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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case
+Of George Dedlow, by S. Weir Mitchell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow
+
+Author: S. Weir Mitchell
+
+Release Date: January 21, 2006 [EBook #693]
+Last Updated: November 15, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A QUACK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A QUACK
+
+AND
+
+THE CASE OF GEORGE DEDLOW
+
+
+By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D., LL.D. Harvard And Edinburgh
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A QUACK
+
+THE CASE OF GEORGE DEDLOW
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Both of the tales in this little volume appeared originally in the
+“Atlantic Monthly” as anonymous contributions. I owe to the present
+owners of that journal permission to use them. “The Autobiography of a
+Quack” has been recast with large additions.
+
+“The Case of George Dedlow” was not written with any intention that it
+should appear in print. I lent the manuscript to the Rev. Dr. Furness
+and forgot it. This gentleman sent it to the Rev. Edward Everett
+Hale. He, presuming, I fancy, that every one desired to appear in the
+“Atlantic,” offered it to that journal. To my surprise, soon afterwards
+I received a proof and a check. The story was inserted as a leading
+article without my name. It was at once accepted by many as the
+description of a real case. Money was collected in several places to
+assist the unfortunate man, and benevolent persons went to the “Stump
+Hospital,” in Philadelphia, to see the sufferer and to offer him aid.
+The spiritual incident at the end of the story was received with joy by
+the spiritualists as a valuable proof of the truth of their beliefs.
+
+S. WEIR MITCHELL
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A QUACK
+
+At this present moment of time I am what the doctors call an interesting
+case, and am to be found in bed No. 10, Ward 11, Massachusetts General
+Hospital. I am told that I have what is called Addison’s disease, and
+that it is this pleasing malady which causes me to be covered with large
+blotches of a dark mulatto tint. However, it is a rather grim subject
+to joke about, because, if I believed the doctor who comes around every
+day, and thumps me, and listens to my chest with as much pleasure as
+if I were music all through--I say, if I really believed him, I should
+suppose I was going to die. The fact is, I don’t believe him at
+all. Some of these days I shall take a turn and get about again; but
+meanwhile it is rather dull for a stirring, active person like me to
+have to lie still and watch myself getting big brown and yellow spots
+all over me, like a map that has taken to growing.
+
+The man on my right has consumption--smells of cod-liver oil, and coughs
+all night. The man on my left is a down-easter with a liver which has
+struck work; looks like a human pumpkin; and how he contrives to whittle
+jackstraws all day, and eat as he does, I can’t understand. I have tried
+reading and tried whittling, but they don’t either of them satisfy me,
+so that yesterday I concluded to ask the doctor if he couldn’t suggest
+some other amusement.
+
+I waited until he had gone through the ward, and then seized my chance,
+and asked him to stop a moment.
+
+“Well, my man,” said he, “what do you want!”
+
+I thought him rather disrespectful, but I replied, “Something to do,
+doctor.”
+
+He thought a little, and then said: “I’ll tell you what to do. I think
+if you were to write out a plain account of your life it would be pretty
+well worth reading. If half of what you told me last week be true, you
+must be about as clever a scamp as there is to be met with. I suppose
+you would just as lief put it on paper as talk it.”
+
+“Pretty nearly,” said I. “I think I will try it, doctor.”
+
+After he left I lay awhile thinking over the matter. I knew well that I
+was what the world calls a scamp, and I knew also that I had got little
+good out of the fact. If a man is what people call virtuous, and fails
+in life, he gets credit at least for the virtue; but when a man is
+a--is--well, one of liberal views, and breaks down, somehow or other
+people don’t credit him with even the intelligence he has put into the
+business. This I call hard. If I did not recall with satisfaction the
+energy and skill with which I did my work, I should be nothing but
+disgusted at the melancholy spectacle of my failure. I suppose that
+I shall at least find occupation in reviewing all this, and I
+think, therefore, for my own satisfaction, I shall try to amuse my
+convalescence by writing a plain, straightforward account of the life I
+have led, and the various devices by which I have sought to get my share
+of the money of my countrymen. It does appear to me that I have had no
+end of bad luck.
+
+As no one will ever see these pages, I find it pleasant to recall for my
+own satisfaction the fact that I am really a very remarkable man. I
+am, or rather I was, very good-looking, five feet eleven, with a lot
+of curly red hair, and blue eyes. I am left-handed, which is another
+unusual thing. My hands have often been noticed. I get them from my
+mother, who was a Fishbourne, and a lady. As for my father, he was
+rather common. He was a little man, red and round like an apple, but
+very strong, for a reason I shall come to presently. The family must
+have had a pious liking for Bible names, because he was called Zebulon,
+my sister Peninnah, and I Ezra, which is not a name for a gentleman. At
+one time I thought of changing it, but I got over it by signing myself
+“E. Sanderaft.”
+
+Where my father was born I do not know, except that it was somewhere in
+New Jersey, for I remember that he was once angry because a man called
+him a Jersey Spaniard. I am not much concerned to write about my people,
+because I soon got above their level; and as to my mother, she died when
+I was an infant. I get my manners, which are rather remarkable, from
+her.
+
+My aunt, Rachel Sanderaft, who kept house for us, was a queer character.
+She had a snug little property, about seven thousand dollars. An old
+aunt left her the money because she was stone-deaf. As this defect came
+upon her after she grew up, she still kept her voice. This woman was the
+cause of some of my ill luck in life, and I hope she is uncomfortable,
+wherever she is. I think with satisfaction that I helped to make her
+life uneasy when I was young, and worse later on. She gave away to the
+idle poor some of her small income, and hid the rest, like a magpie,
+in her Bible or rolled in her stockings, or in even queerer places.
+The worst of her was that she could tell what people said by looking at
+their lips; this I hated. But as I grew and became intelligent, her ways
+of hiding her money proved useful, to me at least. As to Peninnah, she
+was nothing special until she suddenly bloomed out into a rather
+stout, pretty girl, took to ribbons, and liked what she called “keeping
+company.” She ran errands for every one, waited on my aunt, and thought
+I was a wonderful person--as indeed I was. I never could understand her
+fondness for helping everybody. A fellow has got himself to think about,
+and that is quite enough. I was told pretty often that I was the most
+selfish boy alive. But, then, I am an unusual person, and there are
+several names for things.
+
+My father kept a small shop for the sale of legal stationery and the
+like, on Fifth street north of Chestnut. But his chief interest in life
+lay in the bell-ringing of Christ Church. He was leader, or No. 1, and
+the whole business was in the hands of a kind of guild which is nearly
+as old as the church. I used to hear more of it than I liked, because my
+father talked of nothing else. But I do not mean to bore myself writing
+of bells. I heard too much about “back shake,” “raising in peal,”
+ “scales,” and “touches,” and the Lord knows what.
+
+My earliest remembrance is of sitting on my father’s shoulder when he
+led off the ringers. He was very strong, as I said, by reason of this
+exercise. With one foot caught in a loop of leather nailed to the floor,
+he would begin to pull No. 1, and by and by the whole peal would be
+swinging, and he going up and down, to my joy; I used to feel as if it
+was I that was making the great noise that rang out all over the town.
+My familiar acquaintance with the old church and its lumber-rooms, where
+were stored the dusty arms of William and Mary and George II., proved of
+use in my later days.
+
+My father had a strong belief in my talents, and I do not think he was
+mistaken. As he was quite uneducated, he determined that I should not
+be. He had saved enough to send me to Princeton College, and when I
+was about fifteen I was set free from the public schools. I never liked
+them. The last I was at was the high school. As I had to come
+down-town to get home, we used to meet on Arch street the boys from the
+grammar-school of the university, and there were fights every week. In
+winter these were most frequent, because of the snow-balling. A fellow
+had to take his share or be marked as a deserter. I never saw any
+personal good to be had out of a fight, but it was better to fight
+than to be cobbed. That means that two fellows hold you, and the other
+fellows kick you with their bent knees. It hurts.
+
+I find just here that I am describing a thing as if I were writing for
+some other people to see. I may as well go on that way. After all, a
+man never can quite stand off and look at himself as if he was the only
+person concerned. He must have an audience, or make believe to have one,
+even if it is only himself. Nor, on the whole, should I be unwilling, if
+it were safe, to let people see how great ability may be defeated by the
+crankiness of fortune.
+
+I may add here that a stone inside of a snowball discourages the fellow
+it hits. But neither our fellows nor the grammar-school used stones in
+snowballs. I rather liked it. If we had a row in the springtime we all
+threw stones, and here was one of those bits of stupid custom no man can
+understand; because really a stone outside of a snowball is much more
+serious than if it is mercifully padded with snow. I felt it to be
+a rise in life when I got out of the society of the common boys who
+attended the high school.
+
+When I was there a man by the name of Dallas Bache was the head master.
+He had a way of letting the boys attend to what he called the character
+of the school. Once I had to lie to him about taking another boy’s ball.
+He told my class that I had denied the charge, and that he always took
+it for granted that a boy spoke the truth. He knew well enough what
+would happen. It did. After that I was careful.
+
+Princeton was then a little college, not expensive, which was very well,
+as my father had some difficulty to provide even the moderate amount
+needed.
+
+I soon found that if I was to associate with the upper set of young men
+I needed money. For some time I waited in vain. But in my second year
+I discovered a small gold-mine, on which I drew with a moderation which
+shows even thus early the strength of my character.
+
+I used to go home once a month for a Sunday visit, and on these
+occasions I was often able to remove from my aunt’s big Bible a five- or
+ten-dollar note, which otherwise would have been long useless.
+
+Now and then I utilized my opportunities at Princeton. I very much
+desired certain things like well-made clothes, and for these I had to
+run in debt to a tailor. When he wanted pay, and threatened to send the
+bill to my father, I borrowed from two or three young Southerners; but
+at last, when they became hard up, my aunt’s uncounted hoard proved a
+last resource, or some rare chance in a neighboring room helped me out.
+I never did look on this method as of permanent usefulness, and it was
+only the temporary folly of youth.
+
+Whatever else the pirate necessity appropriated, I took no large amount
+of education, although I was fond of reading, and especially of novels,
+which are, I think, very instructive to the young, especially the novels
+of Smollett and Fielding.
+
+There is, however, little need to dwell on this part of my life.
+College students in those days were only boys, and boys are very strange
+animals. They have instincts. They somehow get to know if a fellow does
+not relate facts as they took place. I like to put it that way, because,
+after all, the mode of putting things is only one of the forms of
+self-defense, and is less silly than the ordinary wriggling methods
+which boys employ, and which are generally useless. I was rather given
+to telling large stories just for the fun of it and, I think, told them
+well. But somehow I got the reputation of not being strictly definite,
+and when it was meant to indicate this belief they had an ill-mannered
+way of informing you. This consisted in two or three fellows standing up
+and shuffling noisily with their feet on the floor. When first I heard
+this I asked innocently what it meant, and was told it was the noise
+of the bearers’ feet coming to take away Ananias. This was considered a
+fine joke.
+
+During my junior year I became unpopular, and as I was very cautious, I
+cannot see why. At last, being hard up, I got to be foolishly reckless.
+But why dwell on the failures of immaturity?
+
+The causes which led to my leaving Nassau Hall were not, after all,
+the mischievous outbreaks in which college lads indulge. Indeed, I have
+never been guilty of any of those pieces of wanton wickedness which
+injure the feelings of others while they lead to no useful result.
+When I left to return home, I set myself seriously to reflect upon the
+necessity of greater care in following out my inclinations, and from
+that time forward I have steadily avoided, whenever it was possible, the
+vulgar vice of directly possessing myself of objects to which I could
+show no legal title. My father was indignant at the results of my
+college career; and, according to my aunt, his shame and sorrow had
+some effect in shortening his life. My sister believed my account of
+the matter. It ended in my being used for a year as an assistant in the
+shop, and in being taught to ring bells--a fine exercise, but not
+proper work for a man of refinement. My father died while training his
+bell-ringers in the Oxford triple bob--broke a blood-vessel somewhere.
+How I could have caused that I do not see.
+
+I was now about nineteen years old, and, as I remember, a middle-sized,
+well-built young fellow, with large eyes, a slight mustache, and, I have
+been told, with very good manners and a somewhat humorous turn. Besides
+these advantages, my guardian held in trust for me about two thousand
+dollars. After some consultation between us, it was resolved that I
+should study medicine. This conclusion was reached nine years before the
+Rebellion broke out, and after we had settled, for the sake of economy,
+in Woodbury, New Jersey. From this time I saw very little of my deaf
+aunt or of Peninnah. I was resolute to rise in the world, and not to be
+weighted by relatives who were without my tastes and my manners.
+
+I set out for Philadelphia, with many good counsels from my aunt and
+guardian. I look back upon this period as a turning-point of my life.
+I had seen enough of the world already to know that if you can succeed
+without exciting suspicion, it is by far the pleasantest way; and I
+really believe that if I had not been endowed with so fatal a liking
+for all the good things of life I might have lived along as reputably as
+most men. This, however, is, and always has been, my difficulty, and
+I suppose that I am not responsible for the incidents to which it gave
+rise. Most men have some ties in life, but I have said I had none which
+held me. Peninnah cried a good deal when we parted, and this, I think,
+as I was still young, had a very good effect in strengthening my
+resolution to do nothing which could get me into trouble. The janitor
+of the college to which I went directed me to a boarding-house, where
+I engaged a small third-story room, which I afterwards shared with Mr.
+Chaucer of Georgia. He pronounced it, as I remember, “Jawjah.”
+
+In this very remarkable abode I spent the next two winters, and finally
+graduated, along with two hundred more, at the close of my two years of
+study. I should previously have been one year in a physician’s office as
+a student, but this regulation was very easily evaded. As to my studies,
+the less said the better. I attended the quizzes, as they call them,
+pretty closely, and, being of a quick and retentive memory, was thus
+enabled to dispense with some of the six or seven lectures a day which
+duller men found it necessary to follow.
+
+Dissecting struck me as a rather nasty business for a gentleman, and on
+this account I did just as little as was absolutely essential. In fact,
+if a man took his tickets and paid the dissection fees, nobody troubled
+himself as to whether or not he did any more than this. A like evil
+existed at the graduation: whether you squeezed through or passed with
+credit was a thing which was not made public, so that I had absolutely
+nothing to stimulate my ambition. I am told that it is all very
+different to-day.
+
+The astonishment with which I learned of my success was shared by the
+numerous Southern gentlemen who darkened the floors and perfumed with
+tobacco the rooms of our boarding-house. In my companions, during
+the time of my studies so called, as in other matters of life, I was
+somewhat unfortunate. All of them were Southern gentlemen, with
+more money than I had. Many of them carried great sticks, usually
+sword-canes, and some bowie-knives or pistols; also, they delighted in
+swallow-tailed coats, long hair, broad-brimmed felt hats, and very tight
+boots. I often think of these gentlemen with affectionate interest, and
+wonder how many are lying under the wheat-fields of Virginia. One could
+see them any day sauntering along with their arms over their companions’
+shoulders, splendidly indifferent to the ways of the people about them.
+They hated the “Nawth” and cursed the Yankees, and honestly believed
+that the leanest of them was a match for any half a dozen of the
+bulkiest of Northerners. I must also do them the justice to say that
+they were quite as ready to fight as to brag, which, by the way, is no
+meager statement. With these gentry--for whom I retain a respect which
+filled me with regret at the recent course of events--I spent a good
+deal of my large leisure. The more studious of both sections called us
+a hard crowd. What we did, or how we did it, little concerns me here,
+except that, owing to my esteem for chivalric blood and breeding, I was
+led into many practices and excesses which cost my guardian and myself
+a good deal of money. At the close of my career as a student I found
+myself aged twenty-one years, and the owner of some seven hundred
+dollars--the rest of my small estate having disappeared variously within
+the last two years. After my friends had gone to their homes in the
+South I began to look about me for an office, and finally settled upon
+very good rooms in one of the down-town localities of the Quaker City.
+I am not specific as to the number and street, for reasons which may
+hereafter appear. I liked the situation on various accounts. It had
+been occupied by a doctor; the terms were reasonable; and it lay on the
+skirts of a good neighborhood, while below it lived a motley population,
+among which I expected to get my first patients and such fees as were to
+be had. Into this new home I moved my medical text-books, a few bones,
+and myself. Also, I displayed in the window a fresh sign, upon which was
+distinctly to be read:
+
+DR. E. SANDERAFT. Office hours, 8 to 9 A.M., 7 to 9 P.M.
+
+
+I felt now that I had done my fair share toward attaining a virtuous
+subsistence, and so I waited tranquilly, and without undue enthusiasm,
+to see the rest of the world do its part in the matter. Meanwhile I
+read up on all sorts of imaginable cases, stayed at home all through my
+office hours, and at intervals explored the strange section of the town
+which lay to the south of my office. I do not suppose there is anything
+like it else where. It was then filled with grog-shops, brothels,
+slop-shops, and low lodging-houses. You could dine for a penny on soup
+made from the refuse meats of the rich, gathered at back gates by a
+horde of half-naked children, who all told varieties of one woeful tale.
