"He put me on milk diet, malt bread, malt extract, malted food, meat shredded and pounded in a mortar, raw beef, and so on. In forty-eight hours the pain was better. For three weeks I improved and hoped. I think that had the diet been then altered to the ordinary food, I might have made a recovery; instead of which it was kept up for nine weeks, at the end of which I had lost all the improvement, and was so weak that I could but just crawl up and down stairs. I attribute my subsequent exhaustion to the continued use of milk, which has the effect of destroying nervous energy." * * * * * 'Oct. 22, 1886. "I have been obliged to set all aside from extreme feebleness. During the last four weeks, indeed, the weakness and emaciation have become very great, so much so that I almost fancy the bones waste. But what I feel most is the loss of fresh air from inability to go out. The last two days have been dry, so that I have been able to get up and down by the house a little. "Still, I should have managed somehow to write to you were it not for the great dislike I feel to this begging business. You must not take offence at this, though you may think me very foolish. I keep putting it off and putting it off, till now I suppose I must do it, or stay the winter indoors in helplessness. To-day I have written to obtain the information necessary to fill up the form you sent. "In September, 1885, my spine seemed suddenly to snap. It happened in ten minutes--quite suddenly. It felt as if one of the vertebrae had been taken away. It was no doubt a form of paralysis. I had to take to the sofa again, and was confined to the house for over seven months, quite helpless. I could not undress myself. At Christmas, other troubles set in; the local doctor gave me up. He told my wife that nothing could be done for me, and that the only hope was in my keeping in good spirits. The misery of that dreadful winter will never be forgotten. At length nature seemed to revive a little, and I got downstairs, and soon after Miss Scott came to see me, and you sent me to the sea. On returning from the sea I slowly lost ground again. In the summer I had an attack of vomiting blood--of itself enough to alarm most people. By October I was confined indoors again. At last I got down here. "Besides all these sufferings I had another trial--a loss by death--one that I cannot dwell upon;"--it was the death of his youngest child--"but it broke me down very much. "Of the loss of all my savings I need not say much. But it is difficult to begin the world afresh"--alas! he was just about to end the world--"even with good health.