I felt unwell, and got back to my
boarding-house with these tidings. The gentleman who kept the house was
far from being satisfied with this, and he gave me a hint that at once put
the door between us. This was the first time I ever had a door shut upon
me, and I am thankful it happened at a soldier rendezvous. I gave the man
all my spare clothes in pawn, and walked away from his house.
I had undoubtedly brought on myself a fit of the "horrors," by my recent
excesses. As I went along the streets, I thought every one was sneering at
me; and, though burning with thirst, I felt ashamed to enter any house to
ask even for water. A black gave me the direction of the Navy Yard, and I
shaped my course for it, feeling more like lying down to die, than
anything else. When about half-way across the bit of vacant land between
the Capitol and the Yard, I sat down under a high picket-fence, and the
devil put it into my head, that it would be well to terminate sufferings
that seemed too hard to be borne, by hanging myself on that very fence. I
took the handkerchief from my neck, made a running bow-line, and got so
far as to be at work at a standing bow-line, to hitch over the top of one
of the poles of the fence.
I now stood up, and began to look for a proper picket to make fast to,
when, in gazing about, I caught sight of the mast-heads of the shipping at
the yard, and of the ensign under which I had so long served! These came
over me, as a light-house comes over a mariner in distress at sea, and I
thought there must be friends for me in that quarter.
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