ur feelings or wishes
now?"

There was an instant return of the hectic circles on the cheeks; the
tongue quivered, or rather rolled violently in the mouth (although the
jaws and lips remained rigid as before;) and at length the same hideous
voice which I have already described, broke forth:

"For God's sake!--quick!--quick!--put me to sleep--or, quick!--waken
me!--quick!--I say to you that I am dead!"

I was thoroughly unnerved, and for an instant remained undecided what to
do. At first I made an endeavor to re-compose the patient; but, failing
in this through total abeyance of the will, I retraced my steps and as
earnestly struggled to awaken him. In this attempt I soon saw that I
should be successful--or at least I soon fancied that my success would
be complete--and I am sure that all in the room were prepared to see the
patient awaken.

For what really occurred, however, it is quite impossible that any human
being could have been prepared.

As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of "dead!
dead!" absolutely bursting from the tongue and not from the lips of the
sufferer, his whole frame at once--within the space of a single minute,
or even less, shrunk--crumbled--absolutely rotted away beneath my hands.
Upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass
of loathsome--of detestable putridity.

THE BLACK CAT.

FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I
neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it,
in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I
not--and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day
I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before
the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of
mere household events. In their consequences, these events have
terrified--have tortured--have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to
expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror--to many
they will seem less terrible than _barroques_. Hereafter, perhaps,
some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the
common-place--some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less
excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I
detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very
natural causes and effects.

From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my
disposition. My tenderness of he