+Here, too, you could be drunk for five cents, and be lodged for three,
+with men, women, and children of all colors lying about you. It was this
+hideous mixture of black and white and yellow wretchedness which made
+the place so peculiar. The blacks predominated, and had mostly
+that swollen, reddish, dark skin, the sign in this race of habitual
+drunkenness. Of course only the lowest whites were here--rag-pickers,
+pawnbrokers, old-clothes men, thieves, and the like. All of this, as it
+came before me, I viewed with mingled disgust and philosophy. I hated
+filth, but I understood that society has to stand on somebody, and I was
+only glad that I was not one of the undermost and worst-squeezed bricks.
+
+I can hardly believe that I waited a month without having been called
+upon by a single patient. At last a policeman on our beat brought me a
+fancy man with a dog-bite. This patient recommended me to his brother,
+the keeper of a small pawnbroking-shop, and by very slow degrees I began
+to get stray patients who were too poor to indulge in up-town doctors.
+I found the police very useful acquaintances; and, by a drink or a cigar
+now and then, I got most of the cases of cut heads and the like at the
+next station-house. These, however, were the aristocrats of my practice;
+the bulk of my patients were soap-fat men, rag-pickers, oystermen,
+hose-house bummers, and worse, with other and nameless trades, men and
+women, white, black, or mulatto. How they got the levies, fips, and
+quarters with which I was reluctantly paid, I do not know; that, indeed,
+was none of my business. They expected to pay, and they came to me in
+preference to the dispensary doctor, two or three squares away, who
+seemed to me to spend most of his days in the lanes and alleys about us.
+Of course he received no pay except experience, since the dispensaries
+in the Quaker City, as a rule, do not give salaries to their doctors;
+and the vilest of the poor prefer a “pay doctor” to one of these
+disinterested gentlemen, who cannot be expected to give their best
+brains for nothing, when at everybody’s beck and call. I am told, indeed
+I know, that most young doctors do a large amount of poor practice, as
+it is called; but, for my own part, I think it better for both parties
+when the doctor insists upon some compensation being made to him. This
+has been usually my own custom, and I have not found reason to regret
+it.
+
+Notwithstanding my strict attention to my own interests, I have been
+rather sorely dealt with by fate upon several occasions, where, so far
+as I could see, I was vigilantly doing everything in my power to keep
+myself out of trouble or danger. I may as well relate one of them,
+merely to illustrate of how little value a man’s intellect may be when
+fate and the prejudices of the mass of men are against him.
+
+One evening, late, I myself answered a ring at the bell, and found a
+small black boy on the steps, a shoeless, hatless little wretch, curled
+darkness for hair, and teeth like new tombstones. It was pretty cold,
+and he was relieving his feet by standing first on one and then on the
+other. He did not wait for me to speak.
+
+“Hi, sah, Missey Barker she say to come quick away, sah, to Numbah 709
+Bedford street.”
+
+The locality did not look like pay, but it is hard to say in this
+quarter, because sometimes you found a well-to-do “brandy-snifter”
+ (local for gin-shop) or a hard-working “leather-jeweler” (ditto for
+shoemaker), with next door, in a house better or worse, dozens of human
+rats for whom every police trap in the city was constantly set.
+
+With a doubt in my mind as to whether I should find a good patient or
+some dirty nigger, I sought the place to which I had been directed.
+I did not like its looks; but I blundered up an alley and into a back
+room, where I fell over somebody, and was cursed and told to lie down
+and keep easy, or somebody, meaning the man stumbled over, would make
+me. At last I lit on a staircase which led into the alley, and, after
+much useless inquiry, got as high as the garret. People hereabout did
+not know one another, or did not want to know, so that it was of little
+avail to ask questions. At length I saw a light through the cracks in
+the attic door, and walked in. To my amazement, the first person I saw
+was a woman of about thirty-five, in pearl-gray Quaker dress--one of
+your quiet, good-looking people. She was seated on a stool beside a
+straw mattress upon which lay a black woman. There were three others
+crowded close around a small stove, which was red-hot--an unusual
+spectacle in this street. Altogether a most nasty den.
+
+As I came in, the little Quaker woman got up and said: “I took the
+liberty of sending for thee to look at this poor woman. I am afraid she
+has the smallpox. Will thee be so kind as to look at her?” And with this
+she held down the candle toward the bed.
+
+“Good gracious!” I said hastily, seeing how the creature was speckled “I
+didn’t understand this, or I would not have come. I have important cases
+which I cannot subject to the risk of contagion. Best let her alone,
+miss,” I added, “or send her to the smallpox hospital.”
+
+Upon my word, I was astonished at the little woman’s indignation. She
+said just those things which make you feel as if somebody had been
+calling you names or kicking you--Was I really a doctor? and so on.
+It did not gain by being put in the ungrammatical tongue of Quakers.
+However, I never did fancy smallpox, and what could a fellow get by
+doctoring wretches like these? So I held my tongue and went away. About
+a week afterwards I met Evans, the dispensary man, a very common fellow,
+who was said to be frank.
+
+“Helloa!” says he. “Doctor, you made a nice mistake about that darky
+at No. 709 Bedford street the other night. She had nothing but measles,
+after all.”
+
+“Of course I knew,” said I, laughing; “but you don’t think I was going
+in for dispensary trash, do you?”
+
+“I should think not,” said Evans.
+
+I learned afterwards that this Miss Barker had taken an absurd fancy
+to the man because he had doctored the darky and would not let the
+Quakeress pay him. The end was, when I wanted to get a vacancy in the
+Southwark Dispensary, where they do pay the doctors, Miss Barker was
+malignant enough to take advantage of my oversight by telling the whole
+story to the board; so that Evans got in, and I was beaten.
+
+You may be pretty sure that I found rather slow the kind of practice I
+have described, and began to look about for chances of bettering myself.
+In this sort of locality rather risky cases turned up now and then;
+and as soon as I got to be known as a reliable man, I began to get the
+peculiar sort of practice I wanted. Notwithstanding all my efforts, I
+found myself, at the close of three years, with all my means spent, and
+just able to live meagerly from hand to mouth, which by no means suited
+a man of my refined tastes.
+
+Once or twice I paid a visit to my aunt, and was able to secure moderate
+aid by overhauling her concealed hoardings. But as to these changes of
+property I was careful, and did not venture to secure the large amount
+I needed. As to the Bible, it was at this time hidden, and I judged
+it, therefore, to be her chief place of deposit. Banks she utterly
+distrusted.
+
+Six months went by, and I was worse off than ever--two months in arrears
+of rent, and numerous other debts to cigar-shops and liquor-dealers. Now
+and then some good job, such as a burglar with a cut head, helped me
+for a while; but, on the whole, I was like Slider Downeyhylle in Neal’s
+“Charcoal Sketches,” and kept going “downer and downer” the more I tried
+not to. Something had to be done.
+
+It occurred to me, about this time, that if I moved into a more genteel
+locality I might get a better class of patients, and yet keep the best
+of those I now had. To do this it was necessary to pay my rent, and
+the more so because I was in a fair way to have no house at all over my
+head. But here fortune interposed. I was caught in a heavy rainstorm on
+Seventh Street, and ran to catch an omnibus. As I pulled open the door
+I saw behind me the Quaker woman, Miss Barker. I laughed and jumped in.
+She had to run a little before the ‘bus again stopped. She got pretty
+wet. An old man in the corner, who seemed in the way of taking charge of
+other people’s manners, said to me: “Young man, you ought to be ashamed
+to get in before the lady, and in this pour, too!”
+
+I said calmly, “But you got in before her.”
+
+He made no reply to this obvious fact, as he might have been in the
+bus a half-hour. A large, well-dressed man near by said, with a laugh,
+“Rather neat, that,” and, turning, tried to pull up a window-sash. In
+the effort something happened, and he broke the glass, cutting his
+hand in half a dozen places. While he was using several quite profane
+phrases, I caught his hand and said, “I am a surgeon,” and tied my
+handkerchief around the bleeding palm.
+
+The guardian of manners said, “I hope you are not much hurt, but there
+was no reason why you should swear.”
+
+On this my patient said, “Go to ----,” which silenced the monitor.
+
+I explained to the wounded man that the cuts should be looked after at
+once. The matter was arranged by our leaving the ‘bus, and, as the rain
+had let up, walking to his house. This was a large and quite luxurious
+dwelling on Fourth street. There I cared for his wounds, which, as I had
+informed him, required immediate attention. It was at this time summer,
+and his wife and niece, the only other members of his family, were
+absent. On my second visit I made believe to remove some splinters of
+glass which I brought with me. He said they showed how shamefully thin
+was that omnibus window-pane. To my surprise, my patient, at the end of
+the month,--for one wound was long in healing,--presented me with one
+hundred dollars. This paid my small rental, and as Mr. Poynter allowed
+me to refer to him, I was able to get a better office and bedroom on
+Spruce street. I saw no more of my patient until winter, although I
+learned that he was a stock-broker, not in the very best repute, but of
+a well-known family.
+
+Meanwhile my move had been of small use. I was wise enough, however, to
+keep up my connection with my former clients, and contrived to live. It
+was no more than that. One day in December I was overjoyed to see
+Mr. Poynter enter. He was a fat man, very pale, and never, to my
+remembrance, without a permanent smile. He had very civil ways, and now
+at once I saw that he wanted something.
+
+I hated the way that man saw through me. He went on without hesitation,
+taking me for granted. He began by saying he had confidence in my
+judgment, and when a man says that you had better look out. He said he
+had a niece who lived with him, a brother’s child; that she was out of
+health and ought not to marry, which was what she meant to do. She was
+scared about her health, because she had a cough, and had lost a brother
+of consumption. I soon came to understand that, for reasons unknown
+to me, my friend did not wish his niece to marry. His wife, he also
+informed me, was troubled as to the niece’s health. Now, he said, he
+wished to consult me as to what he should do. I suspected at once that
+he had not told me all.
+
+I have often wondered at the skill with which I managed this rather
+delicate matter. I knew I was not well enough known to be of direct
+use, and was also too young to have much weight. I advised him to get
+Professor C.
+
+Then my friend shook his head. He said in reply, “But suppose, doctor,
+he says there is nothing wrong with the girl?”
+
+Then I began to understand him.
+
+“Oh,” I said, “you get a confidential written opinion from him. You can
+make it what you please when you tell her.”
+
+He said no. It would be best for me to ask the professor to see Miss
+Poynter; might mention my youth, and so on, as a reason. I was to get
+his opinion in writing.
+
+“Well?” said I.
+
+“After that I want you to write me a joint opinion to meet the case--all
+the needs of the case, you see.”
+
+I saw, but hesitated as to how much would make it worth while to pull
+his hot chestnuts out of the fire--one never knows how hot the chestnuts
+are.
+
+Then he said, “Ever take a chance in stocks?”
+
+I said, “No.”
+
+He said that he would lend me a little money and see what he could do
+with it. And here was his receipt from me for one thousand dollars, and
+here, too, was my order to buy shares of P. T. Y. Would I please to Sign
+it? I did.
+
+I was to call in two days at his house, and meantime I could think it
+over. It seemed to me a pretty weak plan. Suppose the young woman--well,
+supposing is awfully destructive of enterprise; and as for me, I had
+only to misunderstand the professor’s opinion. I went to the house, and
+talked to Mr. Poynter about his gout. Then Mrs. Poynter came in, and
+began to lament her niece’s declining health. After that I saw Miss
+Poynter. There is a kind of innocent-looking woman who knows no more of
+the world than a young chicken, and is choke-full of emotions. I saw it
+would be easy to frighten her. There are some instruments anybody can
+get any tune they like out of. I was very grave, and advised her to see
+the professor. And would I write to ask him, said Mr. Poynter. I said I
+would.
+
+As I went out Mr. Poynter remarked: “You will clear some four hundred
+easy. Write to the professor. Bring my receipt to the office next week,
+and we will settle.”
+
+We settled. I tore up his receipt and gave him one for fifteen hundred
+dollars, and received in notes five hundred dollars.
+
+In a day or so I had a note from the professor stating that Miss Poynter
+was in no peril; that she was, as he thought, worried, and had only a
+mild bronchial trouble. He advised me to do so-and-so, and had ventured
+to reassure my young patient. Now, this was a little more than I
+wanted. However, I wrote Mr. Poynter that the professor thought she had
+bronchitis, that in her case tubercle would be very apt to follow,
+and that at present, and until she was safe, we considered marriage
+undesirable.
+
+Mr. Poynter said it might have been put stronger, but he would make it
+do. He made it. The first effect was an attack of hysterics. The final
+result was that she eloped with her lover, because if she was to die,
+as she wrote her aunt, she wished to die in her husband’s arms. Human
+nature plus hysteria will defy all knowledge of character. This was what
+our old professor of practice used to say.
+
+Mr. Poynter had now to account for a large trust estate which had
+somehow dwindled. Unhappily, princes are not the only people in whom you
+must not put your trust. As to myself, Professor L. somehow got to know
+the facts, and cut me dead. It was unpleasant, but I had my five hundred
+dollars, and--I needed them. I do not see how I could have been more
+careful.
+
+After this things got worse. Mr. Poynter broke, and did not even pay
+my last bill. I had to accept several rather doubtful cases, and once a
+policeman I knew advised me that I had better be on my guard.
+
+But, really, so long as I adhered to the common code of my profession I
+was in danger of going without my dinner.
+
+Just as I was at my worst and in despair something always turned up, but
+it was sure to be risky; and now my aunt refused to see me, and Peninnah
+wrote me goody-goody letters, and said Aunt Rachel had been unable to
+find certain bank-notes she had hidden, and vowed I had taken them. This
+Peninnah did not think possible. I agreed with her. The notes were
+found somewhat later by Peninnah in the toes of a pair of my aunt’s old
+slippers. Of course I wrote an indignant letter. My aunt declared that
+Peninnah had stolen the notes, and restored them when they were missed.
+Poor Peninnah! This did not seem to me very likely, but Peninnah did
+love fine clothes.
+
+One night, as I was debating with myself as to how I was to improve my
+position, I heard a knock on my shutter, and, going to the door, let in
+a broad-shouldered man with a whisky face and a great hooked nose. He
+wore a heavy black beard and mustache, and looked like the wolf in the
+pictures of Red Riding-hood which I had seen as a child.
+
+“Your name’s Sanderaft?” said the man.
+
+“Yes; that’s my name--Dr. Sanderaft.”
+
+As he sat down he shook the snow over everything, and said coolly: “Set
+down, doc; I want to talk with you.”
+
+“What can I do for you?” said I.
+
+The man looked around the room rather scornfully, at the same time
+throwing back his coat and displaying a red neckerchief and a huge
+garnet pin. “Guess you’re not overly rich,” he said.
+
+“Not especially,” said I. “What’s that your business?”
+
+He did not answer, but merely said, “Know Simon Stagers?”
+
+“Can’t say I do,” said I, cautiously. Simon was a burglar who had blown
+off two fingers when mining a safe. I had attended him while he was
+hiding.
+
+“Can’t say you do. Well, you can lie, and no mistake. Come, now, doc.
+Simon says you’re safe, and I want to have a leetle plain talk with
+you.”
+
+With this he laid ten gold eagles on the table. I put out my hand
+instinctively.
+
+“Let ‘em alone,” cried the man, sharply. “They’re easy earned, and ten
+more like ‘em.”
+
+“For doing what?” I said.
+
+The man paused a moment, and looked around him; next he stared at me,
+and loosened his cravat with a hasty pull. “You’re the coroner,” said
+he.
+
+“I! What do you mean?”
+
+“Yes, you’re the coroner; don’t you understand?” and so saying, he
+shoved the gold pieces toward me.
+
+“Very good,” said I; “we will suppose I’m the coroner. What next?”
+
+“And being the coroner,” said he, “you get this note, which requests you
+to call at No. 9 Blank street to examine the body of a young man which
+is supposed--only supposed, you see--to have--well, to have died under
+suspicious circumstances.”
+
+“Go on,” said I.
+
+“No,” he returned; “not till I know how you like it. Stagers and another
+knows it; and it wouldn’t be very safe for you to split, besides not
+making nothing out of it. But what I say is this, Do you like the
+business of coroner?”
+
+I did not like it; but just then two hundred in gold was life to me, so
+I said: “Let me hear the whole of it first. I am safe.”
+
+“That’s square enough,” said the man. “My wife’s got”--correcting
+himself with a shivery shrug--“my wife had a brother that took to
+cutting up rough because when I’d been up too late I handled her a
+leetle hard now and again.
