Alas! never was prophecy so contradicted or hope so defeated. For a year I suffered from my stomach, keeping wonderfully well up in strength. At the end of a year or more, I became afflicted with constant headache, viz., about 9 o'clock A. M., the headache would come on and continue during the day. From the time I was liberated from Southern prisons (and in fact long before I was released), up to the setting in of the daily headache, I had been occasionally afflicted with it. Now, headache became one of the most direful curses. From this time forward, for a year or more, I was on the down-hill road. My stomach was much worse than ever, and my headache became worse in proportion with my stomach. My body was very much debilitated; I suffered fearfully, wretchedly. From the ravages made on my entire physical system by constant headaches, and the terrible agonies and torments of my stomach, my mind became debilitated. In my extremity, I cried to God, and asked him why He so afflicted me! My sufferings were so intolerable and continuous, that my face became the reflected image of agony. My mother, God bless her! who could not conceive the uncommon suffering I was enduring, and imagining that I might have some trouble on my mind, begged me, in alarm, not to look so pain-stricken; that persons were noticing the appalling expression of my countenance. The reader will please remember that I was making my own living, during all this time, as a clerk. I tried different physicians and remedies without avail. Nothing seemed to benefit me, and I quit trying. At last a physician in the town where I resided, in whom I had but little confidence, and who for six months past had been endeavoring to get my consent to allow him to treat my case, induced me to place myself under his professional care. None of the rest had benefited me, and he could but fail, and might do me some good. I would die if there were not a change soon, and I could but do this at the worst under his treatment. Besides, I wanted present relief from the most distracting pain. I was suffering daily torment and torture, with a body weak and wasted, and a constitution whose resisting power, before persistent and repeated assaults, had at last given way; my mind was become greatly impaired, and my spirits had sunk into a black midnight of despair. "'Tis no time now to stickle over means and remedies; let him cure me who can, or let me die if I must," I thought. Nevertheless, in going into this physician's office, I emphatically charged him not to administer to me any opium or morphia, as I had a horror of such things.