“It is a trite observation that in the mind of one standing on the margin of the Valley of Shadows, as I was at that awful moment, all the events of his past life pass in swift review. So rapidly does one impression follow another, that one’s previous experiences form a single composite picture like that of the biograph, or the pictures that dreams paint upon the brain. Such was my own experience in a general way, but one feature of the mental life review which my terrible experience brought me was most peculiar and horrifying. “For several years before I graduated in medicine, I occupied a position in the coroner’s office in the city of C----. In the performance of my official duties I was compelled to witness a number of executions. Among others was that of a certain wife murderer. The sheriff, usually expert in such matters, made a bungle of this man’s case. The noose slipped and he slowly strangled to death! The unhappy event made a most powerful impression upon my youthful mind, but I little thought of the mental rehearsal of the awful scene that was in store for me. “Standing out in bold relief from the rest of the picture of my past life that was displayed before my mental vision as the mob completed its preparations for hanging me, was the frightful scene enacted on the gallows at the execution of the wife murderer in the jail yard of C----. “The most peculiar feature of it all was that it was I, and not that wife murderer whose death throes I saw in my mind’s eye. Horrible beyond conception were that awful choking, the agonized struggle for breath, the tumultuous spasms of the diaphragm, the twitchings of the muscles and the frightful roaring in the ears which I experienced as the murderer slowly died of strangulation. As the limbs of the dying man in the mental picture spasmodically flexed and extended themselves, I felt all of the agonizing pains experienced by sufferers from lock jaw or strychnine poisoning. “And this was not all. My chest was encircled as with a band of iron. Closer and closer drew the band until it seemed as if my diaphragm must tear clear across its breadth in the fearful effort to get oxygen into my lungs. I saw brilliant, glittering points and shafts of light dancing before my eyes. I seemed to be growing delirious and vainly tried to speak, the result being a queer sort of gibberish. Worst of all, the black death hood seemed suddenly to become transformed into a mask of transparent glass, through which I could see my own purpling, swollen features, with the bulging, blackened lips and protruding tongue and turgid, popping eye balls, in which I could see the horror of impending death reflected. Oh, it was horrible! horrible!