+
+“Luckily he fell sick with typhoid just then--you see, he lived with
+us. When he got better I guessed he’d drop all that; but somehow he was
+worse than ever--clean off his head, and strong as an ox. My wife said
+to put him away in an asylum. I didn’t think that would do. At last he
+tried to get out. He was going to see the police about--well--the
+thing was awful serious, and my wife carrying on like mad, and wanting
+doctors. I had no mind to run, and something had got to be done. So
+Simon Stagers and I talked it over. The end of it was, he took worse of
+a sudden, and got so he didn’t know nothing. Then I rushed for a doctor.
+He said it was a perforation, and there ought to have been a doctor when
+he was first took sick.
+
+“Well, the man died, and as I kept about the house, my wife had
+no chance to talk. The doctor fussed a bit, but at last he gave a
+certificate. I thought we were done with it. But my wife she writes
+a note and gives it to a boy in the alley to put in the post. We
+suspicioned her, and Stagers was on the watch. After the boy got away a
+bit, Simon bribed him with a quarter to give him the note, which wasn’t
+no less than a request to the coroner to come to the house to-morrow and
+make an examination, as foul play was suspected--and poison.”
+
+When the man quit talking he glared at me. I sat still. I was cold all
+over. I was afraid to go on, and afraid to go back, besides which, I did
+not doubt that there was a good deal of money in the case.
+
+“Of course,” said I, “it’s nonsense; only I suppose you don’t want the
+officers about, and a fuss, and that sort of thing.”
+
+“Exactly,” said my friend. “It’s all bosh about poison. You’re the
+coroner. You take this note and come to my house. Says you: ‘Mrs. File,
+are you the woman that wrote this note? Because in that case I must
+examine the body.’”
+
+“I see,” said I; “she needn’t know who I am, or anything else; but if I
+tell her it’s all right, do you think she won’t want to know why there
+isn’t a jury, and so on?”
+
+“Bless you,” said the man, “the girl isn’t over seventeen, and doesn’t
+know no more than a baby. As we live up-town miles away, she won’t know
+anything about you.”
+
+“I’ll do it,” said I, suddenly, for, as I saw, it involved no sort of
+risk; “but I must have three hundred dollars.”
+
+“And fifty,” added the wolf, “if you do it well.”
+
+Then I knew it was serious.
+
+With this the man buttoned about him a shaggy gray overcoat, and took
+his leave without a single word in addition.
+
+A minute later he came back and said: “Stagers is in this business, and
+I was to remind you of Lou Wilson,--I forgot that,--the woman that died
+last year. That’s all.” Then he went away, leaving me in a cold sweat. I
+knew now I had no choice. I understood why I had been selected.
+
+For the first time in my life, that night I couldn’t sleep. I thought
+to myself, at last, that I would get up early, pack a few clothes,
+and escape, leaving my books to pay as they might my arrears of rent.
+Looking out of the window, however, in the morning, I saw Stagers
+prowling about the opposite pavement; and as the only exit except the
+street door was an alleyway which opened along-side of the front of the
+house, I gave myself up for lost. About ten o’clock I took my case
+of instruments and started for File’s house, followed, as I too well
+understood, by Stagers.
+
+I knew the house, which was in a small uptown street, by its closed
+windows and the craped bell, which I shuddered as I touched. However,
+it was too late to draw back, and I therefore inquired for Mrs. File. A
+haggard-looking young woman came down, and led me into a small parlor,
+for whose darkened light I was thankful enough.
+
+“Did you write this note?”
+
+“I did,” said the woman, “if you’re the coroner. Joe File--he’s my
+husband--he’s gone out to see about the funeral. I wish it was his, I
+do.”
+
+“What do you suspect?” said I.
+
+“I’ll tell you,” she returned in a whisper. “I think he was made away
+with. I think there was foul play. I think he was poisoned. That’s what
+I think.”
+
+“I hope you may be mistaken,” said I. “Suppose you let me see the body.”
+
+“You shall see it,” she replied; and following her, I went up-stairs to
+a front chamber, where I found the corpse.
+
+“Get it over soon,” said the woman, with strange firmness. “If there
+ain’t no murder been done I shall have to run for it; if there was”--and
+her face set hard--“I guess I’ll stay.” With this she closed the door
+and left me with the dead.
+
+If I had known what was before me I never could have gone into the thing
+at all. It looked a little better when I had opened a window and let in
+plenty of light; for although I was, on the whole, far less afraid of
+dead than living men, I had an absurd feeling that I was doing this dead
+man a distinct wrong--as if it mattered to the dead, after all! When the
+affair was over, I thought more of the possible consequences than of its
+relation to the dead man himself; but do as I would at the time, I was
+in a ridiculous funk, and especially when going through the forms of a
+post-mortem examination.
+
+I am free to confess now that I was careful not to uncover the man’s
+face, and that when it was over I backed to the door and hastily escaped
+from the room. On the stairs opposite to me Mrs. File was seated, with
+her bonnet on and a bundle in her hand.
+
+“Well,” said she, rising as she spoke, and with a certain eagerness in
+her tone, “what killed him? Was it poison?”
+
+“Poison, my good woman!” said I. “When a man has typhoid fever he don’t
+need poison to kill him. He had a relapse, that’s all.”
+
+“And do you mean to say he wasn’t poisoned,” said she, with more than a
+trace of disappointment in her voice--“not poisoned at all?”
+
+“No more than you are,” said I. “If I had found any signs of foul play I
+should have had a regular inquest. As it is, the less said about it the
+better. The fact is, it would have been much wiser to have kept quiet at
+the beginning. I can’t understand why you should have troubled me about
+it at all. The man had a perforation. It is common enough in typhoid.”
+
+“That’s what the doctor said--I didn’t believe him. I guess now the
+sooner I leave the better for me.”
+
+“As to that,” I returned, “it is none of my business; but you may rest
+certain about the cause of your brother’s death.”
+
+My fears were somewhat quieted that evening when Stagers and the wolf
+appeared with the remainder of the money, and I learned that Mrs. File
+had fled from her home and, as File thought likely, from the city also.
+A few months later File himself disappeared, and Stagers found his way
+for the third time into the penitentiary. Then I felt at ease. I now
+see, for my own part, that I was guilty of more than one mistake, and
+that I displayed throughout a want of intelligence. I ought to have
+asked more, and also might have got a good fee from Mrs. File on account
+of my services as coroner. It served me, however, as a good lesson; but
+it was several months before I felt quite comfortable.
+
+Meanwhile money became scarce once more, and I was driven to my wit’s
+end to devise how I should continue to live as I had done. I tried,
+among other plans, that of keeping certain pills and other medicines,
+which I sold to my patients; but on the whole I found it better to send
+all my prescriptions to one druggist, who charged the patient ten or
+twenty cents over the correct price, and handed this amount to me.
+
+In some cases I am told the percentage is supposed to be a donation on
+the part of the apothecary; but I rather fancy the patient pays for
+it in the end. It is one of the absurd vagaries of the profession to
+discountenance the practice I have described, but I wish, for my part,
+I had never done anything more foolish or more dangerous. Of course it
+inclines a doctor to change his medicines a good deal, and to order them
+in large quantities, which is occasionally annoying to the poor; yet, as
+I have always observed, there is no poverty as painful as your own, so
+that I prefer to distribute pecuniary suffering among many rather than
+to concentrate it on myself. That’s a rather neat phrase.
+
+About six months after the date of this annoying adventure, an
+incident occurred which altered somewhat, and for a time improved, my
+professional position. During my morning office-hour an old woman came
+in, and putting down a large basket, wiped her face with a yellow-cotton
+handkerchief, and afterwards with the corner of her apron. Then she
+looked around uneasily, got up, settled her basket on her arm with a
+jerk which may have decided the future of an egg or two, and remarked
+briskly: “Don’t see no little bottles about; got the wrong stall, I
+guess. You ain’t no homeopath doctor, are you?”
+
+With great presence of mind, I replied: “Well, ma’am, that depends upon
+what you want. Some of my patients like one, and some like the other.”
+ I was about to add, “You pay your money and you take your choice,”
+ but thought better of it, and held my peace, refraining from classical
+quotation.
+
+“Being as that’s the case,” said the old lady, “I’ll just tell you my
+symptoms. You said you give either kind of medicine, didn’t you?”
+
+“Just so,” replied I.
+
+“Clams or oysters, whichever opens most lively, as my old Joe
+says--tends the oyster-stand at stall No. 9. Happen to know Joe?”
+
+No, I did not know Joe; but what were the symptoms?
+
+They proved to be numerous, and included a stunning in the head and a
+misery in the side, with bokin after victuals.
+
+I proceeded, of course, to apply a stethoscope over her ample bosom,
+though what I heard on this and similar occasions I should find it
+rather difficult to state. I remember well my astonishment in one
+instance where, having unconsciously applied my instrument over a
+clamorous silver watch in the watchfob of a sea-captain, I concluded for
+a moment that he was suffering from a rather remarkable displacement of
+the heart. As to my old lady, whose name was Checkers, and who kept an
+apple-stand near by, I told her that I was out of pills just then, but
+would have plenty next day. Accordingly, I proceeded to invest a small
+amount at a place called a homeopathic pharmacy, which I remember amused
+me immensely.
+
+A stout little German, with great silver spectacles, sat behind a
+counter containing numerous jars of white powders labeled concisely
+“Lac.,” “Led.,” “Onis.,” “Op.,” “Puls.,” etc., while behind him were
+shelves filled with bottles of what looked like minute white shot.
+
+“I want some homeopathic medicine,” said I.
+
+“Vat kindt?” said my friend. “Vat you vants to cure!”
+
+I explained at random that I wished to treat diseases in general.
+
+“Vell, ve gifs you a case, mit a pook,” and thereon produced a large box
+containing bottles of small pills and powders, labeled variously with
+the names of the diseases, so that all you required was to use the
+headache or colic bottle in order to meet the needs of those particular
+maladies.
+
+I was struck at first with the exquisite simplicity of this arrangement;
+but before purchasing, I happened luckily to turn over the leaves of a
+book, in two volumes, which lay on the counter; it was called “Jahr’s
+Manual.” Opening at page 310, vol. i, I lit upon “Lachesis,” which
+proved to my amazement to be snake-venom. This Mr. Jahr stated to be
+indicated for use in upward of a hundred symptoms. At once it occurred
+to me that “Lach.” was the medicine for my money, and that it was quite
+needless to waste cash on the box. I therefore bought a small jar of
+“Lach.” and a lot of little pills, and started for home.
+
+My old woman proved a fast friend; and as she sent me numerous patients,
+I by and by altered my sign to “Homeopathic Physician and Surgeon,”
+ whatever that may mean, and was regarded by my medical brothers as a
+lost sheep, and by the little-pill doctors as one who had seen the error
+of his ways.
+
+In point of fact, my new practice had decided advantages. All pills
+looked and tasted alike, and the same might be said of the powders, so
+that I was never troubled by those absurd investigations into the nature
+of remedies which some patients are prone to make. Of course I desired
+to get business, and it was therefore obviously unwise to give little
+pills of “Lac.,” or “Puls.,” or “Sep.,” when a man needed a dose of
+oil, or a white-faced girl iron, or the like. I soon made the useful
+discovery that it was only necessary to prescribe cod-liver oil, for
+instance, as a diet, in order to make use of it where required. When
+a man got impatient over an ancient ague, I usually found, too, that I
+could persuade him to let me try a good dose of quinine; while, on the
+other hand, there was a distinct pecuniary advantage in those cases
+of the shakes which could be made to believe that it “was best not
+to interfere with nature.” I ought to add that this kind of faith is
+uncommon among folks who carry hods or build walls.
+
+For women who are hysterical, and go heart and soul into the business
+of being sick, I have found the little pills a most charming resort,
+because you cannot carry the refinement of symptoms beyond what my
+friend Jahr has done in the way of fitting medicines to them, so that if
+I had taken seriously to practising this double form of therapeutics, it
+had, as I saw, certain conveniences.
+
+Another year went by, and I was beginning to prosper in my new mode of
+life. My medicines (being chiefly milk-sugar, with variations as to
+the labels) cost next to nothing; and as I charged pretty well for both
+these and my advice, I was now able to start a gig.
+
+I solemnly believe that I should have continued to succeed in the
+practice of my profession if it had not happened that fate was once more
+unkind to me, by throwing in my path one of my old acquaintances. I
+had a consultation one day with the famous homeopath Dr. Zwanzig. As
+we walked away we were busily discussing the case of a poor consumptive
+fellow who previously had lost a leg. In consequence of this defect, Dr.
+Zwanzig considered that the ten-thousandth of a grain of aurum would
+be an overdose, and that it must be fractioned so as to allow for the
+departed leg, otherwise the rest of the man would be getting a leg-dose
+too much. I was particularly struck with this view of the case, but I
+was still more, and less pleasingly, impressed at the sight of my former
+patient Stagers, who nodded to me familiarly from the opposite pavement.
+
+I was not at all surprised when, that evening quite late, I found this
+worthy waiting in my office. I looked around uneasily, which was clearly
+understood by my friend, who retorted: “Ain’t took nothin’ of yours,
+doc. You don’t seem right awful glad to see me. You needn’t be
+afraid--I’ve only fetched you a job, and a right good one, too.”
+
+I replied that I had my regular business, that I preferred he should get
+some one else, and pretty generally made Mr. Stagers aware that I
+had had enough of him. I did not ask him to sit down, and, just as I
+supposed him about to leave, he seated himself with a grin, remarking,
+“No use, doc; got to go into it this one time.”
+
+At this I, naturally enough, grew angry and used several rather violent
+phrases.
+
+“No use, doc,” said Stagers.
+
+Then I softened down, and laughed a little, and treated the thing as a
+joke, whatever it was, for I dreaded to hear.
+
+But Stagers was fate. Stagers was inevitable. “Won’t do, doc--not even
+money wouldn’t get you off.”
+
+“No?” said I, interrogatively, and as coolly as I could, contriving at
+the same time to move toward the window. It was summer, the sashes were
+up, the shutters half drawn in, and a policeman whom I knew was lounging
+opposite, as I had noticed when I entered. I would give Stagers a scare,
+charge him with theft--anything but get mixed up with his kind again. It
+was the folly of a moment and I should have paid dear for it.
+
+He must have understood me, the scoundrel, for in an instant I felt a
+cold ring of steel against my ear, and a tiger clutch on my cravat.
+“Sit down,” he said. “What a fool you are! Guess you forgot that there
+coroner’s business and the rest.” Needless to say that I obeyed. “Best
+not try that again,” continued my guest. “Wait a moment”; and rising, he
+closed the window.
+
+There was no resource left but to listen; and what followed I shall
+condense rather than relate it in the language employed by Mr. Stagers.
+
+It appeared that my other acquaintance Mr. File had been guilty of a
+cold-blooded and long-premeditated murder, for which he had been tried
+and convicted. He now lay in jail awaiting his execution, which was to
+take place at Carsonville, Ohio. It seemed that with Stagers and
+others he had formed a band of expert counterfeiters in the West. Their
+business lay in the manufacture of South American currencies. File had
+thus acquired a fortune so considerable that I was amazed at his having
+allowed his passion to seduce him into unprofitable crime. In his agony
+he unfortunately thought of me, and had bribed Stagers largely in order
+that he might be induced to find me. When the narration had reached
+this stage, and I had been made fully to understand that I was now and
+hereafter under the sharp eye of Stagers and his friends, that, in a
+word, escape was out of the question, I turned on my tormentor.
+
+“What does all this mean?” I said. “What does File expect me to do?”
+
+“Don’t believe he exactly knows,” said Stagers. “Something or other to
+get him clear of hemp.”
+
+“But what stuff!” I replied. “How can I help him? What possible
+influence could I exert?”
+
+“Can’t say,” answered Stagers, imperturbably. “File has a notion you’re
+‘most cunning enough for anything. Best try something, doc.”
+
+“And what if I won’t do it?” said I. “What does it matter to me if the
+rascal swings or no?”
+
+“Keep cool, doc,” returned Stagers. “I’m only agent in this here
+business. My principal, that’s File, he says: ‘Tell Sanderaft to find
+some way to get me clear. Once out, I give him ten thousand dollars. If
+he don’t turn up something that will suit, I’ll blow about that coroner
+business and Lou Wilson, and break him up generally.’”
+
+“You don’t mean,” said I, in a cold sweat--“you don’t mean that, if I
+can’t do this impossible thing, he will inform on me?”
+
+“Just so,” returned Stagers. “Got a cigar, doc?”
+
+I only half heard him. What a frightful position! I had been leading a
+happy and an increasingly profitable life--no scrapes and no dangers;
+and here, on a sudden, I had presented to me the alternative of saving
+a wretch from the gallows or of spending unlimited years in a State
+penitentiary. As for the money, it became as dead leaves for this once
+only in my life. My brain seemed to be spinning round. I grew weak all
+over.
+
+“Cheer up a little,” said Stagers. “Take a nip of whisky. Things ain’t
+at the worst, by a good bit. You just get ready, and we’ll start by the
+morning train. Guess you’ll try out something smart enough as we travel
+along. Ain’t got a heap of time to lose.”
