SHEPPARD LEE. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. "Let
those shine now that never shone before,
And those that always
shone now shine the more."
The miser’s children...
Page 3
The fate of the
firstborn... 15
The catastrophe of a
tragedy often performed on the great stage of life... 18
In which it is shown
that a man may be more useful after death than while living... 24
Sheppard Lee’s search
for a body.--An uncommon incident 28
In which the Author
makes the acquaintance of a philanthropist... 36
Containing an affecting
adventure with a victim of the law 44
In which the plot
thickens, and the tragedy grows deeper 50
The philanthropist’s
family... Page 56
Some account of the
worthy Abel Snipe... 66
In which the young man
Jonathan argues several cases of conscience, which are recommended to be
brought before Yearly Meeting... 69
Containing little or
nothing save apostrophes, exhortations, and quarrels... 76
Which is short and
moral, and can therefore be skipped 80
An inconvenience of
being in another man’s body, when called upon to give evidence as to one’s own
exit.. 82
The sorrows of a
philanthropist... 86
The same subject
continued... 93
Containing a
difficulty... 100
In what manner Mr.
Zachariah Longstraw determined to improve his fortune... 105
In which a catastrophe
begins... 110
In which the
catastrophe is continued... Page 114
The denouement of the
drams... 119
A remark, in which the
Author appears as a politician, and abuses both parties... 127
An uncommon adventure
that befell the Author.. 129
In which Sheppard Lee
takes a journey, and discovers the secret object of his captors... 133
Containing other
secrets, but not so important.. 138
In which the Author
approaches a climax in his adventures 144
Containing a specimen
of eloquence, with some account of the dangers of Lynchdom... 149
In which Sheppard Lee
reaches the darkest period of his existence... 153
In which Sheppard Lee
finds every thing black about him 157
In which Sheppard Lee
is introduced to his master. 161
An old woman’s cure for
a disease extremely prevalent both in the coloured and uncoloured creation...
Page 164
Some account of
Ridgewood Hill, and the Author’s occupations... 166
In which the Author
further describes his situation, and philosophizes on the state of slavery...
169
Recollections of
slavery... 175
A scene on the banks of
the Potomac, with the humours of an African improvisatore... 178
The Author descends
among the slaves, and suddenly becomes a man of figure, and an interpreter of
new doctrines. 181
What it was the negroes
had discovered among the scantling 185
The effect of the
pamphlet on its reader and hearers. 189
The hatching of a
conspiracy... 194
How the spoils of
victory were intended to be divided. 196
The attack of the
insurgents upon the mansion at Ridgewood Hill... 200
The tragical
occurrences that followed... 204
The results of the
insurrection, with a truly strange and fatal catastrophe that befell the
Author... Page 208
In which it is related
what became of the Author after being hanged... 211
CHAPTER I. Containing
an inkling of the life and habits of Mr. Arthur Megrim... 217
CHAPTER II. The happy
condition in which Sheppard Lee is at last placed 222
CHAPTER III. The
employments of a young gentleman of fortune. 227
CHAPTER IV. Some
account of the inconveniences of having a digestive apparatus... 230
CHAPTER V. The same
subject continued, with an account of several surprising transformations... 235
CHAPTER VI. An account
of the woes of an Emperor of France, which have never before appeared in
history... 238
CHAPTER VII. In which
Sheppard Lee is convinced that all is not gold which glistens... 241
CHAPTER VIII. In which
the Author stumbles upon an old acquaintance 244
CHAPTER IX. Containing
an account of the wonderful discoveries of the German doctor... Page 248
CHAPTER X. Containing a
more wonderful discovery on the part of Sheppard Lee, with perhaps the most
surprising adventure that ever befell him... 252
CHAPTER I. Sheppard Lee
flies from the German doctor, and finds himself again in New-Jersey... 258
CHAPTER II. What had
happened at Watermelon Hill during the Author’s absence... 262
CHAPTER III. Containing
the substance of a singular debate betwixt the Author and his brother, with a
philosophic defence of the Author’s credibility... 267
CHAPTER IV. Being the
last chapter of all... 275
It will scarcely be
supposed that, with the passion of covetousness gnawing at my heart, I had
space or convenience for any other feeling. But Abram Skinner had loved his
children; and to this passion I was introduced, as well as to the other. At
first I was surprised that I should bestow the least regard upon them, seeing
that they were no children of mine. I endeavoured to shake off the feeling of
attachment, as an absurdity, but could not; in spite of myself, I found my
spirit yearning towards them; and by-and-by, having lost my identity entirely,
I could scarcely, even when I made the effort, recall the consciousness that I
was not their parent in reality.
Indeed, the
transformation that had now occurred to my spirit was more thorough than it had
been in either previous instance; I could scarce convince myself I had not been
born the being I represented; my past existence began to appear to my
reflections only as some idle dream, that the fever of sickness had brought
upon my mind; and I forgot that I was, or had been, Sheppard Lee.
Yes, reader, I was now
Abram Skinner in all respects, and I loved his children, as he had done before
me. In entering his body, I became, as I have mentioned repeatedly before, the
subject of every peculiarity of being that marked the original possessor:
without which, indeed, the great experiment my destiny permitted me to make of
the comparative good and evil of different spheres of existence, must have been
made in vain. What my prototype hated I was enforced to hate; what he loved I
found myself compelled in like manner to love. While moving in the bodies of
John H. Higginson and I. D. Dawkins, I do not remember that I experienced any
affection for anybody; which happened, doubtless, because these individuals
confined their affections to their own persons. Abram Skinner, on the contrary,
loved his children; which I suppose was owing to their being the worst children
that ever tormented a parent. He loved them, and so did I; he pondered with
bitterness over the ingratitude of their tempers, and the profligacy of their
lives, and I--despite all my attempts to the contrary--did the same. I forgot,
at last, that I was not their parent, and my feelings showed me that I was; and
I found in the anguish that attacked my spirit, when I thought of them, one of
the modes in which Heaven visits with retribution the worshipper of the false
god of the country. When the votary of Mammon has propitiated his deity, let him
count the children he has sacrificed upon his altar. Avarice, as well as wrath,
sows the storm only to reap the whirlwind.
I am growing serious
upon this subject, but I cannot help it. This portion of my history dwells on
my remembrance with gloom; it keeps me moralizing over the career of my
neighbours. When I see or hear of a man who is bending all his energies to the
acquisition of a fortune, and is already the master of his thousands, I ask, “What
has become of his sons?” or, “What will become of them?”
With the affection for
the children of Abram Skinner that took possession of my mind, came also a
persuasion, exceedingly painful, that they were a triad of graceless,
ungrateful reprobates; and, what was worse, there was something whispered
within me that much, if not all, the evil of their lives and natures, was owing
to the neglect in which their parent, while engrossed with the high thought of
heaping up money, had allowed them to grow up. The consequences of this neglect
I felt as if it had been my own act.
The first pang was
inflicted by the girl Alicia, and I felt it keenly--not, indeed, that I had any
particular parental affection for her, as doubtless I should have had, had she
not run away so opportunely. On the contrary, a vague recollection of my amour,
and the inconstancy of her temper, caused my feelings in relation to her to
assume a very peculiar hue; so that I regarded her with sentiments due as much
to the jilted lover as the injured father. But what chiefly afflicted me was
the hint she had given in the postscript of her letter, warning me of the fatal
call to be made upon me, within two months’ space, to render up an account of
my guardianship, and surrender into the hands of that detestable Sammy Wilkins,
my late cousin, the rich legacy of her aunt Sally, which, being chiefly in real
estate, I--or rather my prototype before me--had, without anticipating such a
catastrophe, managed so prudently that it was now worth more than double its
original value. The thought filled me with such rage and phrensy, that, had she
been twice my daughter, I should have rewarded her with execrations.
