Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Humorists, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Twain, Mark, 1835-1910
I found Henry stretched upon a mattress on the floor of a great
building, along with thirty or forty other scalded and wounded persons,
and was promptly informed, by some indiscreet person, that he had
inhaled steam; that his body was badly scalded, and that he would live
but a little while; also, I was told that the physicians and nurses were
giving their whole attention to persons who had a chance of being saved.
They were short-handed in the matter of physicians and nurses; and Henry
and such others as were considered to be fatally hurt were receiving
only such attention as could be spared, from time to time, from the more
urgent cases. But Dr. Peyton, a fine and large-hearted old physician of
great reputation in the community, gave me his sympathy and took
vigorous hold of the case, and in about a week he had brought Henry
around. Dr. Peyton never committed himself with prognostications which
might not materialize, but at eleven o'clock one night he told me that
Henry was out of danger, and would get well. Then he said, "At midnight
these poor fellows lying here and there all over this place will begin
to mourn and mutter and lament and make outcries, and if this commotion
should disturb Henry it will be bad for him; therefore ask the physician
on watch to give him an eighth of a grain of morphine, but this is not
to be done unless Henry shall show signs that he is being disturbed."
Oh well, never mind the rest of it. The physicians on watch were young
fellows hardly out of the medical college, and they made a mistake--they
had no way of measuring the eighth of a grain of morphine, so they
guessed at it and gave him a vast quantity heaped on the end of a
knife-blade, and the fatal effects were soon apparent. I think he died
about dawn, I don't remember as to that. He was carried to the dead-room
and I went away for a while to a citizen's house and slept off some of
my accumulated fatigue--and meantime something was happening. The
coffins provided for the dead were of unpainted white pine, but in this
instance some of the ladies of Memphis had made up a fund of sixty
dollars and bought a metallic case, and when I came back and entered the
dead-room Henry lay in that open case, and he was dressed in a suit of
my clothing. He had borrowed it without my knowledge during our last
sojourn in St. Louis; and I recognized instantly that my dream of
several weeks before was here exactly reproduced, so far as these
details went--and I think I missed one detail; but that one was
immediately supplied, for just then an elderly lady entered the place
with a large bouquet consisting mainly of white roses, and in the centre
of it was a red rose, and she laid it on his breast.
I told the dream there in the Club that night just as I have told it
here.
Rev. Dr. Burton swung his leonine head around, focussed me with his eye,
and said:
"When was it that this happened?"
"In June, '58."
"It is a good many years ago. Have you told it several times since?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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