+
+I was silent. A great anguish had me in its grip. I might squirm as I
+would, it was all in vain. Hideous plans rose to my mind, born of this
+agony of terror. I might murder Stagers, but what good would that do?
+As to File, he was safe from my hand. At last I became too confused to
+think any longer. “When do we leave?” I said feebly.
+
+“At six to-morrow,” he returned.
+
+How I was watched and guarded, and how hurried over a thousand miles of
+rail to my fate, little concerns us now. I find it dreadful to recall it
+to memory. Above all, an aching eagerness for revenge upon the man who
+had caused me these sufferings was uppermost in my mind. Could I not
+fool the wretch and save myself? Of a sudden an idea came into my
+consciousness. Then it grew and formed itself, became possible,
+probable, seemed to me sure. “Ah,” said I, “Stagers, give me something
+to eat and drink.” I had not tasted food for two days.
+
+Within a day or two after my arrival, I was enabled to see File in his
+cell, on the plea of being a clergyman from his native place.
+
+I found that I had not miscalculated my danger. The man did not appear
+to have the least idea as to how I was to help him. He only knew that I
+was in his power, and he used his control to insure that something more
+potent than friendship should be enlisted in his behalf. As the days
+went by, his behavior grew to be a frightful thing to witness. He
+threatened, flattered, implored, offered to double the sum he had
+promised if I would save him. My really reasonable first thought was to
+see the governor of the State, and, as Stagers’s former physician,
+make oath to his having had many attacks of epilepsy followed by brief
+periods of homicidal mania. He had, in fact, had fits of alcoholic
+epilepsy. Unluckily, the governor was in a distant city. The time was
+short, and the case against my man too clear. Stagers said it would not
+do. I was at my wit’s end. “Got to do something,” said File, “or I’ll
+attend to your case, doc.”
+
+“But,” said I, “suppose there is really nothing?”
+
+“Well,” said Stagers to me when we were alone, “you get him satisfied,
+anyhow. He’ll never let them hang him, and perhaps--well, I’m going to
+give him these pills when I get a chance. He asked to have them. But
+what’s your other plan?”
+
+Stagers knew as much about medicine as a pig knows about the opera. So
+I set to work to delude him, first asking if he could secure me, as a
+clergyman, an hour alone with File just before the execution. He said
+money would do it, and what was my plan?
+
+“Well,” said I, “there was once a man named Dr. Chovet. He lived in
+London. A gentleman who turned highwayman was to be hanged. You see,”
+ said I, “this was about 1760. Well, his friends bribed the jailer and
+the hangman. The doctor cut a hole in the man’s windpipe, very low down
+where it could be partly hid by a loose cravat. So, as they hanged him
+only a little while, and the breath went in and out of the opening below
+the noose, he was only just insensible when his friends got him--”
+
+“And he got well,” cried Stagers, much pleased with my rather
+melodramatic tale.
+
+“Yes,” I said, “he got well, and lived to take purses, all dressed in
+white. People had known him well, and when he robbed his great-aunt, who
+was not in the secret, she swore she had seen his ghost.”
+
+Stagers said that was a fine story; guessed it would work; small town,
+new business, lots of money to use. In fact, the attempt thus to save
+a man is said to have been made, but, by ill luck, the man did not
+recover. It answered my purpose, but how any one, even such an ass as
+this fellow, could believe it could succeed puzzles me to this day.
+
+File became enthusiastic over my scheme, and I cordially assisted his
+credulity. The thing was to keep the wretch quiet until the business
+blew up or--and I shuddered--until File, in despair, took his pill. I
+should in any case find it wise to leave in haste.
+
+My friend Stagers had some absurd misgivings lest Mr. File’s neck might
+be broken by the fall; but as to this I was able to reassure him upon
+the best scientific authority. There were certain other and minor
+questions, as to the effect of sudden, nearly complete arrest of the
+supply of blood to the brain; but with these physiological refinements
+I thought it needlessly cruel to distract a man in File’s peculiar
+position. Perhaps I shall be doing injustice to my own intellect if I
+do not hasten to state again that I had not the remotest belief in
+the efficacy of my plan for any purpose except to get me out of a very
+uncomfortable position and give me, with time, a chance to escape.
+
+Stagers and I were both disguised as clergymen, and were quite freely
+admitted to the condemned man’s cell. In fact, there was in the little
+town a certain trustful simplicity about all their arrangements. The
+day but one before the execution Stagers informed me that File had the
+pills, which he, Stagers, had contrived to give him. Stagers seemed
+pleased with our plan. I was not. He was really getting uneasy and
+suspicious of me--as I was soon to find out.
+
+So far our plans, or rather mine, had worked to a marvel. Certain of
+File’s old accomplices succeeded in bribing the hangman to shorten the
+time of suspension. Arrangements were made to secure me two hours alone
+with the prisoner, so that nothing seemed to be wanting to this tomfool
+business. I had assured Stagers that I would not need to see File again
+previous to the operation; but in the forenoon of the day before that
+set for the execution I was seized with a feverish impatience, which
+luckily prompted me to visit him once more. As usual, I was admitted
+readily, and nearly reached his cell when I became aware, from the
+sound of voices heard through the grating in the door, that there was a
+visitor in the cell. “Who is with him?” I inquired of the turnkey.
+
+“The doctor,” he replied.
+
+“Doctor?” I said, pausing. “What doctor?”
+
+“Oh, the jail doctor. I was to come back in half an hour to let him out;
+but he’s got a quarter to stay. Shall I let you in, or will you wait?”
+
+“No,” I replied; “it is hardly right to interrupt them. I will walk in
+the corridor for ten minutes or so, and then you can come back to let me
+into the cell.”
+
+“Very good,” he returned, and left me.
+
+As soon as I was alone, I cautiously advanced until I stood alongside of
+the door, through the barred grating of which I was able readily to hear
+what went on within. The first words I caught were these:
+
+“And you tell me, doctor, that, even if a man’s windpipe was open, the
+hanging would kill him--are you sure?”
+
+“Yes, I believe there would be no doubt of it. I cannot see how escape
+would be possible. But let me ask you why you have sent for me to ask
+these singular questions. You cannot have the faintest hope of escape,
+and least of all in such a manner as this. I advise you to think about
+the fate which is inevitable. You must, I fear, have much to reflect
+upon.”
+
+“But,” said File, “if I wanted to try this plan of mine, couldn’t some
+one be found to help me, say if he was to make twenty thousand or so by
+it? I mean a really good doctor.” Evidently File cruelly mistrusted my
+skill, and meant to get some one to aid me.
+
+“If you mean me,” answered the doctor, “some one cannot be found,
+neither for twenty nor fifty thousand dollars. Besides, if any one were
+wicked enough to venture on such an attempt, he would only be deceiving
+you with a hope which would be utterly vain. You must be off your head.”
+
+I understood all this with an increasing fear in my mind. I had meant to
+get away that night at all risks. I saw now that I must go at once.
+
+After a pause he said: “Well, doctor, you know a poor devil in my fix
+will clutch at straws. Hope I have not offended you.”
+
+“Not in the least,” returned the doctor. “Shall I send you Mr. Smith?”
+ This was my present name; in fact, I was known as the Rev. Eliphalet
+Smith.
+
+“I would like it,” answered File; “but as you go out, tell the warden I
+want to see him immediately about a matter of great importance.”
+
+At this stage I began to apprehend very distinctly that the time
+had arrived when it would be wiser for me to delay escape no longer.
+Accordingly, I waited until I heard the doctor rise, and at once stepped
+quietly away to the far end of the corridor. I had scarcely reached it
+when the door which closed it was opened by a turnkey who had come to
+relieve the doctor and let me into the cell. Of course my peril was
+imminent. If the turnkey mentioned my near presence to the prisoner,
+immediate disclosure would follow. If some lapse of time were secured
+before the warden obeyed the request from File that he should visit him,
+I might gain thus a much-needed hour, but hardly more. I therefore said
+to the officer: “Tell the warden that the doctor wishes to remain an
+hour longer with the prisoner, and that I shall return myself at the end
+of that time.”
+
+“Very good, sir,” said the turnkey, allowing me to pass out, and, as
+he followed me, relocking the door of the corridor. “I’ll tell him,”
+ he said. It is needless to repeat that I never had the least idea of
+carrying out the ridiculous scheme with which I had deluded File and
+Stagers, but so far Stagers’s watchfulness had given me no chance to
+escape.
+
+In a few moments I was outside of the jail gate, and saw my
+fellow-clergyman, Mr. Stagers, in full broadcloth and white tie, coming
+down the street toward me. As usual, he was on his guard; but this time
+he had to deal with a man grown perfectly desperate, with everything to
+win and nothing to lose. My plans were made, and, wild as they were, I
+thought them worth the trying. I must evade this man’s terrible watch.
+How keen it was, you cannot imagine; but it was aided by three of the
+infamous gang to which File had belonged, for without these spies no one
+person could possibly have sustained so perfect a system.
+
+I took Stagers’s arm. “What time,” said I, “does the first train start
+for Dayton?”
+
+“At twelve. What do you want?”
+
+“How far is it?”
+
+“About fifteen miles,” he replied.
+
+“Good. I can get back by eight o’clock to-night.”
+
+“Easily,” said Stagers, “if you go. What do you want?”
+
+“I want a smaller tube to put in the windpipe--must have it, in fact.”
+
+“Well, I don’t like it,” said he, “but the thing’s got to go through
+somehow. If you must go, I will go along myself. Can’t lose sight of
+you, doc, just at present. You’re monstrous precious. Did you tell
+File?”
+
+“Yes,” said I; “he’s all right. Come. We’ve no time to lose.”
+
+Nor had we. Within twenty minutes we were seated in the last car of
+a long train, and running at the rate of twenty miles an hour toward
+Dayton. In about ten minutes I asked Stagers for a cigar.
+
+“Can’t smoke here,” said he.
+
+“No,” I answered; “of course not. I’ll go forward into the smoking-car.”
+
+“Come along,” said he, and we went through the train.
+
+I was not sorry he had gone with me when I found in the smoking-car one
+of the spies who had been watching me so constantly. Stagers nodded to
+him and grinned at me, and we sat down together.
+
+“Chut!” said I, “left my cigar on the window-ledge in the hindmost car.
+Be back in a moment.”
+
+This time, for a wonder, Stagers allowed me to leave unaccompanied. I
+hastened through to the nearer end of the hindmost car, and stood on
+the platform. I instantly cut the signal-cord. Then I knelt down, and,
+waiting until the two cars ran together, I tugged at the connecting-pin.
+As the cars came together, I could lift it a little, then as the strain
+came on the coupling the pin held fast. At last I made a great effort,
+and out it came. The car I was on instantly lost speed, and there on the
+other platform, a hundred feet away, was Stagers shaking his fist at me.
+He was beaten, and he knew it. In the end few people have been able to
+get ahead of me.
+
+The retreating train was half a mile away around the curve as I screwed
+up the brake on my car hard enough to bring it nearly to a stand. I did
+not wait for it to stop entirely before I slipped off the steps, leaving
+the other passengers to dispose of themselves as they might until their
+absence should be discovered and the rest of the train return.
+
+As I wish rather to illustrate my very remarkable professional career
+than to amuse by describing its lesser incidents, I shall not linger to
+tell how I succeeded, at last, in reaching St. Louis. Fortunately, I
+had never ceased to anticipate the moment when escape from File and his
+friends would be possible, so that I always carried about with me the
+very small funds with which I had hastily provided myself upon leaving.
+The whole amount did not exceed sixty-five dollars, but with this, and
+a gold watch worth twice as much, I hoped to be able to subsist until
+my own ingenuity enabled me to provide more liberally for the future.
+Naturally enough, I scanned the papers closely to discover some account
+of File’s death and of the disclosures concerning myself which he was
+only too likely to have made.
+
+I came at last on an account of how he had poisoned himself, and so
+escaped the hangman. I never learned what he had said about me, but I
+was quite sure he had not let me off easy. I felt that this failure to
+announce his confessions was probably due to a desire on the part of the
+police to avoid alarming me. Be this as it may, I remained long ignorant
+as to whether or not the villain betrayed my part in that unusual
+coroner’s inquest.
+
+Before many days I had resolved to make another and a bold venture.
+Accordingly appeared in the St. Louis papers an advertisement to the
+effect that Dr. von Ingenhoff, the well-known German physician, who had
+spent two years on the Plains acquiring a knowledge of Indian medicine,
+was prepared to treat all diseases by vegetable remedies alone. Dr. von
+Ingenhoff would remain in St. Louis for two weeks, and was to be found
+at the Grayson House every day from ten until two o’clock.
+
+To my delight, I got two patients the first day. The next I had twice as
+many, when at once I hired two connecting rooms, and made a very useful
+arrangement, which I may describe dramatically in the following way:
+
+There being two or three patients waiting while I finished my cigar and
+morning julep, enters a respectable-looking old gentleman who inquires
+briskly of the patients if this is really Dr. von Ingenhoff’s. He is
+told it is. My friend was apt to overact his part. I had often occasion
+to ask him to be less positive.
+
+“Ah,” says he, “I shall be delighted to see the doctor. Five years ago
+I was scalped on the Plains, and now”--exhibiting a well-covered
+head--“you see what the doctor did for me. ‘T isn’t any wonder I’ve come
+fifty miles to see him. Any of you been scalped, gentlemen?”
+
+To none of them had this misfortune arrived as yet; but, like most folks
+in the lower ranks of life and some in the upper ones, it was pleasant
+to find a genial person who would listen to their account of their own
+symptoms.
+
+Presently, after hearing enough, the old gentleman pulls out a large
+watch. “Bless me! it’s late. I must call again. May I trouble you, sir,
+to say to the doctor that his old friend called to see him and will drop
+in again to-morrow? Don’t forget: Governor Brown of Arkansas.” A moment
+later the governor visited me by a side door, with his account of the
+symptoms of my patients.
+
+Enter a tall Hoosier, the governor having retired. “Now, doc,” says
+the Hoosier, “I’ve been handled awful these two years back.” “Stop!” I
+exclaimed. “Open your eyes. There, now, let me see,” taking his pulse
+as I speak. “Ah, you’ve a pain there, and there, and you can’t sleep;
+cocktails don’t agree any longer. Weren’t you bit by a dog two years
+ago?” “I was,” says the Hoosier, in amazement. “Sir,” I reply, “you have
+chronic hydrophobia. It’s the water in the cocktails that disagrees
+with you. My bitters will cure you in a week, sir. No more whisky--drink
+milk.”
+
+The astonishment of my patient at these accurate revelations may be
+imagined. He is allowed to wait for his medicine in the anteroom, where
+the chances are in favor of his relating how wonderfully I had told all
+his symptoms at a glance.
+
+Governor Brown of Arkansas was a small but clever actor, whom I met
+in the billiard-room, and who day after day, in varying disguises and
+modes, played off the same tricks, to our great common advantage.
+
+At my friend’s suggestion, we very soon added to our resources by
+the purchase of two electromagnetic batteries. This special means of
+treating all classes of maladies has advantages which are altogether
+peculiar. In the first place, you instruct your patient that the
+treatment is of necessity a long one. A striking mode of putting it is
+to say, “Sir, you have been six months getting ill; it will require six
+months for a cure.” There is a correct sound about such a phrase, and it
+is sure to satisfy. Two sittings a week, at two dollars a sitting, will
+pay. In many cases the patient gets well while you are electrifying him.
+Whether or not the electricity cured him is a thing I shall never know.
+If, however, he began to show signs of impatience, I advised him that
+he would require a year’s treatment, and suggested that it would be
+economical for him to buy a battery and use it at home. Thus advised,
+he pays you twenty dollars for an instrument which cost you ten, and you
+are rid of a troublesome case.
+
+If the reader has followed me closely, he will have learned that I am
+a man of large and liberal views in my profession, and of a very
+justifiable ambition. The idea has often occurred to me of combining in
+one establishment all the various modes of practice which are known
+as irregular. This, as will be understood, is really only a wider
+application of the idea which prompted me to unite in my own business
+homeopathy and the practice of medicine. I proposed to my partner,
+accordingly, to combine with our present business that of spiritualism,
+which I knew had been very profitably turned to account in connection
+with medical practice. As soon as he agreed to this plan, which, by the
+way, I hoped to enlarge so as to include all the available isms, I set
+about making such preparations as were necessary. I remembered having
+read somewhere that a Dr. Schiff had shown that he could produce
+remarkable “knockings,” so called, by voluntarily dislocating the great
+toe and then forcibly drawing it back into its socket. A still better
+noise could be made by throwing the tendon of the peroneus longus muscle
+out of the hollow in which it lies, alongside of the ankle. After some
+effort I was able to accomplish both feats quite readily, and could
+occasion a remarkable variety of sounds, according to the power which I
+employed or the positions which I occupied at the time. As to all other
+matters, I trusted to the suggestions of my own ingenuity, which, as a
+rule, has rarely failed me.