My quondam uncle, Mr.
Samuel Wilkins of Wilkinsbury Hall, who, it seems, received the girl as well as
he afterward did his daughter’s husband, thought fit to pay me a visit, a week
after my transformation, to confer with me on the subject; and receiving no
satisfaction, for I was in a rage and refused to see him, sent me divers notes,
proposing a reconciliation betwixt myself and his daughter-in-law; and these
being cast into the fire, I received, in course of time, a letter from his
lawyer, or his son Sammy’s, in which I was politely asked what were my
intentions in relation to settlement, and so forth, and so forth.
I received letters from
the damsel also, but they went into the fire like the others; and my rage
waxing higher and higher as the time of settlement drew nigh, I set myself to
work to frame such a guardian’s account as would materially lessen the amount
of my losses.
But all was in vain;
the married Alicia was at last of age, and all I could do was to fling the
matter into the lawyers’ hands, so as to keep the money, the dear money, in my
own as long as possible.
My reader may think
this was not a very handsome or reputable way of treating a daughter; but he
must recollect I was in Abram Skinner’s body. The matter was still in suit when
I departed from my borrowed flesh; but I have no doubt the execrable Samuel
Wilkins, Jr. got possession of the legacy, as well as ten times as much to the
back of it.
But this, great as was
the anguish the evil inflicted, was nothing to the pangs I suffered on account
of the two boys, Ralph and Abbot. On these I showered--not openly, indeed, for
I was crabbed enough of temper, but in my secret heart--all the affection such
a parent could feel. But I showered it in vain; the seeds of evil example and
neglect had taken root; the prospect of wealth had long since turned brains
untempered by education and moral culture, and the parsimony of their parent
only drove them into profligacy of a more demoralizing species; they were
ruined in morals, in prospects, and in reputation; and while yet upon the
threshold of manhood, they presented upon their brows the stamp of degradation
and the warrant of untimely graves.
The younger, Abbot, had
evidently been a favourite from his childhood up, his temper being fierce and
imperious, yet with an occasional dash of amiableness, that showed what his
disposition might have been, if regulated by a careful and conscientious
parent. He possessed a fine figure, of which he was vain; and being of a gay
and convivial turn, there was the stronger propensity to dissipation, and
greater fear of the consequences. These were now lamentable enough; he was
already beyond redemption--a sot, and almost a madman.
The elder brother was a
young man, to all appearance, of a saturnine mood and staid habits; but this
was in appearance only. He was the associate of the junior in all his scenes of
frolic, and an actor in others of which, perhaps, Abbot never dreamed. A strong
head and a spirit of craft enabled him to conceal the effect of excesses which
sent his brother home reeling and raging with drunkenness. I knew his habits
well; and I knew that, besides being in a fairer way to the grave--if not to
the gallows--he was a hypocrite of the worst order; his gravity being put on to
cover a temper both fiery and malicious, and his apparent correctness of habits
being the mere cover to the most scandalous irregularities. He was a creature
all of duplicity, and wo to the father who made him such!
The scene in the dying
chamber of their father they never forgot, though, perhaps, I might have done
so. It drove the younger from all attempts at pretended regard or concealment
of his profligacy, and was, I believe, the cause of his final ruin. He
absconded, out of mere shame, for a week, and then returned to put a bold or
indifferent face upon the matter, and to show himself as regardless of respect
as restraint.
The other, after
concealing himself in like manner for a few days, came to me, apparently in
great contrition of spirit, and almost persuaded me that his brutal conduct on
that eventful evening arose rather from grief than joy. He had been so much
affected by my death, he assured me, as scarce to know what he did when
swallowing a glass of brandy his brother gave him; that, he declared with half
a dozen tears, had set him crazy, and he knew not what he had done--only he
recollected something about going to the chamber, where, he believed, he had
behaved very badly; for which he begged my forgiveness, and hoped I would not
think his conduct was owing to any want of affecttion.
I had proof enough that
the villain was telling me falsehoods, and I knew that if either should, in a
moment of soberness and compunction, breathe a single sigh over my death-bed,
he was not the one. In truth, they were both bad; both, perhaps, irreclaimable;
but while the conduct of Abbot gave me most pain, that of Ralph filled me with
constant terror. Nothing but the daily excitement of speculation and gain could
have made tolerable an existence cursed by incessant griefs and forebodings.
It may be supposed that
I frequently took the young men to task for their excesses. I might as well
have scolded the winds for blowing, or the waters for running. It is true that
Ralph heard me commonly with great patience, and sometimes with apparent
contrition; but at times a scowl came over his dark features that frightened me
into silence; and once, giving way to his fierce temper, he told me that if
there was any thing amiss or disreputable in his conduct, it was the
consequence of mine; that I, instead of granting him the means for reasonable
indulgence, and elevating him to the station among honourable and worthy men to
which my wealth gave him a claim, and which he had a right to expect of me, had
kept him in a state of need and vassalage intolerable to any one of his age and
spirit.
As for Abbot, this kind
of recrimination was a daily thing with him. I scarce ever saw him except when
inflamed with drink; and on such occasions he was wont to demand money, which
being denied, he would give way to passion, and load me with reproaches still
more bitter of spirit and violent of expression than those uttered by Ralph.
Nay, upon my charging him with being an abandoned profligate and ruined man, he
admitted the fact, and swore that I was the author of his destruction; that my
niggardliness had deprived him of the opportunities that gave other young men
professions and independence; that I had brought him up in idleness and
ignorance, and, by still refusing him his rights, was consigning him to infamy
and an early grave.
Such controversies
between us were common, and perhaps expedited the fate that was in store for
him, as well as his brother. I thought in my folly to punish, and at the same
time check his excesses, by denying him all supplies of money, and by refusing
to pay a single debt he contracted. A deep gloom suddenly invested him; he
ceased to return home intoxicated, but stalked into and out of the house like a
spectre, without bestowing any notice upon me. The change frighted me; and, in
alarm lest the difficulties under which he might be placed were driving him to
desperation, I followed him to his chamber, with almost the resolution to
relieve his wants, let them be what they might.
The absence of
intoxication for several days in succession had induced me to hope he had
broken through the accursed bondage of drink, were it only from rage and shame.
But I was fatally mistaken. As I entered the apartment I saw him place upon the
table a large case-bottle of brandy, which he had just taken from a buffet. He
looked over his shoulder as I stepped in, and, without regarding me, proceeded
to pour a large draught into a tumbler. His hand was tremulous, and, indeed,
shook so much, that the liquor was spilt in the operation. I was shocked at the
sight, and struck dumb; seeing which he laughed, with what seemed to me as much
triumph as derision, and said, “You see! This is the way we go it. Your health,
father. Come, help yourself; don’t stand on ceremony.”
“I, Abbot!” said I, as
he swallowed the vile potion; “have you neither respect nor shame? I never
drank such poison in my life!”
“The more is the pity,”
muttered the young man, but rather as if speaking to himself than me; “I should
have had the sooner and freer swing of it.”
“You mean if it had
killed me, as it is killing you,” said I, pierced by the heartlessness of his
expression. “Oh, Abbot! a judgment will come upon you yet!”
He stared me in the
face, but without making a reply. Then pushing a chair towards me, he sat down
himself, and deliberately filled his glass a second time.
