little, and I begun to ‘raise.’ At night they carried me back to bed. My bed-room windows had been wide open all day, and I wouldn’t have them shut now; but in answer to their fears about the night air and catching cold, I said, ‘Give me clothes enough, and I will risk the night air——I’m going to breathe pure air the next six weeks——if I live so long.’ They all felt terribly——they thought I was shortening my life, even then——but they yielded, finally, in everything, even to not asking me ‘if I couldn’t eat a little of this, or that, if they would make it for me?’ I had replied: ‘No, when I feel like eating a piece of Graham bread or a potato, without butter or salt, I will eat something——not before.’ This had occurred in the morning, and that very night I asked for a slice of bread and ate a little bit——as big as my two fingers, perhaps. I had them put a teaspoonful of cayenne pepper[32] in a dish and turn warm water on it——a quart——and let it stand overnight, and in the morning was sponged all over in that water——the dregs turned off. I had them bathe an arm and then dry it with a coarse towel, and rub me with it as hard as I could bear (not very hard, to be sure), then a leg, and so on.[33] It seemed to give the dead skin a little life; then they carried me out to my ‘work’ again! I felt like resting after the bath, but after a while I turned over and dug a larger hole than on the day before, filled it——partly with what I raised from my lungs, and such stuff as it was! I could take longer breaths, too; and after digging a minute or so I would _have_ to stop and take a long breath, and then go on again.[34] I was thirsty a good deal, and would drink water——all I wanted. I ate a piece of stale coarse bread and some fruit that morning after I was rested from my first digging, and then I kept on resting for some hours, after which I dug a little more. In the middle of the day, when the sun came down too hot, I had an old umbrella put over me and fastened. At night a little bit of bread and a small potato: I ate as much as I could relish, but not a mouthful more. In this way I kept on, day after day, and they began to see that I was gaining. Father, who could not believe the gain was real, but rather the temporary effect of my will, yet joked me about ruining the lawn: ‘I shall have to turf it all over again, Lucia,’ said he, even before I could dig a hole large enough in a day to bury a cat in, and he tried to laugh at his little joke. I remember that I did laugh, and came near strangling in a coughing fit in consequence, but that was a help; what I _needed_ was to cough and raise the stuff up——those old ulcers that the doctor said my lungs were covered with——and I found fresh air, flavored with a little exercise, a better ‘expectorant,’ as you doctors say, than those I had been taking. I began to feel hopeful——the novelty of the idea——digging for my life! I took a desperate view of it——six weeks to live——‘I’ll die fighting,’ I said to myself.