+
+The largest success attended the novel plan which my lucky genius had
+devised, so that soon we actually began to divide large profits and to
+lay by a portion of our savings. It is, of course, not to be supposed
+that this desirable result was attained without many annoyances and some
+positive danger. My spiritual revelations, medical and other, were, as
+may be supposed, only more or less happy guesses; but in this, as in
+predictions as to the weather and other events, the rare successes
+always get more prominence in the minds of men than the numerous
+failures. Moreover, whenever a person has been fool enough to resort to
+folks like myself, he is always glad to be able to defend his conduct by
+bringing forward every possible proof of skill on the part of the men he
+has consulted. These considerations, and a certain love of mysterious or
+unusual means, I have commonly found sufficient to secure an ample share
+of gullible individuals. I may add, too, that those who would be
+shrewd enough to understand and expose us are wise enough to keep away
+altogether. Such as did come were, as a rule, easy enough to manage, but
+now and then we hit upon some utterly exceptional patient who was
+both foolish enough to consult us and sharp enough to know he had been
+swindled. When such a fellow made a fuss, it was occasionally necessary
+to return his money if it was found impossible to bully him into
+silence. In one or two instances, where I had promised a cure upon
+prepayment of two or three hundred dollars, I was either sued or
+threatened with suit, and had to refund a part or the whole of the
+amount; but most people preferred to hold their tongues rather than
+expose to the world the extent of their own folly.
+
+In one most disastrous case I suffered personally to a degree which I
+never can recall without a distinct sense of annoyance, both at my own
+want of care and at the disgusting consequences which it brought upon
+me.
+
+Early one morning an old gentleman called, in a state of the utmost
+agitation, and explained that he desired to consult the spirits as to
+a heavy loss which he had experienced the night before. He had left, he
+said, a sum of money in his pantaloons pocket upon going to bed. In the
+morning he had changed his clothes and gone out, forgetting to remove
+the notes. Returning in an hour in great haste, he discovered that the
+garment still lay upon the chair where he had thrown it, but that the
+money was missing. I at once desired him to be seated, and proceeded
+to ask him certain questions, in a chatty way, about the habits of his
+household, the amount lost, and the like, expecting thus to get some
+clue which would enable me to make my spirits display the requisite
+share of sagacity in pointing out the thief. I learned readily that he
+was an old and wealthy man, a little close, too, I suspected, and that
+he lived in a large house with but two servants, and an only son about
+twenty-one years old. The servants were both women who had lived in the
+household many years, and were probably innocent. Unluckily, remembering
+my own youthful career, I presently reached the conclusion that the
+young man had been the delinquent. When I ventured to inquire a little
+as to his habits, the old gentleman cut me very short, remarking that he
+came to ask questions, and not to be questioned, and that he desired at
+once to consult the spirits. Upon this I sat down at a table, and, after
+a brief silence, demanded in a solemn voice if there were any spirits
+present. By industriously cracking my big toe-joint I was enabled to
+represent at once the presence of a numerous assembly of these worthies.
+Then I inquired if any one of them had been present when the robbery was
+effected. A prompt double knock replied in the affirmative. I may say
+here, by the way, that the unanimity of the spirits as to their use of
+two knocks for “yes” and one for “no” is a very remarkable point, and
+shows, if it shows anything, how perfect and universal must be the
+social intercourse of the respected departed. It is worthy of note,
+also, that if the spirit--I will not say the medium--perceives after one
+knock that it were wiser to say yes, he can conveniently add the second
+tap. Some such arrangement in real life would, it appears to me, be
+highly desirable.
+
+It seemed that the spirit was that of Vidocq, the French detective. I
+had just read a translation of his memoirs, and he seemed to me a very
+available spirit to call upon.
+
+As soon as I explained that the spirit who answered had been a witness
+of the theft, the old man became strangely agitated. “Who was it?” said
+he. At once the spirit indicated a desire to use the alphabet. As we
+went over the letters,--always a slow method, but useful when you want
+to observe excitable people,--my visitor kept saying, “Quicker--go
+quicker.” At length the spirit spelled out the words, “I know not his
+name.”
+
+“Was it,” said the gentleman--“was it a--was it one of my household?”
+
+I knocked “yes” without hesitation; who else, indeed, could it have
+been?
+
+“Excuse me,” he went on, “if I ask you for a little whisky.”
+
+This I gave him. He continued: “Was it Susan or Ellen?”
+
+“No, no!”
+
+“Was it--” He paused. “If I ask a question mentally, will the spirits
+reply?” I knew what he meant. He wanted to ask if it was his son, but
+did not wish to speak openly.
+
+“Ask,” said I.
+
+“I have,” he returned.
+
+I hesitated. It was rarely my policy to commit myself definitely, yet
+here I fancied, from the facts of the case and his own terrible anxiety,
+that he suspected, or more than suspected, his son as the guilty person.
+I became sure of this as I studied his face. At all events, it would be
+easy to deny or explain in case of trouble; and, after all, what slander
+was there in two knocks? I struck twice as usual.
+
+Instantly the old gentleman rose up, very white, but quite firm.
+“There,” he said, and cast a bank-note on the table, “I thank you,” and
+bending his head on his breast, walked, as I thought, with great effort
+out of the room.
+
+On the following morning, as I made my first appearance in my outer
+room, which contained at least a dozen persons awaiting advice,
+who should I see standing by the window but the old gentleman with
+sandy-gray hair? Along with him was a stout young man with a head as
+red as mine, and mustache and whiskers to match. Probably the son, I
+thought--ardent temperament, remorse, come to confess, etc. I was
+never more mistaken in my life. I was about to go regularly through my
+patients when the old gentleman began to speak.
+
+“I called, doctor,” said he, “to explain the little matter about which
+I--about which I--”
+
+“Troubled your spirits yesterday,” added the youth, jocosely, pulling
+his mustache.
+
+“Beg pardon,” I returned; “had we not better talk this over in private?
+Come into my office,” I added, touching the younger man on the arm.
+
+Would you believe it? he took out his handkerchief and dusted the place
+I had touched. “Better not,” said he. “Go on, father; let us get done
+with this den.”
+
+“Gentlemen,” said the elder person, addressing the patients, “I called
+here yesterday, like a fool, to ask who had stolen from me a sum of
+money which I believed I left in my room on going out in the morning.
+This doctor here and his spirits contrived to make me suspect my only
+son. Well, I charged him at once with the crime as soon as I got
+back home, and what do you think he did? He said, ‘Father, let us go
+up-stairs and look for it,’ and--”
+
+Here the young man broke in with: “Come, father; don’t worry yourself
+for nothing”; and then turning, added: “To cut the thing short, he found
+the notes under his candle-stick, where he left them on going to bed.
+This is all of it. We came here to stop this fellow” (by which he meant
+me) “from carrying a slander further. I advise you, good people, to
+profit by the matter, and to look up a more honest doctor, if doctoring
+be what you want.”
+
+As soon as he had ended, I remarked solemnly: “The words of the spirits
+are not my words. Who shall hold them accountable?”
+
+“Nonsense,” said the young man. “Come, father”; and they left the room.
+
+Now was the time to retrieve my character. “Gentlemen,” said I, “you
+have heard this very singular account. Trusting the spirits utterly and
+entirely as I do, it occurs to me that there is no reason why they
+may not, after all, have been right in their suspicions of this young
+person. Who can say that, overcome by remorse, he may not have seized
+the time of his father’s absence to replace the money?”
+
+To my amazement, up gets a little old man from the corner. “Well, you
+are a low cuss!” said he, and taking up a basket beside him, hobbled
+hastily out of the room. You may be sure I said some pretty sharp things
+to him, for I was out of humor to begin with, and it is one thing to
+be insulted by a stout young man, and quite another to be abused by
+a wretched old cripple. However, he went away, and I supposed, for my
+part, that I was done with the whole business.
+
+An hour later, however, I heard a rough knock at my door, and opening it
+hastily, saw my red-headed young man with the cripple.
+
+“Now,” said the former, taking me by the collar, and pulling me into
+the room among my patients, “I want to know, my man, if this doctor said
+that it was likely I was the thief after all?”
+
+“That’s what he said,” replied the cripple; “just about that, sir.”
+
+I do not desire to dwell on the after conduct of this hot-headed young
+man. It was the more disgraceful as I offered but little resistance, and
+endured a beating such as I would have hesitated to inflict upon a dog.
+Nor was this all. He warned me that if I dared to remain in the city
+after a week he would shoot me. In the East I should have thought
+but little of such a threat, but here it was only too likely to
+be practically carried out. Accordingly, with my usual decision of
+character, but with much grief and reluctance, I collected my whole
+fortune, which now amounted to at least seven thousand dollars, and
+turned my back upon this ungrateful town. I am sorry to say that I also
+left behind me the last of my good luck.
+
+I traveled in a leisurely way until I reached Boston. The country
+anywhere would have been safer, but I do not lean to agricultural
+pursuits. It seemed an agreeable city, and I decided to remain.
+
+I took good rooms at Parker’s, and concluding to enjoy life, amused
+myself in the company of certain, I may say uncertain, young women who
+danced at some of the theaters. I played billiards, drank rather too
+much, drove fast horses, and at the end of a delightful year was shocked
+to find myself in debt, and with only seven dollars and fifty-three
+cents left--I like to be accurate. I had only one resource: I determined
+to visit my deaf aunt and Peninnah, and to see what I could do in the
+role of the prodigal nephew. At all events, I should gain time to think
+of what new enterprise I could take up; but, above all, I needed a
+little capital and a house over my head. I had pawned nearly everything
+of any value which I possessed.
+
+I left my debts to gather interest, and went away to Woodbury. It was
+the day before Christmas when I reached the little Jersey town, and
+it was also by good luck Sunday. I was hungry and quite penniless. I
+wandered about until church had begun, because I was sure then to find
+Aunt Rachel and Peninnah out at the service, and I desired to explore a
+little. The house was closed, and even the one servant absent. I got in
+with ease at the back through the kitchen, and having at least an hour
+and a half free from interruption, I made a leisurely search. The
+role of prodigal was well enough, but here was a better chance and an
+indulgent opportunity.
+
+In a few moments I found the famous Bible hid away under Aunt Rachel’s
+mattress. The Bible bank was fat with notes, but I intended to be
+moderate enough to escape suspicion. Here were quite two thousand
+dollars. I resolved to take, just now, only one hundred, so as to keep a
+good balance. Then, alas! I lit on a long envelop, my aunt’s will. Every
+cent was left to Christ Church; not a dime to poor Pen or to me. I was
+in a rage. I tore up the will and replaced the envelop. To treat
+poor Pen that way--Pen of all people! There was a heap more will than
+testament, for all it was in the Bible. After that I thought it was
+right to punish the old witch, and so I took every note I could find.
+When I was through with this business, I put back the Bible under
+the mattress, and observing that I had been quite too long, I went
+downstairs with a keen desire to leave the town as early as possible. I
+was tempted, however, to look further, and was rewarded by finding in
+an old clock case a small reticule stuffed with bank-notes. This I
+appropriated, and made haste to go out. I was too late. As I went into
+the little entry to get my hat and coat, Aunt Rachel entered, followed
+by Peninnah.
+
+At sight of me my aunt cried out that I was a monster and fit for the
+penitentiary. As she could not hear at all, she had the talk to herself,
+and went by me and up-stairs, rumbling abuse like distant thunder
+overhead.
+
+Meanwhile I was taken up with Pen. The pretty fool was seated on a
+chair, all dressed up in her Sunday finery, and rocking backward and
+forward, crying, “Oh, oh, ah!” like a lamb saying, “Baa, baa, baa!” She
+never had much sense. I had to shake her to get a reasonable word.
+She mopped her eyes, and I heard her gasp out that my aunt had at last
+decided that I was the person who had thinned her hoards. This was bad,
+but involved less inconvenience than it might have done an hour earlier.
+Amid tears Pen told me that a detective had been at the house inquiring
+for me. When this happened it seems that the poor little goose had tried
+to fool deaf Aunt Rachel with some made-up story as to the man having
+come about taxes. I suppose the girl was not any too sharp, and the old
+woman, I guess, read enough from merely seeing the man’s lips. You never
+could keep anything from her, and she was both curious and suspicious.
+She assured the officer that I was a thief, and hoped I might be caught.
+I could not learn whether the man told Pen any particulars, but as I was
+slowly getting at the facts we heard a loud scream and a heavy fall.
+
+Pen said, “Oh, oh!” and we hurried upstairs. There was the old woman
+on the floor, her face twitching to right, and her breathing a sort of
+hoarse croak. The big Bible lay open on the floor, and I knew what had
+happened. It was a fit of apoplexy.
+
+At this very unpleasant sight Pen seemed to recover her wits, and said:
+“Go away, go away! Oh, brother, brother, now I know you have stolen her
+money and killed her, and--and I loved you, I was so proud of you! Oh,
+oh!”
+
+This was all very fine, but the advice was good. I said: “Yes, I had
+better go. Run and get some one--a doctor. It is a fit of hysterics;
+there is no danger. I will write to you. You are quite mistaken.”
+
+This was too feeble even for Pen, and she cried:
+
+“No, never; I never want to see you again. You would kill me next.”
+
+“Stuff!” said I, and ran down-stairs. I seized my coat and hat, and went
+to the tavern, where I got a man to drive me to Camden. I have never
+seen Pen since. As I crossed the ferry to Philadelphia I saw that I
+should have asked when the detective had been after me. I suspected from
+Pen’s terror that it had been recently.
+
+It was Sunday and, as I reminded myself, the day before Christmas. The
+ground was covered with snow, and as I walked up Market street my feet
+were soon soaked. In my haste I had left my overshoes. I was very
+cold, and, as I now see, foolishly fearful. I kept thinking of what a
+conspicuous thing a fire-red head is, and of how many people knew me.
+As I reached Woodbury early and without a cent, I had eaten nothing all
+day. I relied on Pen.
+
+Now I concluded to go down into my old neighborhood and get a lodging
+where no references were asked. Next day I would secure a disguise and
+get out of the way. I had passed the day without food, as I have just
+said, and having ample means, concluded to go somewhere and get a good
+dinner. It was now close to three in the afternoon. I was aware of two
+things: that I was making many plans, and giving them up as soon as
+made; and that I was suddenly afraid without cause, afraid to enter an
+eating-house, and in fear of every man I met.
+
+I went on, feeling more and more chilly. When a man is really cold his
+mind does not work well, and now it was blowing a keen gale from the
+north. At Second and South I came plump on a policeman I knew. He looked
+at me through the drifting snow, as if he was uncertain, and twice
+looked back after having passed me. I turned west at Christian street.
+When I looked behind me the man was standing at the corner, staring
+after me. At the next turn I hurried away northward in a sort of anguish
+of terror. I have said I was an uncommon person. I am. I am sensitive,
+too. My mind is much above the average, but unless I am warm and well
+fed it does not act well, and I make mistakes. At that time I was
+half frozen, in need of food, and absurdly scared. Then that old fool
+squirming on the floor got on to my nerves. I went on and on, and at
+last into Second street, until I came to Christ Church, of all places
+for me. I heard the sound of the organ in the afternoon service. I felt
+I must go in and get warm. Here was another silly notion: I was afraid
+of hotels, but not of the church. I reasoned vaguely that it was a dark
+day, and darker in the church, and so I went in at the Church Alley
+entrance and sat near the north door. No one noticed me. I sat still in
+a high-backed pew, well hid, and wondering what was the matter with me.
+It was curious that a doctor, and a man of my intelligence, should have
+been long in guessing a thing so simple.
+
+For two months I had been drinking hard, and for two days had quit,
+being a man capable of great self-control, and also being short of
+money. Just before the benediction I saw a man near by who seemed to
+stare at me. In deadly fear I got up and quickly slipped through a
+door into the tower room. I said to myself, “He will follow me or wait
+outside.” I stood a moment with my head all of a whirl, and then in
+a shiver of fear ran up the stairs to the tower until I got into the
+bell-ringer’s room. I was safe. I sat down on a stool, twitching and
+tremulous. There were the old books on bell-ringing, and the miniature
+chime of small bells for instruction. The wind had easy entrance, and it
+swung the eight ropes about in a way I did not like. I remember saying,
+“Oh, don’t do that.” At last I had a mad desire to ring one of the
+bells. As a loop of rope swung toward me it seemed to hold a face, and
+this face cried out, “Come and hang yourself; then the bell will ring.”
+
+If I slept I do not know. I may have done so. Certainly I must have
+stayed there many hours. I was dull and confused, and yet on my guard,
+for when far into the night I heard noises below, I ran up the steeper
+steps which ascend to the steeple, where are the bells. Half-way up I
+sat down on the stair. The place was cold and the darkness deep. Then I
+heard the eight ringers down below. One said: “Never knowed a Christmas
+like this since Zeb Sanderaft died. Come, boys!” I knew it must be close
+on to midnight. Now they would play a Christmas carol. I used every
+Christmas to be roused up and carried here and set on dad’s shoulder.
