On the night of the third day of my abstinence, rendered more nervous and excitable than usual by the privation, I retired late, and later still I fell into an uneasy sleep, and thus into a dream, vivid, illuminated, more real than any event of my life.  I was at home, and fell sick.  The illness developed into a fever, and then a delirium set in, not an intellectual blank, but a misty and most delicious wandering in places of incomparable beauty.  I learned subsequently that our regular physician was not certain to finish me, when a consultation was called, which did the business.  I have the satisfaction of knowing that they were of the proper school.  I lay sick for three days.

On the morning of the fourth, at sunrise, I died.  The sensation was not unpleasant.  It was not a sudden shock.  I passed out of my body as one would walk from the door of his house.  There the body lay,—­a blank, so far as I was concerned, and only interesting to me as I was rather entertained with watching the respect paid to it.  My friends stood about the bedside, regarding me (as they seemed to suppose), while I, in a different part of the room, could hardly repress a smile at their mistake, solemnized as they were, and I too, for that matter, by my recent demise.  A sensation (the word you see is material and inappropriate) of etherealization and imponderability pervaded me, and I was not sorry to get rid of such a dull, slow mass as I now perceived myself to be, lying there on the bed.  When I speak of my death, let me be understood to say that there was no change, except that I passed out of my body and floated to the top of a bookcase in the corner of the room, from which I looked down.  For a moment I was interested to see my person from the outside, but thereafter I was quite indifferent to the body.  I was now simply soul.  I seemed to be a globe, impalpable, transparent, about six inches in diameter.  I saw and heard everything as before.  Of course, matter was no obstacle to me, and I went easily and quickly wherever I willed to go.  There was none of that tedious process of communicating my wishes to the nerves, and from them to the muscles.  I simply resolved to be at a particular place, and I was there.  It was better than the telegraph.

It seemed to have been intimated to me at my death (birth I half incline to call it) that I could remain on this earth for four weeks after my decease, during which time I could amuse myself as I chose.

I chose, in the first place, to see myself decently buried, to stay by myself to the last, and attend my own funeral for once.  As most of those referred to in this true narrative are still living, I am forbidden to indulge in personalities, nor shall I dare to say exactly how my death affected my friends, even the home circle.  Whatever others did, I sat up with myself and kept awake.  I saw the “pennies” used instead of the “quarters” which I should have preferred.  I saw myself “laid out,” a phrase that has come to have such a slang meaning that I smile as I write it.  When the body was put into the coffin, I took my place on the lid.