For a number of years I was connected with the Special Police Force of the City of Pittsburg. In November, 1895, I was taken with loss of appetite. I remained four weeks in my room thinking each day that I would recover by the next. At the end of that time, I went to the Mercy Hospital and was there three weeks, having no nourishment all that time but milk.
The hospital doctors did not know what to call my trouble and neither did a number of others who were invited in to examine me, but finally decided that one of my lungs had a cavity on the inside. I had become very weak and thin, and I said to the warden one day, that I wished he would take a couple of addresses for me, as I thought I was near the finish. I closed my eyes for some time and when I opened them again the sisters and doctors were standing by my bed. I said, "Do you people know that I am dying?" One of the doctors then placed his ear to my heart and another placed his fingers on my pulse. One of the sisters asked me if I would take absolution. I said, "No, my God is all right." She said, "What kind of a God have you?" I replied that I did not give it any personal form, but that it was there in the room some place. (I never had any orthodox belief.) The doctor informed me that I had only five minutes to live and the sister added that the absolution could do me no harm, but I answered that I did not want it. I then gave her the address of one of my sisters in Wayne County, N. Y., to whom they sent word at once.
My sister came right on to Pittsburg, and when she found me still living endeavored to have them keep me until I grew stronger, but they did not wish to do so. In three or four days we started for Buffalo, where we were met by another sister, a Christian Scientist, whom I had not seen for nine years, and were taken to her home.
