When
little boys have learned a new bad word they are never happy till they have
chalked it up on a door. And this also is Literature.
He was in a high fever while he was writing, and the blood-and-thunder
Magazine diction he adopted did not calm him. Two months afterward he was
reported fit for duty, but, in spite of the fact that he was urgently needed
to help an undermanned Commission stagger through a deficit, he preferred to
die; vowing at the last that he was hag-ridden. I got his manuscript before he
died, and this is his version of the affair, dated 1885:
My doctor tells me that I need rest and change of air. It is not improbable
that I shall get both ere long--rest that neither the red-coated messenger nor
the midday gun can break, and change of air far beyond that which any
homeward-bound steamer can give me. In the meantime I am resolved to stay
where I am; and, in flat defiance of my doctor's orders, to take all the world
into my confidence. You shall learn for yourselves the precise nature of my
malady; and shall, too, judge for yourselves whether any man born of woman on
this weary earth was ever so tormented as I.
Speaking now as a condemned criminal might speak ere the drop-bolts are drawn,
my story, wild and hideously improbable as it may appear, demands at least
attention.
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