+When they were done ringing, Number Two always gave me a box of
+sugar-plums and a large red apple. As they rang off, my father would cry
+out, “One, two,” and so on, and then cry, “Elias, all over town people
+are opening windows to listen.” I seemed to hear him as I sat in the
+gloom. Then I heard, “All ready; one, two,” and they rang the Christmas
+carol. Overhead I heard the great bells ringing out:
+
+     And all the bells on earth shall ring
+     On Christmas day, on Christmas day.
+
+I felt suddenly excited, and began to hum the air. Great heavens! There
+was the old woman, Aunt Rachel, with her face going twitch, twitch, the
+croak of her breathing keeping a sort of mad time with “On Christmas
+day, on Christmas day.” I jumped up. She was gone. I knew in a hazy sort
+of way what was the matter with me, but I had still the sense to sit
+down and wait. I said now it would be snakes, for once before I had been
+almost as bad. But what I did see was a little curly-headed boy in a
+white frock and pantalets, climbing up the stairs right leg first;
+so queer of me to have noticed that. I knew I was that boy. He was an
+innocent-looking little chap, and was smiling. He seemed to me to grow
+and grow, and at last was a big, red-headed man with a live rat in his
+hand. I saw nothing more, but I surely knew I needed whisky. I waited
+until all was still, and got down and out, for I knew every window. I
+soon found a tavern, and got a drink and some food. At once my fear
+left me. I was warm at last and clear of head, and had again my natural
+courage. I was well aware that I was on the edge of delirium tremens and
+must be most prudent. I paid in advance for my room and treated myself
+as I had done many another. Only a man of unusual force could have
+managed his own case as I did. I went out only at night, and in a week
+was well enough to travel. During this time I saw now and then that
+grinning little fellow. Sometimes he had an apple and was eating it. I
+do not know why he was worse to me than snakes, or the twitchy old woman
+with her wide eyes of glass, and that jerk, jerk, to right.
+
+I decided to go back to Boston. I got to New York prudently in a
+roundabout way, and in two weeks’ time was traveling east from Albany.
+
+I felt well, and my spirits began at last to rise to their usual level.
+When I arrived in Boston I set myself to thinking how best I could
+contrive to enjoy life and at the same time to increase my means.
+I possessed sufficient capital, and was able and ready to embark in
+whatever promised the best returns with the smallest personal risks. I
+settled myself in a suburb, paid off a few pressing claims, and began to
+reflect with my ordinary sagacity.
+
+We were now in the midst of a most absurd war with the South, and it was
+becoming difficult to escape the net of conscription. It might be wise
+to think of this in time. Europe seemed a desirable residence, but
+I needed more money to make this agreeable, and an investment for my
+brains was what I wanted most. Many schemes presented themselves
+as worthy the application of industry and talent, but none of them
+altogether suited my case. I thought at times of traveling as
+a physiological lecturer, combining with it the business of a
+practitioner: scare the audience at night with an enumeration of
+symptoms which belong to ten out of every dozen healthy people, and
+then doctor such of them as are gulls enough to consult me next day.
+The bigger the fright the better the pay. I was a little timid, however,
+about facing large audiences, as a man will be naturally if he has lived
+a life of adventure, so that upon due consideration I gave up the idea
+altogether.
+
+The patent medicine business also looked well enough, but it is somewhat
+overdone at all times, and requires a heavy outlay, with the probable
+result of ill success. Indeed, I believe one hundred quack remedies fail
+for one that succeeds, and millions must have been wasted in placards,
+bills, and advertisements, which never returned half their value to the
+speculator. I think I shall some day beguile my time with writing an
+account of the principal quack remedies which have met with success.
+They are few in number, after all, as any one must know who recalls the
+countless pills and tonics which are puffed awhile on the fences, and
+disappear, to be heard of no more.
+
+Lastly, I inclined for a while to undertake a private insane asylum,
+which appeared to me to offer facilities for money-making, as to which,
+however, I may have been deceived by the writings of certain popular
+novelists. I went so far, I may say, as actually to visit Concord for
+the purpose of finding a pleasant locality and a suitable atmosphere.
+Upon reflection I abandoned my plans, as involving too much personal
+labor to suit one of my easy frame of mind.
+
+Tired at last of idleness and lounging on the Common, I engaged in two
+or three little ventures of a semi-professional character, such as
+an exhibition of laughing-gas, advertising to cure cancer,--“Send
+twenty-five stamps by mail to J. B., and receive an infallible
+receipt,”--etc. I did not find, however, that these little enterprises
+prospered well in New England, and I had recalled very forcibly a story
+which my father was fond of relating to me in my boyhood. It was about
+how certain very knowing flies went to get molasses, and how it ended by
+the molasses getting them. This, indeed, was precisely what happened to
+me in all my efforts to better myself in the Northern States, until at
+length my misfortunes climaxed in total and unexpected ruin.
+
+Having been very economical, I had now about twenty-seven hundred
+dollars. It was none too much. At this time I made the acquaintance of a
+sea-captain from Maine. He told me that he and two others had chartered
+a smart little steamer to run to Jamaica with a variety cargo. In fact,
+he meant to run into Wilmington or Charleston, and he was to
+carry quinine, chloroform, and other medical requirements for the
+Confederates. He needed twenty-five hundred dollars more, and a doctor
+to buy the kind of things which army surgeons require. Of course I was
+prudent and he careful, but at last, on his proving to me that there was
+no risk, I agreed to expend his money, his friends’, and my own up to
+twenty-five hundred dollars. I saw the other men, one of them a rebel
+captain. I was well pleased with the venture, and resolved for obvious
+reasons to go with them on the steamer. It was a promising investment,
+and I am free to reflect that in this, as in some other things, I have
+been free from vulgar prejudices. I bought all that we needed, and was
+well satisfied when it was cleverly stowed away in the hold.
+
+We were to sail on a certain Thursday morning in September, 1863. I
+sent my trunk to the vessel, and went down the evening before we were to
+start to go on board, but found that the little steamer had been hauled
+out from the pier. The captain, who met me at this time, endeavored
+to get a boat to ferry us to the ship; but a gale was blowing, and he
+advised me to wait until morning. My associates were already on board.
+Early next day I dressed and went to the captain’s room, which proved to
+be empty. I was instantly filled with doubt, and ran frantically to the
+Long Wharf, where, to my horror, I could see no signs of the vessel or
+captain. Neither have I ever set eyes on them from that time to this.
+I thought of lodging information with the police as to the unpatriotic
+design of the rascal who swindled me, but on the whole concluded that it
+was best to hold my tongue.
+
+It was, as I perceived, such utterly spilt milk as to be little worth
+lamenting, and I therefore set to work, with my accustomed energy, to
+utilize on my own behalf the resources of my medical education, which so
+often before had saved me from want. The war, then raging at its height,
+appeared to offer numerous opportunities to men of talent. The path
+which I chose was apparently a humble one, but it enabled me to make
+very practical use of my professional knowledge, and afforded for a time
+rapid and secure returns, without any other investment than a little
+knowledge cautiously employed. In the first place, I deposited my small
+remnant of property in a safe bank. Then I went to Providence, where, as
+I had heard, patriotic persons were giving very large bounties in order,
+I suppose, to insure the government the services of better men than
+themselves. On my arrival I lost no time in offering myself as a
+substitute, and was readily accepted, and very soon mustered into the
+Twentieth Rhode Island. Three months were passed in camp, during which
+period I received bounty to the extent of six hundred and fifty dollars,
+with which I tranquilly deserted about two hours before the regiment
+left for the field. With the product of my industry I returned to
+Boston, and deposited all but enough to carry me to New York, where
+within a month I enlisted twice, earning on each occasion four hundred
+dollars.
+
+After this I thought it wise to try the same game in some of the smaller
+towns near to Philadelphia. I approached my birthplace with a good deal
+of doubt; but I selected a regiment in camp at Norristown, which is
+eighteen miles away. Here I got nearly seven hundred dollars by entering
+the service as a substitute for an editor, whose pen, I presume, was
+mightier than his sword. I was, however, disagreeably surprised by
+being hastily forwarded to the front under a foxy young lieutenant,
+who brutally shot down a poor devil in the streets of Baltimore for
+attempting to desert. At this point I began to make use of my medical
+skill, for I did not in the least degree fancy being shot, either
+because of deserting or of not deserting. It happened, therefore, that a
+day or two later, while in Washington, I was seized in the street with a
+fit, which perfectly imposed upon the officer in charge, and caused
+him to leave me at the Douglas Hospital. Here I found it necessary
+to perform fits about twice a week, and as there were several real
+epileptics in the ward, I had a capital chance of studying their
+symptoms, which, finally, I learned to imitate with the utmost
+cleverness.
+
+I soon got to know three or four men who, like myself, were personally
+averse to bullets, and who were simulating other forms of disease with
+more or less success. One of them suffered with rheumatism of the back,
+and walked about like an old man; another, who had been to the front,
+was palsied in the right arm. A third kept open an ulcer on the leg,
+rubbing in a little antimonial ointment, which I bought at fifty cents,
+and sold him at five dollars a box.
+
+A change in the hospital staff brought all of us to grief. The new
+surgeon was a quiet, gentlemanly person, with pleasant blue eyes and
+clearly cut features, and a way of looking at you without saying much. I
+felt so safe myself that I watched his procedures with just that kind of
+enjoyment which one clever man takes in seeing another at work.
+
+The first inspection settled two of us.
+
+“Another back case,” said the assistant surgeon to his senior.
+
+“Back hurt you?” says the latter, mildly.
+
+“Yes, sir; run over by a howitzer; ain’t never been able to stand
+straight since.”
+
+“A howitzer!” says the surgeon. “Lean forward, my man, so as to touch
+the floor--so. That will do.” Then turning to his aid, he said, “Prepare
+this man’s discharge papers.”
+
+“His discharge, sir?”
+
+“Yes; I said that. Who’s next?”
+
+“Thank you, sir,” groaned the man with the back. “How soon, sir, do you
+think it will be?”
+
+“Ah, not less than a month,” replied the surgeon, and passed on.
+
+Now, as it was unpleasant to be bent like the letter C, and as the
+patient presumed that his discharge was secure, he naturally allowed
+himself a little relaxation in the way of becoming straighter.
+Unluckily, those nice blue eyes were everywhere at all hours, and one
+fine morning Smithson was appalled at finding himself in a detachment
+bound for the field, and bearing on his descriptive list an ill-natured
+indorsement about his malady.
+
+The surgeon came next on O’Callahan, standing, like each of us, at the
+foot of his own bed.
+
+“I’ve paralytics in my arm,” he said, with intention to explain his
+failure to salute his superior.
+
+“Humph!” said the surgeon; “you have another hand.”
+
+“An’ it’s not the rigulation to saloot with yer left,” said the
+Irishman, with a grin, while the patients around us began to smile.
+
+“How did it happen?” said the surgeon.
+
+“I was shot in the shoulder,” answered the patient, “about three months
+ago, sir. I haven’t stirred it since.”
+
+The surgeon looked at the scar.
+
+“So recently?” said he. “The scar looks older; and, by the way,
+doctor,”--to his junior,--“it could not have gone near the nerves. Bring
+the battery, orderly.”
+
+In a few moments the surgeon was testing one after another, the
+various muscles. At last he stopped. “Send this man away with the next
+detachment. Not a word, my man. You are a rascal, and a disgrace to
+honest men who have been among bullets.”
+
+The man muttered something, I did not hear what.
+
+“Put this man in the guard-house,” cried the surgeon, and so passed on
+without smile or frown.
+
+As to the ulcer case, to my amusement he was put in bed, and his leg
+locked up in a wooden splint, which effectually prevented him from
+touching the part diseased. It healed in ten days, and he too went as
+food for powder.
+
+The surgeon asked me a few questions, and requesting to be sent for
+during my next fit, left me alone.
+
+I was, of course, on my guard, and took care to have my attacks only
+during his absence, or to have them over before he arrived. At length,
+one morning, in spite of my care, he chanced to enter the ward as I fell
+on the floor. I was laid on the bed, apparently in strong convulsions.
+Presently I felt a finger on my eyelid, and as it was raised, saw the
+surgeon standing beside me. To escape his scrutiny I became more violent
+in my motions. He stopped a moment and looked at me steadily. “Poor
+fellow!” said he, to my great relief, as I felt at once that I had
+successfully deceived him. Then he turned to the ward doctor and
+remarked: “Take care he does not hurt his head against the bed; and, by
+the by, doctor, do you remember the test we applied in Carstairs’s
+case? Just tickle the soles of his feet and see if it will cause those
+backward spasms of the head.”
+
+The aid obeyed him, and, very naturally, I jerked my head backward as
+hard as I could.
+
+“That will answer,” said the surgeon, to my horror. “A clever rogue.
+Send him to the guard-house.”
+
+Happy had I been had my ill luck ended here, but as I crossed the yard
+an officer stopped me. To my disgust, it was the captain of my old Rhode
+Island company.
+
+“Hello!” said he; “keep that fellow safe. I know him.”
+
+To cut short a long story, I was tried, convicted, and forced to refund
+the Rhode Island bounty, for by ill luck they found my bank-book among
+my papers. I was finally sent to Fort Delaware and kept at hard
+labor, handling and carrying shot, policing the ground, picking up
+cigar-stumps, and other light, unpleasant occupations.
+
+When the war was over I was released. I went at once to Boston, where I
+had about four hundred dollars in bank. I spent nearly all of this sum
+before I could satisfy the accumulated cravings of a year and a half
+without drink or tobacco, or a decent meal. I was about to engage in a
+little business as a vender of lottery policies when I first began to
+feel a strange sense of lassitude, which soon increased so as quite to
+disable me from work of any kind. Month after month passed away, while
+my money lessened, and this terrible sense of weariness went on from bad
+to worse. At last one day, after nearly a year had elapsed, I perceived
+on my face a large brown patch of color, in consequence of which I went
+in some alarm to consult a well-known physician. He asked me a multitude
+of tiresome questions, and at last wrote off a prescription, which I
+immediately read. It was a preparation of arsenic.
+
+“What do you think,” said I, “is the matter with me, doctor?”
+
+“I am afraid,” said he, “that you have a very serious trouble--what we
+call Addison’s disease.”
+
+“What’s that?” said I.
+
+“I do not think you would comprehend it,” he replied; “it is an
+affection of the suprarenal capsules.”
+
+I dimly remembered that there were such organs, and that nobody knew
+what they were meant for. It seemed that doctors had found a use for
+them at last.
+
+“Is it a dangerous disease?” I said.
+
+“I fear so,” he answered.
+
+“Don’t you really know,” I asked, “what’s the truth about it?”
+
+“Well,” he returned gravely, “I’m sorry to tell you it is a very
+dangerous malady.”
+
+“Nonsense!” said I; “I don’t believe it”; for I thought it was only a
+doctor’s trick, and one I had tried often enough myself.
+
+“Thank you,” said he; “you are a very ill man, and a fool besides. Good
+morning.” He forgot to ask for a fee, and I did not therefore find it
+necessary to escape payment by telling him I was a doctor.
+
+Several weeks went by; my money was gone, my clothes were ragged, and,
+like my body, nearly worn out, and now I am an inmate of a hospital.
+To-day I feel weaker than when I first began to write. How it will end,
+I do not know. If I die, the doctor will get this pleasant history, and
+if I live, I shall burn it, and as soon as I get a little money I will
+set out to look for my sister. I dreamed about her last night. What I
+dreamed was not very agreeable. I thought it was night. I was walking up
+one of the vilest streets near my old office, and a girl spoke to me--a
+shameless, worn creature, with great sad eyes. Suddenly she screamed,
+“Brother, brother!” and then remembering what she had been, with her
+round, girlish, innocent face and fair hair, and seeing what she was
+now, I awoke and saw the dim light of the half-darkened ward.
+
+I am better to-day. Writing all this stuff has amused me and, I think,
+done me good. That was a horrid dream I had. I suppose I must tear up
+all this biography.
+
+“Hello, nurse! The little boy--boy--”
+
+
+“GOOD HEAVENS!” said the nurse, “he is dead! Dr. Alston said it would
+happen this way. The screen, quick--the screen--and let the doctor
+know.”
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CASE OF GEORGE DEDLOW
+
+The following notes of my own case have been declined on various
+pretests by every medical journal to which I have offered them. There
+was, perhaps, some reason in this, because many of the medical facts
+which they record are not altogether new, and because the psychical
+deductions to which they have led me are not in themselves of medical
+interest. I ought to add that a great deal of what is here related is
+not of any scientific value whatsoever; but as one or two people on
+whose judgment I rely have advised me to print my narrative with all
+the personal details, rather than in the dry shape in which, as a
+psychological statement, I shall publish it elsewhere, I have yielded
+to their views. I suspect, however, that the very character of my record
+will, in the eyes of some of my readers, tend to lessen the value of the
+metaphysical discoveries which it sets forth.
