
into a patent pump, until the tartar-emetic, and the coffee, and the
pumpkin-pie I had eaten for dinner had all revisited this mundane
sphere.

They had no mercy on me; I promenaded up and down and across with
father, with Mary, with the doctor, until I felt that I should die if
they didn't allow me to stop promenading.

The worst of it was, the house was full of folks; they crowded about
the chamber door and looked at me, dancing up and down with the hired
girl and the doctor.

"Shut the door--they shall _not_ look at me!" I gasped, at last. The
doctor felt my pulse and said proudly to my mother:

"Madam, your son will live! Our skill and vigilance have saved him."

"Bless you, doctor!" sobbed my parents.

"I will _not_ live," I moaned, "to be the laughing stock of
Babbletown. I will buy some more."

"John," said my father, weeping, "arouse yourself! You shall leave
this place, if you desire it--only live! I will get you the position
of weather-gauger on top of Mount Washington, if you say so, but don't
commit any more suicide, my son!"

I was affected, and promised that I wouldn't, provided that I was
found a situation somewhere by myself. So the excitement subsided.
Father slept with me that night, keeping one eye open; the doctor got
the credit of saving my life, and the girls of Babbletown were scared
out of laughing at me fo