to have been actually dead, was living! Dr. D---- was
instantly standing by the bedside, and, upon examination, he found that a
sudden and copious flow of blood had taken place from the wound which the
lancet had left, and this, no doubt, had effected his sudden and almost
preternatural restoration to an existence from which all thought he had
been for ever removed. The man was still speechless, but he seemed to
understand the physician when he forbid his repeating the painful and
fruitless attempts which he made to articulate, and he at once resigned
himself quietly into his hands.

I left the patient with leeches upon his temples, and bleeding
freely--apparently with little of the drowsiness which accompanies
apoplexy; indeed, Dr. D---- told me that he had never before witnessed a
seizure which seemed to combine the symptoms of so many kinds, and yet
which belonged to none of the recognized classes; it certainly was not
apoplexy, catalepsy, _nor delirium tremens_, and yet it seemed, in some
degree, to partake of the properties of all--it was strange, but stranger
things are coming.

During two or three days Dr. D---- would not allow his patient to
converse in a manner which could excite or exhaust him, with any one; he
suffered him merely, as briefly as possible, to express his immediate
wants, and it was not until the fourth day after my early visit, the
particulars of which I have just detailed, that it was thought expedient
that I should see him, and then only because it appeared that his extreme
importunity and impatience were likely to retard his recovery more than
the mere exhaustion attendant upon a short conversation could possibly
do; perhaps, too, my friend entertained some hope that if by holy
confession his patient's bosom were eased of the perilous stuff, which no
doubt, oppressed it, his recovery would be more assured and rapid. It
was, then, as I have said, upon the fourth day after my first
professional call, that I found myself once more in the dreary chamber of
want and sickness. The man was in bed, and appeared low and restless. On
my entering the room he raised himself in the bed, and muttered twice or
thrice--"Thank God! thank God." I signed to those of his family who stood
by, to leave the room, and took a chair beside the bed. So soon as we
were alone, he said, rather doggedly--"There's no use now in telling me
of the sinfulness of bad ways--I know it all--I know where they lead
to--I seen ever