moment and laid on my death-bed — dying. My heart ceases to beat, my breath stops, my eyes are fixed and glassy, and my whole body is rigid and cold. The doctor bends over me and says: " He is dead," and my sobbing friends cry: " Lord have mercy on his soul." But now suppose I am not dead at all but only in a trance, conscious of all going on around me but unable to move a muscle. I feel them prepare my body and lay me in state, and friends come and weep over me, and they talk of me and they pray for my soul and, my God! they never dream that I am still alive. And now the coffin comes and they lift me into it and they bid me a last farewell and oh, horror! the coffin lid closes above me and still I cannot move. They bring me to church and lay me before the high altar, and I hear, as though afar off, the pealing of the organ and the priest's voice faintly intoning: " Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine." Ah! now, we are in the cemetery and I hear the grating of the ropes as they lower me into the grave, and then comes the awful rattle as fast and furious they shovel in the earth. Oh, horror of horrors! In a frenzy of anguish, with one last supreme effort I cast off my lethargy, and commence to struggle with the blind fury of despair. Oh God! it is too late, I am lost; fainter and fainter grows the noise of the shovels, and soon all is silent and I am left alone in my living tomb. But still I struggle in my narrow cell. My hands and feet are bound fast, but I hammer my head against my coffin lid, and I plunge wildly, and turn round and round and bite and gnaw
