There are three wicks, you know, to the lamp of a man’s life:  brain, blood, and breath.  Press the brain a little, its light goes out, followed by both the others.  Stop the heart a minute and out go all three of the wicks.  Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centres of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness.  The “tripod of life” a French physiologist called these three organs.  It is all clear enough which leg of the tripod is going to break down here.  I could tell you exactly what the difficulty is;—­which would be as intelligible and amusing as a watchmaker’s description of a diseased timekeeper to a ploughman.  It is enough to say, that I found just what I expected to, and that I think this attack is only the prelude of more serious consequences,—­which expression means you very well know what.

And now the secrets of this life hanging on a thread must surely come out.  If I have made a mystery where there was none, my suspicions will be shamed, as they have often been before.  If there is anything strange, my visits will clear it up.

I sat an hour or two by the side of the Little Gentleman’s bed, after giving him some henbane to quiet his brain, and some foxglove, which an imaginative French professor has called the “Opium of the Heart.”  Under their influence he gradually fell into an uneasy, half-waking slumber, the body fighting hard for every breath, and the mind wandering off in strange fancies and old recollections, which escaped from his lips in broken sentences.

—­The last of ’em,—­he said,—­the last of ’em all,—­thank God!  And the grave he lies in will look just as well as if he had been straight.  Dig it deep, old Martin, dig it deep,—­and let it be as long as other folks’ graves.  And mind you get the sods flat, old man,—­flat as ever a straight-backed young fellow was laid under.  And then, with a good tall slab at the head, and a foot-stone six foot away from it, it’ll look just as if there was a man underneath.

A man!  Who said he was a man?  No more men of that pattern to bear his name!—­Used to be a good-looking set enough.—­Where ’s all the manhood and womanhood gone to since his great-grandfather was the strongest man that sailed out of the town of Boston, and poor Leah there the handsomest woman in Essex, if she was a witch?

—­Give me some light,—­he said,—­more light.  I want to see the picture.

He had started either from a dream or a wandering reverie.  I was not unwilling to have more light in the apartment, and presently had lighted an astral lamp that stood on a table.—­He pointed to a portrait hanging against the wall.—­Look at her,—­he said,—­look at her!  Wasn’t that a pretty neck to slip a hangman’s noose over?