“Abbot! for Heaven’s
sake,” said I, wringing my very hands in despair, “what will tempt you to quit
this horrid practice?”
“Nothing,” said he; “you
have asked the question a month too late. Look,” he continued, pointing my
attention again to his hand, shaking, as it held the bottle, as if under the
palsy of age; “do you know what that means?”
“What does it mean?”
said I, so confounded by the sight and his stolid merriment (for he laughed again
while exposing the fruit of his degrading habit) that I scarce knew what I
said.
“It means,” said he, “that
death is coming, to make equitable division betwixt Ralph and Alicia-- unless
the devil, after all, should carry them off before me; in which case you can
build an hospital with your money.”
He swallowed the
draught, and then, leaning on the table, buried his face between his hands.
The sarcasm was not
lost upon me, and the idea that he was about to become the victim of a passion
from which he might be wrested by a sacrifice on my part, greatly excited my
feelings.
“I will do any thing,”
said I; “what shall I do to save you? Oh, Abbot! can you not refrain from this
dreadful indulgence? What shall I do?”
He leaped upon his
feet, and eyed me with a look full of wildness.
“Pay my debts,” he
cried; “pay my debts, and make me independent; and I--I’ll try.”
“And what,” said I,
trembling with fear, “what sum will pay your debts?”
“Twenty
thousand--perhaps,” said he.
“Twenty thousand! what!
twenty thousand dollars!” cried I, lost in confusion.
“You won’t, then?” said
the reprobate.
“Not a cent!” cried I,
in a fury. “How came you to owe such a sum? Do you think I will believe you?
How could you incur such a debt? What have you been doing?”
“Gambling, drinking,
and so forth, and so forth, twenty times over.”
He snatched up the
bottle, and, locking it in the buffet, deposited the key in his pocket. Then
seizing upon his hat, and stepping to where I stood, transfixed with grief and
indignation, he said,--
“You won’t take the
bargain, then?”
“Not a dollar, not a
dime, not a cent!” said I.
“Not even to save my
life, father?”
“Not a dollar, not a
dime, not a cent!” I reiterated, incapable of saying another word.
“Farewell then,” said
he, “and good luck to you! It is a declaration of war, and now I’ll keep no terms
with you.”
Then giving me a look
that froze my blood, it was so furiously hostile and vindictive, he struck his
hands together, rushed from the house, and I saw him no more for nearly a
fortnight. I saw him no more, as I said; but coming home the following evening
from the club, I found my strong-box broken open and rifled of the money that I
left in it.
The sum was indeed but
small, but the robbery had been perpetrated by my own son; and the reader, if
he be a father, will judge what effect this discovery produced upon my mind. In
good truth, I felt now that I was the most wretched of human beings, and was
reduced nearly to distraction.
But this blow was but a
buffet with the hand, compared with the thunder-bolt that fate was preparing to
launch against my bosom. I cursed my miserable lot; yet it wanted one more
stroke of misfortune to sever the chain with which avarice still bound me to my
condition.
On the eleventh day
after the flight of Abbot, whom all my inquiries failed to discover, as I was
walking towards the exchange, torn by my domestic woes, and by a threatened
convulsion in stocks, which concerned me very nearly, I met one of my
companions of the club, who, noting my disturbed countenance, drew me aside,
and told me he was sorry I had got my foot into the fire; but the club had last
night taken the matter into consideration, and agreed to stand by me, if it
were possible.
All this was heathen
Greek to me; and I told my friend I was in no trouble I knew of, and wanted no
countenance from anybody.
“I am very glad to hear
it,” said he; “but what are you doing with so much paper in the market? That’s
no good sign, you’ll allow!”
I started aghast, and
he proceeded to inform me that he had himself seen two of my notes for
considerable amounts, and had heard of others; and, finally, that he had just,
parted with the president (an intimate friend of his) of a bank not a furlong
off, who had asked divers questions as to the state of my affairs, and admitted
there was paper of mine at that moment in the bank.
I was seized with
consternation, assured him all such notes must be forgeries; and running with
him to the bank, demanded to see any paper they had with my name to it. They
produced two different notes for large amounts, which I instantly declared to
be counterfeit; and then ran in search of others.
The hubbub created by
this declaration was great, but the tumult in my mind was greater. A horrid
suspicion as to the author of the forgeries entered my soul, and I became so
deadly sick as to be unable to prosecute the inquisition further. My friend
deposited me in a coach, and I was carried to my home, but in a condition more
dead than alive. My suspicions were in a few hours dreadfully confirmed by my
friend, who returned with the intelligence which he had acquired. The forger
was discovered and arrested--it was the elder brother, Ralph Skinner.
Words cannot paint the
agony with which I flew to the magistrate’s office, and beheld the unfortunate
youth in the hands of justice; but what was my horror to discover the extent
and multiplicity of his frauds. The number of forgeries he had committed in his
parent’s name was indeed enormous; and it seems he had committed them with the
intention of flying; for many of his guilty gains were found secreted on his
person. But even after so much had been recovered, the residue to be refunded
was appalling. The thought of making restitution drove me almost to a phrensy,
while the idea of seeing him carried to jail, to meet the doom of a felon, was
equally distracting. My misery was read on my face; and some one present,
perhaps with a motive of humanity, cried out,
“Why persecute the
young man? Here is his father, who acknowledges the notes to be genuine.”
“Ah,” said the
magistrate, “does he so? Why, then we have had much foolish trouble for
nothing.”
I looked at the amount
of the forgeries, a list of which some one put into my hands.
“It is false,” I cried;
“I will not pay a cent!”
I cast my eyes upon
Ralph. He reached over a table behind which he stood, and waved his hand to and
fro, as if, had he been nigh enough, he would have buffeted me on the face. His
look was that of a demon, and he spat the foam from his lips, as if to testify
the extremity of hatred.
“Let him go,” I cried; “I
will pay it all!”
“You can undoubtedly do
so, if you will,” said the magistrate, who had marked the malice that beamed
from the visage of the young man; “but do not dream that that will discharge
the prisoner from arrest, or from the necessity of answering the felony of
which he now stands accused, before a court and jury. The extent of the
forgeries, and the temper displayed by the accused, are such, that he must and
shall abide the fruits of his delinquency. He stands committed--officer, remove
him.”
I heard no more; my
brain spun round and round, and I was again carried insensible to my miserable
dwelling.
It may be supposed that
the misery now weighing me to the earth was as much as could be imposed upon
me; but I was destined to find, and that before the night was over, that misery
is only comparative, and that there is no affliction so positively great that
greater may not be experienced. In the dead of the night, when my woes had at
last been drowned in slumber, I was roused by feeling a hand pressing upon my
bosom; and, starting up, I saw, for there was a taper burning on a table hard
by, a man standing over me, holding a pillow in his hand, which, the moment I
caught sight of him, he thrust into my face, and there endeavoured to hold it,
as if to suffocate me.
The horror of death
endowed me with a strength not my own, and the ruffian held the pillow with a
feeble and trembling arm. I dashed it aside, leaped up in the bed, and beheld
in the countenance of the murderer the features of the long missing and
abandoned son, Abbot Skinner.
His face was white and
chalky, with livid stains around the eyes and mouth, the former of which were
staring out of their orbits in a manner ghastly to behold, while his lips were
drawn asunder and away from his teeth, as in the face of a mummy. He looked as
if horror-struck at the act he was attempting; and yet there was something
devilish and determined in his air, that increased my terror to ecstasy. I
sprang from the bed, threw myself on the floor, and, grasping his knees,
besought him to spare my life. There seemed indeed occasion for all my
supplications: his bloated and altered visage, the neglected appearance of his
garments and person, and a thousand other signs, showed that the whole period
of his absence had been passed in excessive toping, and the murderous and
unnatural act which he meditated manifested to what a pitch of phrensy he had
brought himself by the indulgence.
