ABSTRACT
309Not long after this, one night—(I have no record of the date, but it was either at the end of December or the beginning of January),—one night, at eleven o’clock, he came into the house in a state that looked like fearful fierce intoxication. Such a state in him, I knew, was impossible; it therefore was the more fearful. I asked hurriedly, ‘What is the matter,—you are fevered?’ ‘Yes, yes,’ he answered, ‘I was on the outside of the stage this bitter day till I was severely chilled,—but now I don’t feel it. Fevered!—of course, a little.’ He mildly and instantly yielded, a property in his nature towards any friend, to my request that he should go to bed. I followed with the best immediate remedy in my power. I entered his chamber as he leapt into bed. On entering the cold sheets, before his head was on the pillow, he slightly coughed, and I heard him say,—‘That is blood from my mouth.’ I went towards him; he was examining a single drop of blood upon the sheet. ‘Bring me the candle, Brown; and let me see this blood.’ After regarding it steadfastly, he looked up in my face, with a calmness of countenance that I can never forget, and said,— ‘I know the colour of that blood;—it is arterial blood;—I cannot be deceived in that colour;— that drop of blood is my death-warrant;—I must die.’ I ran for a surgeon; my friend was bled; and, 310at five in the morning, I left him after he had been, some time, in a quiet sleep.
