A more pitiable object than he, when last I saw him, just before his death, can not be imagined.

His body had swollen until it seemed marvelous that the human skin could bear so much distention without disruption, All the old look of bright intelligence had been.
driven from his face by the distortion of his features.

His swarthy hair and beard, grown long and ragged, had that peculiar repulsive look which the black hair of the sick is prone to assume.
I attributed much of my freedom from the diseases to which others succumbed to abstention from water drinking.

Long before I entered the army, I had constructed a theory--on premises that were doubtless as insufficient as those that boyish theories are usually based upon--that drinking water was a habit, and a pernicious one, which sapped away the energy.

I took some trouble to curb my appetite for water, and soon found that I got along very comfortably without drinking anything beyond that which was contained in my food.