As I grasped his knees,
he put his hand into his bosom, and drew out a poniard, a weapon I had never
before known him to carry; at the sight of which I considered myself a dead
man. But the love of life still prevailing, I leaped up, and ran to a corner of
the room, where I mingled adjurations and entreaties with loud screams for
assistance. He stood as if rooted to the spot for a moment; then dropping his
horrid weapon, he advanced a few paces, clasped his hands together, fell upon
his knees, and burst into tears, and all the while without having uttered a
single word. But now, my cries still continuing, he exclaimed, but with a most
wild and disturbed look--“Father, I won’t hurt you, and pray don’t hurt me!”
By this time the
housekeeper Barbara, having been alarmed by my outcries, came into the chamber;
and her presence relieving me of the immediate fear of death, I gave vent to
the horror that his unnatural attempt on my life justly excited, and thus made
the woman acquainted with his baseness.
The poor old creature,
who had always loved him, was greatly affected, especially when, in reply to my
reproaches, he began to talk incoherently, admitting the fact, one instant
attempting to justify it by preferring some strange and incoherent complaint,
and the next assuring me, in the most piteous manner, that he would do me no
harm. To Barbara’s upbraidings he replied with a like inconsistency; and when
she reproached him for meditating violence at such a moment, while I was
mourning the baseness of his brother, he paid little attention to what she
said, seeming not only ignorant of Ralph’s delinquency, but apparently
indifferent to it.
For this reason I began
to fear his brain was touched; of which, indeed, I had soon the most fatal
proof; for Barbara, having led him to his chamber, came back, assuring me that
he was going mad, that his mind was already in a ferment, and, in a word, that
that horrible distraction which sooner or later overtakes the confirmed
drinker, was lighting the torch in his brain that could only go out with life
itself. A physician was sent for: our fears were but too just, and before dawn
the miserable youth was raving distracted.
The day that followed
was one of distraction, not only to the wretched Abbot, but to myself; and I
remember it as a confused dream. The only thing that dwells on my recollection,
apart from the outcries in Abbot’s chamber and the tumult in my own heart, is,
that some one who owed me a sum of money, due that day, came and paid it into
my hands with great punctiliousness, and that I received and wrote the
acquittance for it with as much accuracy as if nothing were the matter, though
my thoughts were far from the subject before me.
At eleven o’clock at
night a messenger came to me from the prison, and his news was indeed
frightful. The wretched Ralph had just been discovered with his throat cut from
ear to ear, having made way with himself in despair.
A few moments after I
was summoned to the death-bed of his brother.
I shall never forget
the horror of that young man’s dissolution. He lay, at times, the picture of
terror, gazing upon the walls, along which, in his imagination, crept myriads
of loathsome reptiles, with now some frightful monster, and now a fire-lipped
demon, stealing out of the shadows and preparing to dart upon him as their
prey. Now he would whine and weep, as if asking forgiveness for some act of
wrong done to the being man is most constant to wrong--the loving, the feeble,
the confiding; and anon, seized by a tempest of passion, the cause of which
could only be imagined, he would start up, fight, foam at the mouth, and fall
back in convulsions. Once he sat up in bed, and, looking like a corpse, began
to sing a bacchanalian song; on another occasion, after lying for many minutes
in apparent stupefaction, he leaped out of bed before he could be prevented,
and, uttering a yell that was heard in the street, endeavoured to throw himself
from the window.
But the last raving act
of all was the most horrid. He rose upon his knees with a strength that could
not be resisted, caught up his pillow, thrust it down upon the bed with both
hands, and there held it, with a grim countenance and a chuckling laugh. None
understood the act but myself: no other could read the devilish thoughts then
at work in his bosom. It was the scene enacted in the chamber of his parent--he
was repeating the deed of murder--he was exulting, in imagination, over a
successful parricide.
In this thought he
expired; for while still pressing upon the pillow with a giant’s strength, he
suddenly fell on his face, and when turned over was a corpse. He gave but a
single gasp, and was no more.
The horror of the
spectacle drove me from the chamber, and I ran to my own to fall down and die;
when the blessed thought entered my mind, that the wo on my spirit, the
anguish, the distraction, were but a dream--that my very existence, as the
miser and broken-hearted father, was a phantasm rather than a reality, since it
was a borrowed existence--and that it was in my power to exchange it, as I had
done other modes of being, for a better. I was Sheppard Lee, not Abram Skinner;
and this was but a voluntary episode in my existence, which I was at liberty to
terminate.
The thought was
rapture. I resolved to sally out and fasten upon the first body I could find,
being certain I could be in none so miserable as I had been in that I now
inhabited. Nay, the idea was so agreeable, the execution of it seemed to
promise such certain release from a load of wretchedness, that I resolved to
attempt it without even waiting for morning.
I seized upon my hat
and cloak, and, for fear I might stumble into some poor man’s body, as I had
done in the case of Dawkins’s, I opened my strong-box, and clapped into my pockets
all the money it contained, designing to take precautionary measures to
transfer it along with my spirit to the new tenement. I seized upon the loaned
money that had been repaid that day, together with a small sum that had been in
the box before; and, had there been a million in the coffer, I should have
nabbed it all, without much question of the right I actually possessed in it.
The whole sum was small, not exceeding four hundred dollars, all being in
bank-bills. I should have been glad of more, but was too eager to exchange my
vile casing, with its miseries, for a better, to think of waiting till
bank-hours next day.
Taking possession,
therefore, of this sum, and a dozen silver spoons that had been left in pledge
a few days before, I hastened to put my plan into execution. I slipped down
stairs, let myself out of the door as softly as if I had been an intruder, and
set out, in a night of February, to search for a new body.
The reflection that I
possessed the power (already thrice successfully exercised) to transfer my
spirit, whenever I willed it, from one man’s body to another, and so get rid of
any afflictions that might beset me, was highly agreeable, and, under the
present circumstances, consolatory. But there was one drawback to my
satisfaction; and that was a discovery which I now made, that men’s bodies were
not to be had every day, at a moment’s warning. This was the more provoking, as
I knew there was no lack of them in the world, between eighty and ninety
thousand men, women, and children having given up the ghost in the natural way
that very day, whose corses would be on the morrow consigned to miserable holes
in the earth, where they could and would be of no service to any person or
persons whatever, the young doctors only excepted.
And here I cannot help
observing, that it is an extremely absurd practice thus to dispose of--to
squander and throw away, as I may call it--the hosts of human bodies that are
annually falling dead upon our hands; whereas, with the least management in the
world, they might be converted into objects of great usefulness and value.
