To the hospital he went: 'twas not for the first,--'twas for
the last time. His agonies were distressing. They wrung from him screams
which could be heard from the fifth floor, where he lay, to the street.
Death made his approaches like some skilful engineer against some
impregnable fortress: fibre by fibre, vein by vein, atom by atom, was
mastered and destroyed.
During one of the rare intervals of freedom from torture, he turned to
the sick-nurse who kept watch by his pillow, and, after vacantly gazing
on her buxom form and ruddy cheek, he significantly asked,--"Mammy, do
you find this world a happy place, and life an easy burden?" The
well-fed woman understood not the bitterness of soul which prompted this
question. "Keep quiet, and sleep," was her reply. He fell back upon his
pillow, murmuring, "_I_ haven't! _I_ haven't!" Yet he was only
eight-and-thirty years old, and men's sorrows commonly commence later in
life. A friend came to see him. As the physicians had forbidden him all
conversation, he wrote on a card this explanation of his
situation:--"Ricord and the other doctors were of opinion that I should
come to Dubois's Hospital.
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