I will now endeavor to recite some of the scenes through which I passed, that the reader may form for himself an opinion regarding my sufferings.  I left Rushville on one of my periodical sprees (I do not remember the exact time, but no matter about that, the fact is burning in my memory), and after three or four weeks of blind, insane, drunken, unpremeditated travel—­heaven only knows where—­I found myself again in Rushville, but more dead than alive.  I experienced a not unfamiliar but most strange foreboding that some terrible calamity was impending.  I was more nervous than ever before, so much so in fact that I became alarmed seriously, and called on Dr. Moffitt for medical advice.  He diagnosed my case, and informed me that my condition was dangerous, unnatural and wild.  He gave me some medicine and kindly advised me to go into his house and lie down, I remained there two days and nights, and in spite of his able treatment and constant care I grew worse.  Do you know what is meant by delirium tremens, reader?  If not, I pray God you may never know more than you may learn from these pages.  I pray God that you may never experience in any form any of the disease’s horrors.  It was this, the most terrible malady that ever tortured man, that was laying its ghastly, livid, serpentine hands upon me.  All at once, and without further warning, my reason forsook me altogether, and I started from Dr. Moffitt’s house to go to my boarding place.  The sidewalks were to me one mass of living, moving, howling, and ferocious animals.  Bears, lions, tigers, wolves, jaguars, leopards, pumas—­all wild beasts of all climes—­were frothing at the mouth around me and striving to get to me.  Recollect that while all this was hallucination, it was just as real as if it had been an undeniable and awful reality.  Above and all around me I heard screams and threatening voices.  At every step I fell over or against some furious animal.  When I finally reached the door leading to my room and just as I was about to enter, a human corpse sprang into the doorway.  It had motion, but I knew that it was a tenant of that dark and windowless abode, the grave.  It opened full upon me its dull, glassy, lustreless eyes; stark, cold, and hideous it stood before me.  It lifted a stiffened arm and struck me a blow in the face with its icy and almost fleshless hand from which reptiles fell and writhed at my feet.  I turned to rush into another room, but the door was bolted.  I then thought for a second that I was dreaming, and I awoke and laughed a wild laugh, which ended in a shriek, for I knew that I was awake.  I turned again toward my own door, and the form had vanished.  I jumped into my room and tore off my clothes, but as I threw aside my garments, each separate piece turned into something miscreated and horrible, with fiendish and burning eyes, that caused my own to start from their sockets.  My room was filled with menacing voices, and just then a mighty wind rushed past my window, and out of the wind came cries, and lamentations, and curses, which took shapes unearthly, and ranged about the bed on which I lay shuddering.  Die! die! die! they shrieked.  I was commanded to hold my breath, and they threatened horrors unimaginable if I did not obey.