According to the
computation of philosophers, the population of the world may be reckoned in
round numbers at just one thousand millions; of which number the annual
mortality, at the low rate of three in a hundred, is thirty millions--and that
without counting the extra million or two knocked on the head in the wars. Let
us see what benefit might be derived from a judicious disposition of this
mountain of mortality--I say mountain, for it is plain such a number of bodies
heaped together would make a Chimborazo. The great mass of mankind might be
made to subserve the purpose for which nature designed them, namely--to enrich
the soil from which they draw their sustenance. According to the economical
Chinese method, each of these bodies could be converted into five tons of
excellent manure; and the whole number would therefore produce just one hundred
and fifty millions of tons; of which one hundred and fifty thousand, being
their due proportion, would fall to the share of the United States of America,
enabling our farmers, in the course of ten or twelve years, to double the value
of their lands. This, therefore, would be a highly profitable way of disposing
of the mass of mankind. Such a disposition of their bodies would prove
especially advantageous among American cultivators in divers districts, as a
remedy against bad agriculture, and as the only means of handing down their
fields in good order to their descendants. Such a disposition of bodies should
be made upon every field of victory, so that dead heroes might be made to
repair some of the mischiefs inflicted by live ones. The English farmers, it is
well known, made good use of the bones left on the field of Waterloo; and
though they would have done much better had they carried off the flesh with
them, they did enough to show that war may be reckoned a good as well as an
evil, and a great battle looked upon as a public blessing. A similar
disposition (to continue the subject) of their mortal flesh might be, with
great propriety, required, in this land, of all politicians and office-holders,
from the vice-president down to the county collector; who, being all patriots,
would doubtless consent to a measure that would make them of some use to their
country. As for the president, we would have him reserved for a nobler purpose;
we would have him boiled down to soap, according to the plan recommended by the
French chymists, to be used by his successor in scouring the constitution and
the minds of the people.
In this manner, I
repeat, the great bulk of human bodies could be profitably appropriated; but
other methods should be taken with particular classes of men, who might claim a
more distinguished and canonical disposition of their bodies. The rich and
tender would esteem it a cruelty to be disposed of in the same way with the
multitude. I would advise, therefore, that their bodies should be converted into
adipocire, or spermaceti, to be made into candles, to be burnt at the tops of
the lamp-posts; whereby those who never shone in life might scintillate as the
lights of the public for a week or two after. Their bones might be made into
rings and whistles, for infant democrats to cut their teeth on.
The French and Italian
philosophers, as I have learned from the newspapers, have made sundry strange,
and, as I think, useful discoveries, in relation to the practicability of
converting the human body into different mineral substances. One man changes
his neighbour’s bones into fine glass; a second turns the blood into iron;
while a third, more successful still, transforms the whole body into stone. If
these things be true, and I have no reason to doubt them, seeing that I found
them, as I said before, in the newspapers, they offer us new modes of
appropriation, applicable to the bodies of other interesting classes. Lovers
might thus be converted into jewels, which, although false, could be worn with
less fear of losing them than happens with living inamoratos; or, in case of
extreme grief on the part of the survivers, into looking-glasses, where the
mourners would find a solace in the contemplation of their own features. The
second process, namely, the conversion of blood into iron, would be peculiarly
applicable in the case of soldiers too distinguished to be cast into
corn-fields; and, indeed, nothing could be more natural than that those whose
blood we buy with gold, should pay us back our change in iron. The last
discovery could be turned to equal profit, and would do away with the necessity
of employing statuaries in all cases where their services are now required. But
I would confine the process of petrifaction to those in whom Nature had
indicated its propriety by beginning the process herself. None could with
greater justice claim to have their bodies turned into stone, than those whose
hearts were of the same material; and I should propose, accordingly, that such
a transformation of bodies should be made only in the case of tyrants, heroes,
duns, and critics.
But this subject,
though often reflected on, I have had no leisure to digest properly. For which
reason, begging the reader’s pardon for the digression, I shall now leave it,
and resume my story.
I was provoked, I say,
to think there were so many millions of dead bodies thrown away every year, for
which I, in the greatest of my difficulties, should be none the better. Such
was the extremity to which I was reduced, that I should have been content to
change conditions with a beggar.
It was a night in
February. The day had been uncommonly fine, with a soft southern air puffing
through the streets; the frost was oozing from the pavement, and the flags--I
beg their pardon, the bricks--were floating in the yellow mud, so that one
walked as if upon a foundation of puddings. Such had been the state of things
in the day; such also as late as at nine o’clock P. M.
But it was now eleven;
the wind had chopped round to the northwest and northeast, and perhaps some
half a dozen other points beside, for it seemed to blow in all directions, and
the thermometer was galloping downward towards zero. A savage snow-storm had
just set in, and with such sharp and piercing gusts of wind, and such fierce
rattling of hail, that, had not my mind been in a ferment, I should have
hesitated to expose myself to its fury. But I reflected that I was flying from
wo and terror; and the hope of diving into some body that might introduce me to
a life of sunshine, rendered me insensible to the rigours of the tempest.
Having stumbled about
in the snow for a while, I began to inquire of myself whither I was going; and
the answer, or rather the want of an answer, somewhat confounded me. Where was
I to look for a dead body, at such a time of night? It occurred to me I had
better refer to a newspaper, and see what persons had lately died in town and
were yet unburied. I stepped accordingly into a barber’s shop, that happened to
be open, and snatched up an evening paper. The first paragraph I laid my eyes
on contained an account of the forgeries of my son, Ralph Skinner. It was
headed Unheard-of Depravity, and it blazoned, in italics and capitals, the
crime, the unnatural crime of committing frauds in the name of a father.
The shock with which I
beheld the fatal publication renewed my horror, and sharpened my desire to end
it. I threw down the paper, without consulting the column of obituaries, and
ran towards the Hospital, where, it appeared to me, I should certainly find one
or more bodies which the doctors had no longer occasion for. But my visit was
at a highly unseasonable hour, and the porter, being knocked out of a
comfortable nap, got up in an ill humour. “Whose cow’s dead now?” I heard him
grumble from his lodge--“I wonder people can’t break their necks by daylight!”
But my neck was not
broken; and he listened to my eager inquiry--“whether there were no dead bodies
in the house?”--with rage and indignation.
“I tell you what,
mister,” said he, “we takes no mad people in here, except they comes the
regular way,”
And with that he shut
the door in my face, leaving me to wonder at his want of civility.
But the air was growing
more frigid every moment, and the hour was waxing later and later. I ran to the
Alms-house, not doubting, as that was a more democratic establishment, that I
should be there received with greater respect. But good-breeding is not a whit
more native to a leather shirt than to a silk stocking. My Cerberus here was
cut from the same flint as the other; his civility had been learned in the same
school, and his English studied from the same grammar.
“I tell you what, uncle
Barebones,” said he, without waiting to be questioned, “we takes no paupers here,
except they comes with an order.”
And so saying, he
slapped to the door with an energy that dislodged from the roof of his den a
full hundred weight or more of snow, which fell in my face, and had wellnigh
smothered me.
The case began to look
desperate; but the difficulty of finding what I wanted only rendered my wits
more active. I resolved to run to one of the medical schools, make my way into
its anatomical repositories, and help myself to the best body I could find;
for, indeed, I was in such a rage of desire to be released from my present
tenement, that I did not design to stand upon trifles.
I set out accordingly,
with this object in view; but fate willed I should seek my fortune in another
quarter.
The storm had by this
time begun to rage with uncommon violence; the winds were blowing like so many
buglers and trumpeters on a militia-day, and the snow that had already fallen
was whisked up every moment from the ground, and driven back again into the
air, to mingle in contention with that which was falling. The atmosphere was
thickened, or rather wholly displaced, by the whirling particles, so that, in a
short time, the wayfarer could neither see nor breathe in the white chaos
around him. It was, in truth, a savage, inclement night. The watchman betook
him to his box, to snooze away the hours in comfort; the lamps went out, being
of a spirit still more economical than their founders, and thinking, with great
justice, that the streets which could do with them, could do equally well
without them; the dogs were no longer heard yelping at the corners; and the
pigs--the only spectres of Philadelphia--that run squeaking and gibbering up
and down the streets in the night, to vanish at early cock-crowing, provided
the hog-catchers are in commission, were one by one retreating to their secret
strongholds, leaving the street to solitude, the snow-storm, and me.
