"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 remembered not to offer one.
Several months went by; my money was gone; my clothes were ragged, and, like my body, nearly worn out; and 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 little sister, about whom I dreamed last night. What I dreamed was not very agreeable. I thought I was walking up one of the vilest streets near my old office, when a girl spoke to me,—a shameless, worn creature, with great sad eyes, not so wicked as the rest of her face. Suddenly she screamed aloud, "Brother! Brother!" and then, remembering what she had been,—with her round, girlish, innocent face, and fair hair,—and seeing what she was, I awoke, and cursed myself in the darkness for the evil I had done in the days of my youth.
FOOTNOTES:
[D] Aurum, used in religious melancholy (see Jahr,) and not a bad remedy, it strikes me.
"THE LIE."
Many years ago—now more than two hundred and fifty—some one in England wrote a short poem bearing the above emphatic title, which deservedly holds a place in the collections of old English poetry at the present day. It is a striking production, familiar, no doubt, to most lovers of ancient verse, and, although numbering only about a dozen stanzas, has outlasted many a ponderous folio.
I say, indefinitely enough, that this little poem was written by some one, and strange as it may appear, the name of that one is still in doubt. Its authorship was attributed, by Bishop Percy and others, to Sir Walter Raleigh, and sometimes with the fanciful addition, that he wrote it the night before his execution. The piece, however, was extant many years before the world was disgraced by that deed of wickedness.
After a while it began to be questioned whether the verses were really written by Sir Walter. Some old-poetry mouser appears to have lighted on an ancient folio volume, the work of Joshua Sylvester, and found among its contents a poem called "The Soul's Errand," which, it would seem, was thought to be the same that had been credited to Sir Walter Raleigh under the title of "The Lie."