The cook came in and together they ransacked my trunks and boxes, coolly appropriating my jewels and other articles they took a fancy to.
Imagine my feelings? Within a few feet, yet unable to prevent them.
The coffin came, I was placed in it.
They screwed the lid down.
I had no idea of time; every minute seemed a year of hideous, appalling agony.
Presently, they carried me to the hearse and put me in.
Supposing they had not been able to purchase a vault, and buried me in the ground?
How awful, if this was death, to be in the ground for eternity, and know it!
And yet, how much more horrible if I was still alive and should wake, to die that death, one of the most awful the human mind can conceive!
Again mid again I pictured to myself what I should pass through, enclosed within these narrow hoards.
How powerfully, with what concentrated efforts of my brain, I willed my limbs to move, but to no purpose!
Only my brain was alive, and in it I suffered more than the agonies of the damned.
Oh! Why had I not the power to kill my brain, and thus escape this uncertainty?