I plodded on as well as
I could, and with such effect, that, after a quarter hour’s trudging, I knew
not well whither, I stopped at last, I knew as little where. Instead of being
in the heart of the city, as I supposed, I found myself somewhere in the
suburbs, wedged fast in a snow-drift. One single lamp, and one single wick of
that single lamp, had escaped the puffs of the tempest; it shone from aloft, through
the rack of snow, like a fire-fly in a fog, dividing its faint beam betwixt my
frozen visage and a low open shed hard by, the only objects, beside itself,
that were visible.
I perceived that I was
lost; and being more than half dead with cold, I dragged myself into the shed,
to shelter me from the fury of the storm, and lament the ill fate that attended
my efforts.
As I stepped into the
wretched hole, I stumbled over a man lying coiled up on the ground, and so
exposed to the air that his legs were already heaped over with snow. There was
just light enough to discern a black jug lying broken at his side, from which
arose the odour of corn-juice, but by no means of the true Monongahela savour.
I was struck by the
fellow’s appearance; he had evidently been lying there all the evening; the
stumble I had made over him did not disturb him in the least, and my hand
chancing to touch his face, I found it could as marble. I perceived he was
dead; a discovery that filled me with uncommon joy; for my eagerness to change
my condition was such, that I only saw in him a body to be taken possession of,
without reading in the broken jug, and the miserable corner in which its victim
had breathed his last, the newer wretchedness and degradation upon which I was
rushing. Such is the short-sightedness of discontent; such the folly of the man
who deems himself the unluckiest of his species.
With a trembling hand I
thrust into the pockets of the corse the money and the silver spoons I had
brought with me, being so far prudent that I was resolved not to trust the
transfer of such valuables to my new body to accident. This being accomplished,
I uttered the wish that had thrice served my turn before.
I wished, however, in
vain; I muttered the charm a dozen times over, but with no more effect than if
I had pronounced it to the lamp-post. The body lay unmoved, and I remained
unchanged.
I became horribly
disconcerted; a fear seized me that my good angel, if I had ever had one, had
deserted me; or that the devil, if it was from him I derived my power of
passing from body to body, had suddenly left me in the lurch;--in a word, that
I had consumed all my privileges of transformation, and was chained to the body
of Abram Skinner for life.
I beat my breast in
despair, and then, changing from that to wrath, I began to belabour the ribs of
the dead man with all the strength of my foot, as if he were answerable for my
disappointment. Perhaps, indeed, the reader will think that he was; for at the
third kick the corpse became animated, and to my astonishment rose upon its
feet, saying, in accents tolerably articulate, though somewhat thick and
tumultuous, “I say, Charlie, odd rabbit it, none on your jokes now, and none on
your takin of folks up; ’cause how, folks is not half so drunk as you suppose.
And so good night, and let’s have no more words about it, and I’ll consider you
werry much of a gentleman.”
With these words the
corpse picked up that fragment of the jug that had the handle to it, leaving
the others, as well as his hat, behind him; and staggering out of the shed, he
began to walk away. I was petrified; he was stalking off with my money, and a
dozen of Mrs. Smith’s silver spoons!
“You villain!” said I,
running after him, “give me back my property.”
“I’m a free man,” said
the sot; “I’m no man’s property. And so, Charlie, don’t go for to disturb me,
for I knows my way home as well as anybody.”
“But the four hundred
dollars and the silver spoons,” said I, seizing him by the shoulders, and
endeavouring to empty the pockets I had but a moment before filled. “If you
resist, you rogue, I’ll put you in jail.”
“I won’t go to jail for
no Charlie in the liberty,” said the man of the jug, who to the last moment
seemed to have no other idea than that he had fallen into the hands of a
guardian of the night, and was in danger of being introduced to warmer quarters
than those he was leaving. He spoke with the indignation of a freeborn
republican, who felt his rights invaded, and was resolute to defend them; and,
lifting up the fragment of his jug, he suddenly bestowed it upon my head with
such good-will that I was felled to the earth. He took advantage of my downfall
to decamp, carrying with him the treasure with which I had so bountifully
freighted him. I pursued him as well as I could, calling upon the watch for
assistance, and shouting murder and robbery at the top of my voice. But all was
in vain; the watch were asleep, or I had wandered beyond their jurisdiction;
and after a ten minutes’ chase I found myself more bewildered than before, and
the robber vanished with his plunder.
I should have cursed my
simplicity in mistaking a drunkard for a dead man; but I had other evils to
distress me besides chagrin. I was lost in a snow-storm, fainting with fatigue,
shivering with cold, and afar from assistance, there not being a single house
in sight. It was in vain that I sought to recover my way; I plunged from one
snow-bank into another; and I believe I should have actually perished, had not
succour arrived at a moment when I had given over all hopes of receiving it.
I had just sunk down
into a huge drift on the roadside, where I lay groaning, unable to extricate
myself, when a man driving by in a chair, hearing my lamentations, drew up, and
demanded, in a most benevolent voice, what was the matter.
“Who art thou, friend?”
said he, “and what are thy distresses? If thou art in affliction, peradventure
there is one nigh at hand who will succour thee.”
“I am,” said I, “the
most miserable wretch on the earth.”
“Heaven be praised!”
said the stranger, with great devoutness of accent; “for in that case I will
give thee help, and the night shall not pass away in vain. Yea, verily, I will
do my best to assist thee; for it is both good and pleasant, a comeliness to
the eye and a refreshment to the spirit, to do good deeds among those who are
truly wretched.”
“And besides,” said I, “I
am sticking fast in the snow, and am perishing with cold.”
“Be of good heart, and
hold still for a moment, and I will come to thy assistance.”
And with that honest
Broadbrim (for such I knew by his speech he must be) descended from the chair,
and helped me out of the drift; all which he accomplished with zeal and
alacrity, showing not more humanity, as I thought, than satisfaction at finding
such a legitimate object for its display. He brushed the snow from my clothes,
and perceiving I was shivering with cold, for I had lost my cloak some minutes
before, he transferred one of his own outer garments, of which, I believe, he
had two or three, to my shoulders, plying me all the time with questions as to
how I came into such a difficulty, and what other griefs I might have to
afflict me, and assuring me I should have his assistance.
“Hast thou no house to
cover thy nakedness?” he cried; “verily, I will find thee a place wherein thou
shalt shelter thyself from snow and from cold. Art thou suffering from lack of
food? Verily, there is a crust of bread and the leg of a chicken yet left in my
basket of cold bits, and thou shalt have them, with something further
hereafter. Hast thou no family or friends? Verily, there are many humane
persons of my acquaintance who will, like myself, consider themselves as thy
brothers and sisters. Art thou oppressed with years as well as poverty? Verily,
then thou hast a stronger claim to pity, and it shall be accorded thee.”
He heaped question upon
question, and assurance upon assurance, with such haste and fervour, that it
was some minutes before I could speak. I took advantage of his first pause to
detail the latest, and, at that moment, the most oppressive of my griefs.
“I have been robbed,” I
cried, “of four hundred dollars, and a dozen silver spoons, by a rascal I found
lying drunk under a shed. But I’ll have the villain, if it costs me the half of
his plunder, and--”
“Be not awroth with the
poor man,” said my deliverer. “It was a wickedness in him to rob thee; but thou
shouldst reflect how wickedness comes of misery, and how misery of the
inclemency of the season. Be merciful to the wicked man, as well as to the
miserable; for thereby thou showest mercy to him who is doubly miserable. But
how didst thou come by four hundred dollars and a dozen silver spoons? Thou
canst not be so poor as to prove an object of charity?”
