As soon as I was able, I took up my journey homeward.
When I got to Raleigh I was so completely worn out that I dropped down in a
shoe shop and saloon, both of which were in the same compartment of a
building. That night I took the tremens. The next day my father came after
me in a spring wagon, and hauled me home. For the most part, during the two
months of which I speak, I had slept out doors, without even a dog for
company, and I contracted slight cold and fever, which terminated in an
attack of inflammatory rheumatism in my left knee. The rheumatism came on
in an instant, and without any previous warning. The first intimation I had
of it was a keen pain, such as I imagine would follow a knife if thrust
through the centre of the knee. When the doctor reached the house my knee
had swollen enormously. I was burning up with a violent fever, and was wild
with delirium. He at once blistered a hole in each side of my knee, and
applied sedatives. My suffering was literally that of the damned. I lay
upon my back for days and nights on a small lounge, without sleeping a
wink, so great was my suffering. For forty-eight hours my eyes were rolled
upward and backward in my head in a set and terrible rigidity.
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