+
+
+I am the son of a physician, still in large practice, in the village
+of Abington, Scofield County, Indiana. Expecting to act as his future
+partner, I studied medicine in his office, and in 1859 and 1860 attended
+lectures at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. My second
+course should have been in the following year, but the outbreak of the
+Rebellion so crippled my father’s means that I was forced to abandon my
+intention. The demand for army surgeons at this time became very great;
+and although not a graduate, I found no difficulty in getting the place
+of assistant surgeon to the Tenth Indiana Volunteers. In the subsequent
+Western campaigns this organization suffered so severely that before the
+term of its service was over it was merged in the Twenty-first Indiana
+Volunteers; and I, as an extra surgeon, ranked by the medical officers
+of the latter regiment, was transferred to the Fifteenth Indiana
+Cavalry. Like many physicians, I had contracted a strong taste for army
+life, and, disliking cavalry service, sought and obtained the position
+of first lieutenant in the Seventy-ninth Indiana Volunteers, an infantry
+regiment of excellent character.
+
+On the day after I assumed command of my company, which had no captain,
+we were sent to garrison a part of a line of block-houses stretching
+along the Cumberland River below Nashville, then occupied by a portion
+of the command of General Rosecrans.
+
+The life we led while on this duty was tedious and at the same time
+dangerous in the extreme. Food was scarce and bad, the water horrible,
+and we had no cavalry to forage for us. If, as infantry, we attempted to
+levy supplies upon the scattered farms around us, the population
+seemed suddenly to double, and in the shape of guerrillas “potted” us
+industriously from behind distant trees, rocks, or fences. Under these
+various and unpleasant influences, combined with a fair infusion of
+malaria, our men rapidly lost health and spirits. Unfortunately, no
+proper medical supplies had been forwarded with our small force
+(two companies), and, as the fall advanced, the want of quinine and
+stimulants became a serious annoyance. Moreover, our rations were
+running low; we had been three weeks without a new supply; and our
+commanding officer, Major Henry L. Terrill, began to be uneasy as to
+the safety of his men. About this time it was supposed that a train with
+rations would be due from the post twenty miles to the north of us; yet
+it was quite possible that it would bring us food, but no medicines,
+which were what we most needed. The command was too small to detach any
+part of it, and the major therefore resolved to send an officer alone to
+the post above us, where the rest of the Seventy-ninth lay, and whence
+they could easily forward quinine and stimulants by the train, if it had
+not left, or, if it had, by a small cavalry escort.
+
+It so happened, to my cost, as it turned out, that I was the only
+officer fit to make the journey, and I was accordingly ordered to
+proceed to Blockhouse No. 3 and make the required arrangements. I
+started alone just after dusk the next night, and during the darkness
+succeeded in getting within three miles of my destination. At this time
+I found that I had lost my way, and, although aware of the danger of my
+act, was forced to turn aside and ask at a log cabin for directions. The
+house contained a dried-up old woman and four white-headed, half-naked
+children. The woman was either stone-deaf or pretended to be so; but, at
+all events, she gave me no satisfaction, and I remounted and rode away.
+On coming to the end of a lane, into which I had turned to seek the
+cabin, I found to my surprise that the bars had been put up during my
+brief parley. They were too high to leap, and I therefore dismounted to
+pull them down. As I touched the top rail, I heard a rifle, and at the
+same instant felt a blow on both arms, which fell helpless. I staggered
+to my horse and tried to mount; but, as I could use neither arm, the
+effort was vain, and I therefore stood still, awaiting my fate. I am
+only conscious that I saw about me several graybacks, for I must have
+fallen fainting almost immediately.
+
+When I awoke I was lying in the cabin near by, upon a pile of rubbish.
+Ten or twelve guerrillas were gathered about the fire, apparently
+drawing lots for my watch, boots, hat, etc. I now made an effort to find
+out how far I was hurt. I discovered that I could use the left forearm
+and hand pretty well, and with this hand I felt the right limb all
+over until I touched the wound. The ball had passed from left to right
+through the left biceps, and directly through the right arm just below
+the shoulder, emerging behind. The right arm and forearm were cold and
+perfectly insensible. I pinched them as well as I could, to test the
+amount of sensation remaining; but the hand might as well have been that
+of a dead man. I began to understand that the nerves had been wounded,
+and that the part was utterly powerless. By this time my friends had
+pretty well divided the spoils, and, rising together, went out. The old
+woman then came to me, and said: “Reckon you’d best git up. They-’uns
+is a-goin’ to take you away.” To this I only answered, “Water, water.”
+ I had a grim sense of amusement on finding that the old woman was not
+deaf, for she went out, and presently came back with a gourdful, which I
+eagerly drank. An hour later the graybacks returned, and finding that
+I was too weak to walk, carried me out and laid me on the bottom of
+a common cart, with which they set off on a trot. The jolting was
+horrible, but within an hour I began to have in my dead right hand a
+strange burning, which was rather a relief to me. It increased as the
+sun rose and the day grew warm, until I felt as if the hand was caught
+and pinched in a red-hot vise. Then in my agony I begged my guard for
+water to wet it with, but for some reason they desired silence, and at
+every noise threatened me with a revolver. At length the pain became
+absolutely unendurable, and I grew what it is the fashion to call
+demoralized. I screamed, cried, and yelled in my torture, until, as
+I suppose, my captors became alarmed, and, stopping, gave me a
+handkerchief,--my own, I fancy,--and a canteen of water, with which I
+wetted the hand, to my unspeakable relief.
+
+It is unnecessary to detail the events by which, finally, I found myself
+in one of the rebel hospitals near Atlanta. Here, for the first time, my
+wounds were properly cleansed and dressed by a Dr. Oliver T. Wilson,
+who treated me throughout with great kindness. I told him I had been a
+doctor, which, perhaps, may have been in part the cause of the unusual
+tenderness with which I was managed. The left arm was now quite easy,
+although, as will be seen, it never entirely healed. The right arm was
+worse than ever--the humerus broken, the nerves wounded, and the hand
+alive only to pain. I use this phrase because it is connected in my
+mind with a visit from a local visitor,--I am not sure he was a
+preacher,--who used to go daily through the wards, and talk to us or
+write our letters. One morning he stopped at my bed, when this little
+talk occurred:
+
+“How are you, lieutenant?”
+
+“Oh,” said I, “as usual. All right, but this hand, which is dead except
+to pain.”
+
+“Ah,” said he, “such and thus will the wicked be--such will you be if
+you die in your sins: you will go where only pain can be felt. For all
+eternity, all of you will be just like that hand--knowing pain only.”
+
+I suppose I was very weak, but somehow I felt a sudden and chilling
+horror of possible universal pain, and suddenly fainted. When I awoke
+the hand was worse, if that could be. It was red, shining, aching,
+burning, and, as it seemed to me, perpetually rasped with hot files.
+When the doctor came I begged for morphia. He said gravely: “We have
+none. You know you don’t allow it to pass the lines.” It was sadly true.
+
+I turned to the wall, and wetted the hand again, my sole relief. In
+about an hour Dr. Wilson came back with two aids, and explained to me
+that the bone was so crushed as to make it hopeless to save it, and
+that, besides, amputation offered some chance of arresting the pain.
+I had thought of this before, but the anguish I felt--I cannot say
+endured--was so awful that I made no more of losing the limb than
+of parting with a tooth on account of toothache. Accordingly, brief
+preparations were made, which I watched with a sort of eagerness such as
+must forever be inexplicable to any one who has not passed six weeks of
+torture like that which I had suffered.
+
+I had but one pang before the operation. As I arranged myself on the
+left side, so as to make it convenient for the operator to use the
+knife, I asked: “Who is to give me the ether?” “We have none,” said the
+person questioned. I set my teeth, and said no more.
+
+I need not describe the operation. The pain felt was severe, but it was
+insignificant as compared with that of any other minute of the past
+six weeks. The limb was removed very near to the shoulder-joint. As the
+second incision was made, I felt a strange flash of pain play through
+the limb, as if it were in every minutest fibril of nerve. This was
+followed by instant, unspeakable relief, and before the flaps were
+brought together I was sound asleep. I dimly remember saying, as I
+pointed to the arm which lay on the floor: “There is the pain, and here
+am I. How queer!” Then I slept--slept the sleep of the just, or, better,
+of the painless. From this time forward I was free from neuralgia. At a
+subsequent period I saw a number of cases similar to mine in a hospital
+in Philadelphia.
+
+It is no part of my plan to detail my weary months of monotonous prison
+life in the South. In the early part of April, 1863, I was exchanged,
+and after the usual thirty days’ furlough returned to my regiment a
+captain.
+
+On the 19th of September, 1863, occurred the battle of Chickamauga, in
+which my regiment took a conspicuous part. The close of our own share
+in this contest is, as it were, burned into my memory with every least
+detail. It was about 6 P. M., when we found ourselves in line, under
+cover of a long, thin row of scrubby trees, beyond which lay a gentle
+slope, from which, again, rose a hill rather more abrupt, and crowned
+with an earthwork. We received orders to cross this space and take the
+fort in front, while a brigade on our right was to make a like movement
+on its flank.
+
+Just before we emerged into the open ground, we noticed what, I think,
+was common in many fights--that the enemy had begun to bowl round shot
+at us, probably from failure of shell. We passed across the valley in
+good order, although the men fell rapidly all along the line. As we
+climbed the hill, our pace slackened, and the fire grew heavier. At
+this moment a battery opened on our left, the shots crossing our heads
+obliquely. It is this moment which is so printed on my recollection.
+I can see now, as if through a window, the gray smoke, lit with red
+flashes, the long, wavering line, the sky blue above, the trodden
+furrows, blotted with blue blouses. Then it was as if the window closed,
+and I knew and saw no more. No other scene in my life is thus scarred,
+if I may say so, into my memory. I have a fancy that the horrible shock
+which suddenly fell upon me must have had something to do with thus
+intensifying the momentary image then before my eyes.
+
+When I awakened, I was lying under a tree somewhere at the rear.
+The ground was covered with wounded, and the doctors were busy at an
+operating-table, improvised from two barrels and a plank. At length two
+of them who were examining the wounded about me came up to where I lay.
+A hospital steward raised my head and poured down some brandy and water,
+while another cut loose my pantaloons. The doctors exchanged looks and
+walked away. I asked the steward where I was hit.
+
+“Both thighs,” said he; “the doctors won’t do nothing.”
+
+“No use?” said I.
+
+“Not much,” said he.
+
+“Not much means none at all,” I answered.
+
+When he had gone I set myself to thinking about a good many things I had
+better have thought of before, but which in no way concern the history
+of my case. A half-hour went by. I had no pain, and did not get weaker.
+At last, I cannot explain why, I began to look about me. At first things
+appeared a little hazy. I remember one thing which thrilled me a little,
+even then.
+
+A tall, blond-bearded major walked up to a doctor near me, saying, “When
+you’ve a little leisure, just take a look at my side.”
+
+“Do it now,” said the doctor.
+
+The officer exposed his wound. “Ball went in here, and out there.”
+
+The doctor looked up at him--half pity, half amazement. “If you’ve got
+any message, you’d best send it by me.”
+
+“Why, you don’t say it’s serious?” was the reply.
+
+“Serious! Why, you’re shot through the stomach. You won’t live over the
+day.”
+
+Then the man did what struck me as a very odd thing. He said, “Anybody
+got a pipe?” Some one gave him a pipe. He filled it deliberately, struck
+a light with a flint, and sat down against a tree near to me. Presently
+the doctor came to him again, and asked him what he could do for him.
+
+“Send me a drink of Bourbon.”
+
+“Anything else?”
+
+“No.”
+
+As the doctor left him, he called him back. “It’s a little rough, doc,
+isn’t it?”
+
+No more passed, and I saw this man no longer. Another set of doctors
+were handling my legs, for the first time causing pain. A moment after
+a steward put a towel over my mouth, and I smelled the familiar odor of
+chloroform, which I was glad enough to breathe. In a moment the trees
+began to move around from left to right, faster and faster; then a
+universal grayness came before me,--and I recall nothing further until I
+awoke to consciousness in a hospital-tent. I got hold of my own identity
+in a moment or two, and was suddenly aware of a sharp cramp in my left
+leg. I tried to get at it to rub it with my single arm, but, finding
+myself too weak, hailed an attendant. “Just rub my left calf,” said I,
+“if you please.”
+
+“Calf?” said he. “You ain’t none. It’s took off.”
+
+“I know better,” said I. “I have pain in both legs.”
+
+“Wall, I never!” said he. “You ain’t got nary leg.”
+
+As I did not believe him, he threw off the covers, and, to my horror,
+showed me that I had suffered amputation of both thighs, very high up.
+
+“That will do,” said I, faintly.
+
+A month later, to the amazement of every one, I was so well as to be
+moved from the crowded hospital at Chattanooga to Nashville, where
+I filled one of the ten thousand beds of that vast metropolis of
+hospitals. Of the sufferings which then began I shall presently speak.
+It will be best just now to detail the final misfortune which here fell
+upon me. Hospital No. 2, in which I lay, was inconveniently crowded with
+severely wounded officers. After my third week an epidemic of hospital
+gangrene broke out in my ward. In three days it attacked twenty persons.
+Then an inspector came, and we were transferred at once to the open air,
+and placed in tents. Strangely enough, the wound in my remaining arm,
+which still suppurated, was seized with gangrene. The usual remedy,
+bromine, was used locally, but the main artery opened, was tied, bled
+again and again, and at last, as a final resort, the remaining arm was
+amputated at the shoulder-joint. Against all chances I recovered, to
+find myself a useless torso, more like some strange larval creature than
+anything of human shape. Of my anguish and horror of myself I dare not
+speak. I have dictated these pages, not to shock my readers, but to
+possess them with facts in regard to the relation of the mind to the
+body; and I hasten, therefore, to such portions of my case as best
+illustrate these views.
+
+In January, 1864, I was forwarded to Philadelphia, in order to enter
+what was known as the Stump Hospital, South street, then in charge
+of Dr. Hopkinson. This favor was obtained through the influence of my
+father’s friend, the late Governor Anderson, who has always manifested
+an interest in my case, for which I am deeply grateful. It was thought,
+at the time, that Mr. Palmer, the leg-maker, might be able to adapt some
+form of arm to my left shoulder, as on that side there remained five
+inches of the arm-bone, which I could move to a moderate extent. The
+hope proved illusory, as the stump was always too tender to bear any
+pressure. The hospital referred to was in charge of several surgeons
+while I was an inmate, and was at all times a clean and pleasant home.
+It was filled with men who had lost one arm or leg, or one of each, as
+happened now and then. I saw one man who had lost both legs, and one
+who had parted with both arms; but none, like myself, stripped of every
+limb. There were collected in this place hundreds of these cases, which
+gave to it, with reason enough, the not very pleasing title of Stump
+Hospital.
+
+I spent here three and a half months, before my transfer to the United
+States Army Hospital for Injuries and Diseases of the Nervous System.
+Every morning I was carried out in an arm-chair and placed in the
+library, where some one was always ready to write or read for me, or to
+fill my pipe. The doctors lent me medical books; the ladies brought me
+luxuries and fed me; and, save that I was helpless to a degree which was
+humiliating, I was as comfortable as kindness could make me.
+
+I amused myself at this time by noting in my mind all that I could learn
+from other limbless folk, and from myself, as to the peculiar feelings
+which were noticed in regard to lost members. I found that the great
+mass of men who had undergone amputations for many months felt the usual
+consciousness that they still had the lost limb. It itched or pained, or
+was cramped, but never felt hot or cold. If they had painful sensations
+referred to it, the conviction of its existence continued unaltered
+for long periods; but where no pain was felt in it, then by degrees the
+sense of having that limb faded away entirely. I think we may to some
+extent explain this. The knowledge we possess of any part is made up
+of the numberless impressions from without which affect its sensitive
+surfaces, and which are transmitted through its nerves to the spinal
+nerve-cells, and through them, again, to the brain. We are thus kept
+endlessly informed as to the existence of parts, because the impressions
+which reach the brain are, by a law of our being, referred by us to
+the part from which they come. Now, when the part is cut off, the
+nerve-trunks which led to it and from it, remaining capable of being
+impressed by irritations, are made to convey to the brain from the stump
+impressions which are, as usual, referred by the brain to the lost parts
+to which these nerve-threads belonged. In other words, the nerve is like
+a bell-wire. You may pull it at any part of its course, and thus ring
+the bell as well as if you pulled at the end of the wire; but, in any
+case, the intelligent servant will refer the pull to the front door,
+and obey it accordingly. The impressions made on the severed ends of
+the nerve are due often to changes in the stump during healing, and
+consequently cease when it has healed, so that finally, in a very
+healthy stump, no such impressions arise; the brain ceases to correspond
+with the lost leg, and, as les absents ont toujours tort, it is no
+longer remembered or recognized. But in some cases, such as mine
+proved at last to my sorrow, the ends of the nerves undergo a curious
+alteration, and get to be enlarged and altered. This change, as I have
+seen in my practice of medicine, sometimes passes up the nerves toward
+the centers, and occasions a more or less constant irritation of the
+nerve-fibers, producing neuralgia, which is usually referred by
+the brain to that part of the lost limb to which the affected nerve
+belonged. This pain keeps the brain ever mindful of the missing part,
+and, imperfectly at least, preserves to the man a consciousness of
+possessing that which he has not.
