who would fly to
save us if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this
fate they can never be informed--that our hopeless portion is that of
the really dead--these considerations, I say, carry into the heart,
which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable horror
from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing
so agonizing upon Earth--we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the
realms of the nethermost Hell. And thus all narratives upon this topic
have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through
the sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly
depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated. What I
have now to tell is of my own actual knowledge--of my own positive and
personal experience.

For several years I had been subject to attacks of the singular disorder
which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy, in default of a more
definitive title. Although both the immediate and the predisposing
causes, and even the actual diagnosis, of this disease are still
mysterious, its obvious and apparent character is sufficiently well
understood. Its variations seem to be chiefly of degree. Sometimes the
patient lies, for a day only, or even for a shorter period, in a species
of exaggerated lethargy. He is senseless and externally motionless; but
the pulsation of the heart is still faintly perceptible; some traces of
warmth remain; a slight color lingers within the centre of the cheek;
and, upon application of a mirror to the lips, we can detect a torpid,
unequal, and vacillating action of the lungs. Then again the duration
of the trance is for weeks--even for months; while the closest scrutiny,
and the most rigorous medical tests, fail to establish any material
distinction between the state of the sufferer and what we conceive of
absolute death. Very usually he is saved from premature interment solely
by the knowledge of his friends that he has been previously subject to
catalepsy, by the consequent suspicion excited, and, above all, by
the non-appearance of decay. The advances of the malady are, luckily,
gradual. The first manifestations, although marked, are unequivocal. The
fits grow successively more and more distinctive, and endure each for a
longer term than the preceding. In this lies the principal security from
inhumation. The unfortunate whose first attack should be of the extreme
character which is occasi