I was at home, and
fell sick. The illness developed into a fever, and then a delirium
set in, not an intellectual blank, but a misty and most delicious
wandering in places of incomparable beauty. I learned subsequently
that our regular physician was not certain to finish me, when a
consultation was called, which did the business. I have the
satisfaction of knowing that they were of the proper school. I lay
sick for three days.
On the morning of the fourth, at sunrise, I died. The sensation was
not unpleasant. It was not a sudden shock. I passed out of my body
as one would walk from the door of his house. There the body lay,--a
blank, so far as I was concerned, and only interesting to me as I was
rather entertained with watching the respect paid to it. My friends
stood about the bedside, regarding me (as they seemed to suppose),
while I, in a different part of the room, could hardly repress a
smile at their mistake, solemnized as they were, and I too, for that
matter, by my recent demise. A sensation (the word you see is
material and inappropriate) of etherealization and imponderability
pervaded me, and I was not sorry to get rid of such a dull, slow mass
as I now perceived myself to be, lying there on the bed.
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