necessary restraining force, at any time I chose to fix for carrying the purpose into execution. For the sake of the poor woman and her distressed family, I felt disposed to make one other attempt at ameliorating a grief which, however, I feared, had its cause much beyond the reach of a surgeon's knife, and fixed an hour next day for attending at the house, with a view to ascertain if any consent could be wrung from the unhappy man to allow something to be done at least for his body. I accordingly kept my appointment; but found that matters had, in the meantime, assumed a different and more serious aspect. The patient was now bound down by strong ropes, and two stout men sat beside him, ready to resist his efforts to escape, or to commit any act of violence. He had that morning jumped from his bedroom window, and flown, in a state approaching to nakedness, to the prison, situated about two miles distant, at the door of which he knelt down, and beseeched the jailor, in tones of piteous supplication, to receive him into what he called his _sanctuary_. The jailor, seeing a naked man supplicating to get _in_ to a place so generally feared and shunned, concluded he was mad, and paid little attention to his asseverations--made, as he said, before God, that he was guilty of murder, and wished to be hanged, with a view to an expiation of his crime. Having got his name, the jailor sent to his wife, and, assistance having been brought, he was carried home, crying bitterly all the way that no one would take vengeance on him, and ease the burning pangs of his mind, by punishing him according to the extent of his crime. The moment I entered, I saw, by the peculiar light and motion of his eye, that he was on the point of madness, which would likely exhibit itself in the form of a brain fever. He looked wildly at me, and, tugging at the ropes, attempted to release himself. I remember many of his expressions, which, however affecting through the ear, would appear only as rant to a reader. The supernatural strength of an access of brain fever enabled him to burst the cords; and the attendants were obliged to apply their hands to keep him down, until they could again bind him. Phrenitis, with all its horrors, had commenced. The history of a brain fever is the history of a man when he has ceased, from the very extremity of his agony, to interest feelings, which seek in vain for traces of humanity in the raving maniac; and why should I try to describe what never has been, and never will be described with any approach to the terrible truth? Heaven was at last merciful, and closed his sufferings with the seal of death. RATTLING, ROARING WILLIE.