One morning, when more than the usual gloom oppressed my spirits, I made an effort to arouse myself and throw off the melancholy that was settling upon me, which each day I felt to be growing more confirmed. I was sitting by a window, which stood wide open, and, just outside, a caged canary was singing and fluttering its feathers in the warm spring sunshine. The little bird was my particular property, and I regarded it with an affection which is rarely bestowed upon pets. With the exception of my young sister, a child about four years of age, this was the only living thing that I had taken any interest in since my sickness. I had trained the canary from the shell, and the little creature seemed to repay all my care, for from no other member of the family would it receive caresses. I was so much afraid of its being accidentally injured that I never allowed it to be freed from the cage, except in my presence. At my call it would fly about me, resting on my head, shoulders, or hands, and chirping in a perfect ecstasy of enjoyment. I arose and opened the door of its prison, then, reseating myself, softly whistled while it darted into the air, wheeled once or twice, and descended upon my hand. Stroking its spotless yellow plumage, I regarded the little thing with a degree of pleasure I had not experienced for several weeks. But sudden horror almost caused my heart to cease its beatings, and the perspiration started from my forehead in great drops, for I felt my fingers slowly closing over the delicate bird. Although I made an attempt greater than the racking effort we sometimes exert in the nightmare, I had no power to restrain them. The canary fluttered in my clasp. I would have dropped it, I would have shrieked for help, but my muscles, my voice, my _body_, obeyed me not, and my fingers, like the steady working of machinery, gradually tightened their relentless grasp. In my agony the veins of my face protruded like lines of cordage. I heard the frail bones breaking beneath the crushing pressure, then my involuntary grip suddenly relaxed, and the bird fell upon my knee, dead and mangled!