er a darker--to live through--or
a better to die upon. Its very perfection and the songs of the robins,
which at that season were plentiful in the neighborhood, served but to
increase my despair and make me the more willing to die. As the day
wore on, my anguish became more intense, but I managed to mislead those
about me by uttering a word now and then, and feigning to read a
newspaper, which to me, however, appeared an unintelligible jumble of
type. My brain was in a ferment. It felt as if pricked by a million
needles at white heat. My whole body felt as though it would be torn
apart by the terrific nervous strain under which I labored.

Shortly after noon, dinner having been served, my mother entered the
room and asked me if she should bring me some dessert. I assented. It
was not that I cared for the dessert; I had no appetite. I wished to
get her out of the room, for I believed myself to be on the verge of
another attack. She left at once. I knew that in two or three minutes
she would return. The crisis seemed at hand. It was now or never for
liberation. She had probably descended one of three flights of stairs
when, with the mad desire to dash my brains out on the pavement below,
I rushed to that window which was directly over the flag walk.
Providence must have guided my movements, for in some otherwise
unaccountable way, on the very point of hurling myself out bodily, I
chose to drop feet foremost instead. With my fingers I clung for a
moment to the sill. Then I let go. In falling my body turned so as to
bring my right side toward the building. I struck the ground a little
more than two feet from the foundation of the house, and at least three
to the left of the point from which I started. Missing the stone
pavement by not more than three or four inches, I struck on
comparatively soft earth. My position must have been almost upright,
for both heels struck the ground squarely. The concussion slightly
crushed one heel bone and broke most of the small bones in the arch of
each foot, but there was no mutilation of the flesh. As my feet struck
the ground my right hand struck hard against the front of the house,
and it is probable that these three points of contact, dividing the
force of the shock, prevented my back from being broken. As it was, it
narrowly escaped a fracture and, for several weeks afterward, it felt
as if powdered glass had been substituted for cartilage between the
vertebrae.

I did not lose consc