No doctor had been called in.
And I might well have died there, for Nelson and the others, deeming me merely "sleeping off my drunk," had let me lie there in a comatose condition for seventeen hours.

Many a man, as every doctor knows, has died of the sudden impact of a quart or more of whisky.

Usually one reads of them so dying, strong drinkers, on account of a wager.

But I didn't know--then.

And so I learned; and by no virtue nor prowess, but simply through good fortune and constitution.