“No,” said I, “I am no
beggar. But I won’t be robbed for nothing.”
“Verily, I say unto
thee again, be not awroth with the poor man. Thou shouldst reflect, if thou
wert robbed, how far thou wast thyself the cause of the evil; for, having four
hundred dollars about thee, thou mightst have relieved the poor creature’s
wants; in which case thou wouldst have prevented both a loss and a crime--the
one on thy part, the other on his. Talk not, therefore, of persecuting the poor
man; hunt him up, if thou canst, administer secretly to his wants, and give him
virtuous counsel; and then, peradventure, he will sin no more.”
I was struck by the
tone and maxims of my deliverer; they expressed an ardour of benevolence, an
enthusiasm of philanthropy, such as I had never dreamed of before. I could not
see his face, the night being so thick and tempestuous; but there was a
complacency, a bustling self-satisfaction in his voice, that convinced me he
was not only a good, but a happy man. I regarded him with as much envy as
respect; and a comparison, which I could not avoid mentally making, betwixt his
condition and my own, drew from me a loud groan.
“Art thou hurt?” said
the good Samaritan. “I will help thee into my wheeled convenience here, and
take thee to thy home.”
“No,” said I, “I will
never go near that wretched house again.”
“What is it that makes
it wretched?” said the Quaker.
“You will know, if you
are of Philadelphia,” I replied, “when I tell you my name. I am the miserable
Abram Skinner.”
“What! Abram Skinner,
the money-lender?” said my friend, with a severe voice. “Friend Abram, I have
heard of thy domestic calamities, and verily I have heard of those of many
others, who laid them all at thy doors, as the author and cause thereof. Thou
art indeed the most wretched of men; but if thou thinkest so thyself, then is
there a hope thou mayst be yet restored to happiness. Thou hast made money, but
what good hast thou done with it? thou hast accumulated thy hundreds, and thy
thousands, and thy tens of thousands--but how many of thy fellow-creatures hast
thou given cause to rejoice in thy prosperity? Truly, I have heard much said of
thy wealth, and thy avarice, friend Abram; but, verily, not a word of thy
kind-heartedness and charity: and know, that goodness and charity are the only
securities against the ills, both sore and manifold, that spring from groaning
coffers. I say to thee, friend Abram, hast thou ever given a dollar in alms to
the poor, or acquitted a single penny of obligation to the hard-run of thy
customers?”
My conscience smote
me--not, however, that I felt any great remorse for not having thrown away my
money in the way the Quaker meant: but his words brought a new idea into my
mind. It was misery on the one hand, and the hope of arriving at happiness on
the other, which had spurred me from transformation to transformation. Each
change had, however, been productive of greater discontent than the other; and
the woes with which I was oppressed in my three borrowed bodies, had been even
greater than those that afflicted me in my own proper original casing. It was
plain that I had not exercised a just discretion in the selection of bodies,
since I had taken those of men whose modes of existence did not dispose to
happiness. What mode of existence then was most likely to secure the content I
sought? Such, I inferred from the Quaker’s discourse, as would call into
operation the love of goodness and of man-- such as would cause to be
cultivated the kindly virtues unknown to the selfish--such as would lead to the
practice of charity and general philanthropy. I was grieved, therefore, that I
had entered so many bodies for nothing; my conscience accused me of a blunder;
and I longed to enter upon an existence of virtue; not that I had any great
regard for virtue itself, but because I valued my own happiness. Had my
deliverer chanced to break his neck while discoursing to me, I should have
reanimated his corse, to try my hand at benevolence. As for being good and
charitable in the body I then occupied, I felt that it was impossible: the
impulse pointed to another existence.
The Quaker’s
indignation soon abated; he looked upon my silence as the effect of remorse,
and the idea of converting me into an alms-giver and a friend of the poor, like
himself, took possession of his imagination, and warmed his spirit. By such a
conversion his philanthropic desires would be doubly gratified; it would make
me happy, and, as I was a rich man, some hundreds of others also. He helped me
into the chair, and driving slowly towards the city, attempted the good work by
describing the misery so prevalent in the suburbs, and dilating with uncommon
enthusiasm upon the delight with which every act of benevolence would be
recorded in my own bosom.
It seems that he was
returning from a mission of charity in one of the remotest districts, where he
had relieved the necessities of divers unhappy wretches; and, he gave me to
understand, it was his purpose to make one more charitable visitation before
returning home, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour and the fury of the
tempest. And this visit he felt the more urged to make, since it would afford a
practical illustration of his remarks, and show how doubly charity was blessed,
both to the giver and receiver.
“Thou shalt see,” said
he, “even with thine own eyes, what power he that hath money hath over the
afflictions of his race--what power to dry the tear of the mourning, and to
check the wicked deeds of the vicious. He that I will now relieve is what thou
didst foolishly call thyself--to wit, the most miserable of men; for he is both
a beggar and a convicted felon, having but a few days since been discharged
from the penitentiary, where he had served out his three years, for, I believe,
the third time in his life.”
“Surely,” said I, “he
is then a reprobate entirely unworthy pity.”
“On the contrary,” said
the philanthropist, “he is for that reason the more to be pitied, since all
regard him with distrust and abhorrence, and refuse him the relief without
which he must again become a criminal: the very boys say to him, ‘Get up, thou
old jail-bird;’ and men and women hoot at him in the streets. Poverty made him
a criminal, and scorn has hardened his heart; yet is he a man with a soul; and
verily thou shalt see how that soul can be melted by the breath of compassion.
In this little hovel we shall find him,” said the Quaker, drawing up before a
miserable frame building, which was of a most lonely aspect, and in a terrible
state of dilapidation, the windows being without shutters and glasses, and even
the door itself half torn from its hinges.
“It is a little
tenement that belongeth to me,” said my friend; “and here I told him he might
shelter him, until I could come in person and relieve him. A negro-man whom I
permitted to live here for a while did very ungratefully, that is to say, very
thoughtlessly--destroy the window-shutters, and other loose work, for
fire-wood, I having forgotten to supply him with that needful article, and he,
poor man, being too bashful to acquaint me with his wants. Verily I do design
to render it more comfortable; but in these hard times one cannot find more
money than sufficeth to fill the mouths of the hungry. Descend, friend Abram,
and let us enter. I see the poor man hath a fire shining through the door; this
will warm thy frozen limbs, while the sound of his grateful acknowledgments
will do the same good office for thy spirit.”
My benevolent friend,
leaving his horse standing at the door, led the way into the hovel, the
interior of which was still more ruinous than the outside. It consisted of but
a single room below, with a garret above. A meager fire, which furnished the
only light, was burning on the hearth, to supply which the planks had been torn
from the floor, leaving the earth below almost bare. There was not a single
article of furniture visible, save an old deal table without leaves, a broken
chair, and a tattered scrap of carpet lying near the fire, which seemed to have
served as both bed and blanket to the wretched tenant.
“How is this?” said the
Friend, in surprise. “Verily I did direct my man Abel to carry divers small
comforts hither, which have vanished, as well as the poor man, John Smith.”
John Smith, it seems,
was the name of the beneficiary, and that convinced me he was a rogue. I
ventured to hint to our common friend, that John Smith, having disposed of
those “small comforts” he spoke of to the best advantage, was now engaged
seeking others in some of our neighbours’ houses; and that the wisest thing we
could do in such a case would be to take our departure.
