Soon my disordered brain was busy with schemes for death.  I distinctly remember one which included a row on Lake Whitney, near New Haven.  This I intended to take in the most unstable boat obtainable.  Such a craft could be easily upset, and I should so bequeath to relatives and friends a sufficient number of reasonable doubts to rob my death of the usual stigma.  I also remember searching for some deadly drug which I hoped to find about the house.  But the quantity and quality of what I found were not such as I dared to trust.  I then thought of severing my jugular vein, even going so far as to test against my throat the edge of a razor which, after the deadly impulse first asserted itself, I had secreted in a convenient place.  I really wished to die, but so uncertain and ghastly a method did not appeal to me.  Nevertheless, had I felt sure that in my tremulous frenzy I could accomplish the act with skilful dispatch, I should at once have ended my troubles.

My imaginary attacks were now recurring with distracting frequency, and I was in constant fear of discovery.  During these three or four days I slept scarcely at all—­even the medicine given to induce sleep having little effect.  Though inwardly frenzied, I gave no outward sign of my condition.  Most of the time I remained quietly in bed.  I spoke but seldom.  I had practically, though not entirely, lost the power of speech; but my almost unbroken silence aroused no suspicions as to the seriousness of my condition.

By a process of elimination, all suicidal methods but one had at last been put aside.  On that one my mind now centred.  My room was on the fourth floor of the house—­one of a block of five—­in which my parents lived.  The house stood several feet back from the street.  The sills of my windows were a little more than thirty feet above the ground.  Under one was a flag pavement, extending from the house to the front gate.  Under the other was a rectangular coal-hole covered with an iron grating.  This was surrounded by flagging over a foot in width; and connecting it and the pavement proper was another flag.  So that all along the front of the house, stone or iron filled a space at no point less than two feet in width.  It required little calculation to determine how slight the chance of surviving a fall from either of those windows.

About dawn I arose.  Stealthily I approached a window, pushed open the blinds, and looked out—­and down.  Then I closed the blinds as noiselessly as possible and crept back to bed:  I had not yet become so irresponsible that I dared to take the leap.  Scarcely had I pulled up the covering when a watchful relative entered my room, drawn thither perhaps by that protecting prescience which love inspires.  I thought her words revealed a suspicion that she had heard me at the window, but speechless as I was I had enough speech to deceive her.  For of what account are Truth and Love when Life itself has ceased to seem desirable?