+
+Where the pains come and go, as they do in certain cases, the subjective
+sensations thus occasioned are very curious, since in such cases the
+man loses and gains, and loses and regains, the consciousness of the
+presence of the lost parts, so that he will tell you, “Now I feel my
+thumb, now I feel my little finger.” I should also add that nearly every
+person who has lost an arm above the elbow feels as though the lost
+member were bent at the elbow, and at times is vividly impressed with
+the notion that his fingers are strongly flexed.
+
+Other persons present a peculiarity which I am at a loss to account for.
+Where the leg, for instance, has been lost, they feel as if the foot
+were present, but as though the leg were shortened. Thus, if the thigh
+has been taken off, there seems to them to be a foot at the knee; if the
+arm, a hand seems to be at the elbow, or attached to the stump itself.
+
+Before leaving Nashville I had begun to suffer the most acute pain in
+my left hand, especially the little finger; and so perfect was the idea
+which was thus kept up of the real presence of these missing parts that
+I found it hard at times to believe them absent. Often at night I would
+try with one lost hand to grope for the other. As, however, I had no
+pain in the right arm, the sense of the existence of that limb gradually
+disappeared, as did that of my legs also.
+
+Everything was done for my neuralgia which the doctors could think of;
+and at length, at my suggestion, I was removed, as I have said, from
+the Stump Hospital to the United States Army Hospital for Injuries
+and Diseases of the Nervous System. It was a pleasant, suburban,
+old-fashioned country-seat, its gardens surrounded by a circle of
+wooden, one-story wards, shaded by fine trees. There were some three
+hundred cases of epilepsy, paralysis, St. Vitus’s dance, and wounds of
+nerves. On one side of me lay a poor fellow, a Dane, who had the same
+burning neuralgia with which I once suffered, and which I now learned
+was only too common. This man had become hysterical from pain. He
+carried a sponge in his pocket, and a bottle of water in one hand, with
+which he constantly wetted the burning hand. Every sound increased his
+torture, and he even poured water into his boots to keep himself from
+feeling too sensibly the rough friction of his soles when walking. Like
+him, I was greatly eased by having small doses of morphia injected under
+the skin of my shoulder with a hollow needle fitted to a syringe.
+
+As I improved under the morphia treatment, I began to be disturbed by
+the horrible variety of suffering about me. One man walked sideways;
+there was one who could not smell; another was dumb from an explosion.
+In fact, every one had his own abnormal peculiarity. Near me was a
+strange case of palsy of the muscles called rhomboids, whose office it
+is to hold down the shoulder-blades flat on the back during the motions
+of the arms, which, in themselves, were strong enough. When, however, he
+lifted these members, the shoulder-blades stood out from the back like
+wings, and got him the sobriquet of the “Angel.” In my ward were also
+the cases of fits, which very much annoyed me, as upon any great change
+in the weather it was common to have a dozen convulsions in view at
+once. Dr. Neek, one of our physicians, told me that on one occasion
+a hundred and fifty fits took place within thirty-six hours. On my
+complaining of these sights, whence I alone could not fly, I was placed
+in the paralytic and wound ward, which I found much more pleasant.
+
+A month of skilful treatment eased me entirely of my aches, and I then
+began to experience certain curious feelings, upon which, having nothing
+to do and nothing to do anything with, I reflected a good deal. It was
+a good while before I could correctly explain to my own satisfaction
+the phenomena which at this time I was called upon to observe. By the
+various operations already described I had lost about four fifths of my
+weight. As a consequence of this I ate much less than usual, and could
+scarcely have consumed the ration of a soldier. I slept also but little;
+for, as sleep is the repose of the brain, made necessary by the waste
+of its tissues during thought and voluntary movement, and as this latter
+did not exist in my case, I needed only that rest which was necessary to
+repair such exhaustion of the nerve-centers as was induced by thinking
+and the automatic movements of the viscera.
+
+I observed at this time also that my heart, in place of beating, as it
+once did, seventy-eight in the minute, pulsated only forty-five times in
+this interval--a fact to be easily explained by the perfect quiescence
+to which I was reduced, and the consequent absence of that healthy and
+constant stimulus to the muscles of the heart which exercise occasions.
+
+Notwithstanding these drawbacks, my physical health was good, which, I
+confess, surprised me, for this among other reasons: It is said that a
+burn of two thirds of the surface destroys life, because then all the
+excretory matters which this portion of the glands of the skin evolved
+are thrown upon the blood, and poison the man, just as happens in an
+animal whose skin the physiologist has varnished, so as in this way to
+destroy its function. Yet here was I, having lost at least a third of my
+skin, and apparently none the worse for it.
+
+Still more remarkable, however, were the psychical changes which I
+now began to perceive. I found to my horror that at times I was less
+conscious of myself, of my own existence, than used to be the case. This
+sensation was so novel that at first it quite bewildered me. I felt like
+asking some one constantly if I were really George Dedlow or not; but,
+well aware how absurd I should seem after such a question, I refrained
+from speaking of my case, and strove more keenly to analyze my feelings.
+At times the conviction of my want of being myself was overwhelming and
+most painful. It was, as well as I can describe it, a deficiency in the
+egoistic sentiment of individuality. About one half of the sensitive
+surface of my skin was gone, and thus much of relation to the outer
+world destroyed. As a consequence, a large part of the receptive central
+organs must be out of employ, and, like other idle things, degenerating
+rapidly. Moreover, all the great central ganglia, which give rise to
+movements in the limbs, were also eternally at rest. Thus one half of me
+was absent or functionally dead. This set me to thinking how much a man
+might lose and yet live. If I were unhappy enough to survive, I might
+part with my spleen at least, as many a dog has done, and grown fat
+afterwards. The other organs with which we breathe and circulate the
+blood would be essential; so also would the liver; but at least half of
+the intestines might be dispensed with, and of course all of the limbs.
+And as to the nervous system, the only parts really necessary to life
+are a few small ganglia. Were the rest absent or inactive, we should
+have a man reduced, as it were, to the lowest terms, and leading an
+almost vegetative existence. Would such a being, I asked myself, possess
+the sense of individuality in its usual completeness, even if his organs
+of sensation remained, and he were capable of consciousness? Of course,
+without them, he could not have it any more than a dahlia or a tulip.
+But with them--how then? I concluded that it would be at a minimum,
+and that, if utter loss of relation to the outer world were capable of
+destroying a man’s consciousness of himself, the destruction of half
+of his sensitive surfaces might well occasion, in a less degree, a like
+result, and so diminish his sense of individual existence.
+
+I thus reached the conclusion that a man is not his brain, or any one
+part of it, but all of his economy, and that to lose any part must
+lessen this sense of his own existence. I found but one person who
+properly appreciated this great truth. She was a New England lady, from
+Hartford--an agent, I think, for some commission, perhaps the Sanitary.
+After I had told her my views and feelings she said: “Yes, I comprehend.
+The fractional entities of vitality are embraced in the oneness of
+the unitary Ego. Life,” she added, “is the garnered condensation of
+objective impressions; and as the objective is the remote father of the
+subjective, so must individuality, which is but focused subjectivity,
+suffer and fade when the sensation lenses, by which the rays of
+impression are condensed, become destroyed.” I am not quite clear that
+I fully understood her, but I think she appreciated my ideas, and I felt
+grateful for her kindly interest.
+
+The strange want I have spoken of now haunted and perplexed me so
+constantly that I became moody and wretched. While in this state, a
+man from a neighboring ward fell one morning into conversation with the
+chaplain, within ear-shot of my chair. Some of their words arrested my
+attention, and I turned my head to see and listen. The speaker, who wore
+a sergeant’s chevron and carried one arm in a sling was a tall, loosely
+made person, with a pale face, light eyes of a washed-out blue tint, and
+very sparse yellow whiskers. His mouth was weak, both lips being almost
+alike, so that the organ might have been turned upside down without
+affecting its expression. His forehead, however, was high and thinly
+covered with sandy hair. I should have said, as a phrenologist, will
+feeble; emotional, but not passionate; likely to be an enthusiast or a
+weakly bigot.
+
+I caught enough of what passed to make me call to the sergeant when the
+chaplain left him.
+
+“Good morning,” said he. “How do you get on?”
+
+“Not at all,” I replied. “Where were you hit?”
+
+“Oh, at Chancellorsville. I was shot in the shoulder. I have what the
+doctors call paralysis of the median nerve, but I guess Dr. Neek and
+the lightnin’ battery will fix it. When my time’s out I’ll go back to
+Kearsarge and try on the school-teaching again. I’ve done my share.”
+
+“Well,” said I, “you’re better off than I.”
+
+“Yes,” he answered, “in more ways than one. I belong to the New Church.
+It’s a great comfort for a plain man like me, when he’s weary and sick,
+to be able to turn away from earthly things and hold converse daily with
+the great and good who have left this here world. We have a circle in
+Coates street. If it wa’n’t for the consoling I get there, I’d of wished
+myself dead many a time. I ain’t got kith or kin on earth; but this
+matters little, when one can just talk to them daily and know that they
+are in the spheres above us.”
+
+“It must be a great comfort,” I replied, “if only one could believe it.”
+
+“Believe!” he repeated. “How can you help it? Do you suppose anything
+dies?”
+
+“No,” I said. “The soul does not, I am sure; and as to matter, it merely
+changes form.”
+
+“But why, then,” said he, “should not the dead soul talk to the living?
+In space, no doubt, exist all forms of matter, merely in finer, more
+ethereal being. You can’t suppose a naked soul moving about without a
+bodily garment--no creed teaches that; and if its new clothing be of
+like substance to ours, only of ethereal fineness,--a more delicate
+recrystallization about the eternal spiritual nucleus,--must it not then
+possess powers as much more delicate and refined as is the new material
+in which it is reclad?”
+
+“Not very clear,” I answered; “but, after all, the thing should be
+susceptible of some form of proof to our present senses.”
+
+“And so it is,” said he. “Come to-morrow with me, and you shall see and
+hear for yourself.”
+
+“I will,” said I, “if the doctor will lend me the ambulance.”
+
+It was so arranged, as the surgeon in charge was kind enough, as usual,
+to oblige me with the loan of his wagon, and two orderlies to lift my
+useless trunk.
+
+On the day following I found myself, with my new comrade, in a house in
+Coates street, where a “circle” was in the daily habit of meeting. So
+soon as I had been comfortably deposited in an arm-chair, beside a large
+pine table, the rest of those assembled seated themselves, and for some
+time preserved an unbroken silence. During this pause I scrutinized
+the persons present. Next to me, on my right, sat a flabby man, with
+ill-marked, baggy features and injected eyes. He was, as I learned
+afterwards, an eclectic doctor, who had tried his hand at medicine
+and several of its quackish variations, finally settling down on
+eclecticism, which I believe professes to be to scientific medicine what
+vegetarianism is to common-sense, every-day dietetics. Next to him sat
+a female-authoress, I think, of two somewhat feeble novels, and much
+pleasanter to look at than her books. She was, I thought, a good deal
+excited at the prospect of spiritual revelations. Her neighbor was a
+pallid, care-worn young woman, with very red lips, and large brown eyes
+of great beauty. She was, as I learned afterwards, a magnetic patient of
+the doctor, and had deserted her husband, a master mechanic, to follow
+this new light. The others were, like myself, strangers brought hither
+by mere curiosity. One of them was a lady in deep black, closely veiled.
+Beyond her, and opposite to me, sat the sergeant, and next to him the
+medium, a man named Brink. He wore a good deal of jewelry, and had large
+black side-whiskers--a shrewd-visaged, large-nosed, full-lipped man,
+formed by nature to appreciate the pleasant things of sensual existence.
+
+Before I had ended my survey, he turned to the lady in black, and asked
+if she wished to see any one in the spirit-world.
+
+She said, “Yes,” rather feebly.
+
+“Is the spirit present?” he asked. Upon which two knocks were heard in
+affirmation. “Ah!” said the medium, “the name is--it is the name of a
+child. It is a male child. It is--”
+
+“Alfred!” she cried. “Great Heaven! My child! My boy!”
+
+On this the medium arose, and became strangely convulsed. “I see,”
+ he said--“I see--a fair-haired boy. I see blue eyes--I see above you,
+beyond you--” at the same time pointing fixedly over her head.
+
+She turned with a wild start. “Where--whereabouts?”
+
+“A blue-eyed boy,” he continued, “over your head. He cries--he says,
+‘Mama, mama!’”
+
+The effect of this on the woman was unpleasant. She stared about her for
+a moment, and exclaiming, “I come--I am coming, Alfy!” fell in hysterics
+on the floor.
+
+Two or three persons raised her, and aided her into an adjoining room;
+but the rest remained at the table, as though well accustomed to like
+scenes.
+
+After this several of the strangers were called upon to write the names
+of the dead with whom they wished to communicate. The names were spelled
+out by the agency of affirmative knocks when the correct letters were
+touched by the applicant, who was furnished with an alphabet-card upon
+which he tapped the letters in turn, the medium, meanwhile, scanning his
+face very keenly. With some, the names were readily made out. With one,
+a stolid personage of disbelieving type, every attempt failed, until at
+last the spirits signified by knocks that he was a disturbing agency,
+and that while he remained all our efforts would fail. Upon this some of
+the company proposed that he should leave; of which invitation he took
+advantage, with a skeptical sneer at the whole performance.
+
+As he left us, the sergeant leaned over and whispered to the medium, who
+next addressed himself to me. “Sister Euphemia,” he said, indicating the
+lady with large eyes, “will act as your medium. I am unable to do more.
+These things exhaust my nervous system.”
+
+“Sister Euphemia,” said the doctor, “will aid us. Think, if you please,
+sir, of a spirit, and she will endeavor to summon it to our circle.”
+
+Upon this a wild idea came into my head. I answered: “I am thinking as
+you directed me to do.”
+
+The medium sat with her arms folded, looking steadily at the center
+of the table. For a few moments there was silence. Then a series of
+irregular knocks began. “Are you present?” said the medium.
+
+The affirmative raps were twice given.
+
+“I should think,” said the doctor, “that there were two spirits
+present.”
+
+His words sent a thrill through my heart.
+
+“Are there two?” he questioned.
+
+A double rap.
+
+“Yes, two,” said the medium. “Will it please the spirits to make us
+conscious of their names in this world?”
+
+A single knock. “No.”
+
+“Will it please them to say how they are called in the world of
+spirits?”
+
+Again came the irregular raps--3, 4, 8, 6; then a pause, and 3, 4, 8, 7.
+
+“I think,” said the authoress, “they must be numbers. Will the spirits,”
+ she said, “be good enough to aid us? Shall we use the alphabet?”
+
+“Yes,” was rapped very quickly.
+
+“Are these numbers?”
+
+“Yes,” again.
+
+“I will write them,” she added, and, doing so, took up the card and
+tapped the letters. The spelling was pretty rapid, and ran thus as she
+tapped, in turn, first the letters, and last the numbers she had already
+set down:
+
+“UNITED STATES ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM, Nos. 3486, 3487.”
+
+The medium looked up with a puzzled expression.
+
+“Good gracious!” said I, “they are MY LEGS--MY LEGS!”
+
+What followed, I ask no one to believe except those who, like myself,
+have communed with the things of another sphere. Suddenly I felt a
+strange return of my self-consciousness. I was reindividualized, so to
+speak. A strange wonder filled me, and, to the amazement of every one,
+I arose, and, staggering a little, walked across the room on limbs
+invisible to them or me. It was no wonder I staggered, for, as I briefly
+reflected, my legs had been nine months in the strongest alcohol. At
+this instant all my new friends crowded around me in astonishment.
+Presently, however, I felt myself sinking slowly. My legs were going,
+and in a moment I was resting feebly on my two stumps upon the floor. It
+was too much. All that was left of me fainted and rolled over senseless.
+
+I have little to add. I am now at home in the West, surrounded by every
+form of kindness and every possible comfort; but alas! I have so
+little surety of being myself that I doubt my own honesty in drawing
+my pension, and feel absolved from gratitude to those who are kind to
+a being who is uncertain of being enough himself to be conscientiously
+responsible. It is needless to add that I am not a happy fraction of
+a man, and that I am eager for the day when I shall rejoin the lost
+members of my corporeal family in another and a happier world.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Autobiography of a Quack And The
+Case Of George Dedlow, by S. Weir Mitchell
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