“Verily,” said my
deliverer, with suavity, “it is not possible John can do the wicked things thou
thinkest of; for, first, it is but three days since he left the penitentiary,
and secondly, I sent him by my helper and friend, Abel Snipe, sufficient
eatables to supply him a week; so that he could have no inducement to do a
wicked thing. Still it doth surprise me that he is absent; nevertheless, we
will tarry a little while, lest peradventure he should return, and be in
trouble, with none to relieve him. It wants yet ten minutes to midnight,”
continued the benevolent man, drawing out a handsome gold watch, “and five of
these at least we can devote to the poor creature.”
I was about to
remonstrate a second time, when a step was heard approaching at a distance in
the street.
“Peradventure it is
John himself,” said my friend; “and peradventure it will be better thou
shouldst step aside into yonder dark corner for an instant, that thou mayst
witness, without restraining by thy presence, the feelings of virtue that
remain in the spirit, even when tainted and hardened by depravity.”
I crept away, as I was
directed, to a corner, where I might easily remain unobserved, the room being
illumined only by the fire, and that consisting of little besides embers and
ashes. From this place I saw Mr. John Smith as he entered, which he declined
doing until after he had peeped suspiciously into the apartment, and been
summoned by the voice of his benefactor.
He was as ill-looking a
dog as I had ever laid eyes on, and his appearance was in strange contrast with
that of his benevolent patron. The latter was a tall and rawboned man of fifty,
with an uncommonly prepossessing visage; rather lantern-jawed, perhaps, but
handsome and good-natured. The other was a slouch of a fellow, short of
stature, but full of fat and brawn, with bow legs, gibbon arms, and a hang-dog
visage. He sidled up to the fire hesitatingly, and, indeed, with an air of shame
and humility; while the philanthropist, laying his watch upon the table,
extended his hand towards him.
“Be of good heart,
friend John,” he said; “I come, not to reproach thee for thy misdeeds, but to
counsel thee how thou shalt amend them, and restore thyself again to the
society of the virtuous.”
“’Es, sir,” grumbled
John Smith, dodging his head in humble acknowledgment, rubbing his hands for
warmth over the fire, and casting a sidelong look at his benefactor. “Werry
good of you, sir; shall ever be beholden. Werry hard times for one what’s been
in the penitentiary--takes away all one’s repurtation; and, Lord bless us, sir,
a man’s but a ruined man when a man hasn’t no repurtation.”
And with that worthy
John drew his sleeve over his nose, which convinced me he was not so much of a
rascal as I thought him.
“John, thou hast been
but as a sinner and a foolish man.”
“’Es, sir,” said John,
with another rub of his sleeve at his nose; “but hard times makes hard work of
a poor man. Always hoped to mend and be wirtuous; but, Lord bless us, Mr.
Longstraw (beg pardon--can’t think of making so free to say friend to such a
great gentleman), one can’t be wirtuous with nothing to live on.”
“Verily, thou speakest,
in a measure, the truth,” said my friend; “and I intend thou shalt now be put
in some way of earning an honest livelihood.”
“’Es, sir,” said John; “and
sure I shall be werry much beholden.”
But it is not my
intention to record the conversation of the worthy pair. I am writing a history
of myself, and not of other people; and I therefore think it proper to pursue
no discourses in which I did not myself bear a part. It is sufficient to say,
that my deliverer said a thousand excellent things in the way of counsel, which
the other received very well, and many indicative of a disposition to be
charitable, which Mr. John Smith received still better; and in the end, to
relieve the pressing wants of the sufferer, which Mr. John Smith feelingly
represented, drew forth a pocketbook, and took therefrom a silver dollar; at
the sight of which, I thought, Mr. John Smith looked a little disappointed.
Nay, it struck me that the appearance of the pocketbook, ancient and illlooking
as it was, had captivated his imagination in a greater degree than the coin. I
had before observed him steal several affectionate looks towards the gold watch
lying on the table, which now, however, the sight of the well-thumbed wallet
seemed to have driven from his thoughts entirely. Nevertheless, he received the
silver dollar with many thanks, and with still more the assurance that the
philanthropist would procure him employment on the morrow; and Mr. Longstraw’s
eyes, as he turned to beckon me from the corner, began to twinkle with the
delight of self-approbation.
I was myself beginning
to feel a sentiment of pleasure, and to picture to my mind the unfortunate
felon, converted, by a few words of counsel, and still fewer dollars of
charity, into an honest and worthy member of society, when--oh horror of
horrors!--the repenting convict suddenly snatched up a brand from the fire, and
discharged it, with a violence that would have felled an ox, full upon the head
of his patron.
The sparks flew from
the brand over the whole room, and my friend dropped upon the floor on his
face, followed by the striker, who, seizing upon his cravat, twisted it tightly
round the unfortunate man’s throat, thus completing by strangulation the murder
more than half accomplished by the below.
The whole affair was
the work of an instant; and had I possessed the will or courage to interfere, I
could not have done so in time to arrest the mischief. But, in truth, I had not
the power to stir; horror and astonishment chained me to the corner, where I
stood as if transformed to stone, unable even to vent my feelings in a cry. I was
seized with a terrible apprehension on my own account; for I could not doubt
that the wretch who would thus murder a benefactor for a few dollars, would
have as little hesitation to despatch me, who had witnessed the deed. I feared
every moment lest the villain should direct his eye to the corner in which I
stood, separated from him only a few yards; but he was too busy with his horrid
work to regard me; and, terrified as I was, I looked on in safety while my
deliverer was murdered before my eyes.
How long Mr. John Smith
was at his dreadful work I cannot say; but I saw him, after a while, relax his
grasp from his victim’s throat, and fall to rummaging his pockets. Then,
leaping up, he seized upon the watch, and clapped it into his bosom, saying,
with a most devilish chuckle and grin,
“Damn them ’ere old
fellers what gives a man a dollar, and preaches about wirtue! I reckon, old
Slabsides, there’s none on your people will hang me for the smash. Much
beholden to you for leaving the horse and chair; it makes all safer.”
With these words the
wretch slipped out of the hovel, and a moment after I heard the smothered roll
of the vehicle as it swept from the door.
I supposed that Mr.
John Smith had taken himself away with as much speed as was consistent with the
strength of his horse and the safety of his bones, and I recovered from the
fears I had entertained on my own account. I crept up to the philanthropist to
give him assistance, if such could be now rendered. But it was too late; he was
already dead: Mr. John Smith had not taken his degrees without proper study in
his profession; and I must say that his practice on the present occasion did
not go far to confirm me in the love of benevolence.
Nevertheless, the
appearance of the defunct threw my mind into a ferment. I had been hunting a
body, and now I had one before me; I had come to believe that, if I wished for
happiness, I must get possession of one whose occupant had previously been
happy; and I had seen enough of the deceased to know that he had been an
uncommonly comfortable and contented personage.
The end of all this was
a resolution, which I instantly made, to take advantage of the poor man’s
misfortune, and convert his body to my own purposes. I had seen him for the
first time that night; I did not remember ever to have heard his name mentioned
before; and I consequently knew nothing of him beyond what I had just learned.
Where he lived, who were his connexions, what his property, &c. &c.,
were all questions to which I was to find answers thereafter. It appeared to me
that a philanthropist of his spirit and age (the latter of which I judged to be
about fifty) could not but be very well known, and that all I should have to
do, after reanimating his body, would be to seek the assistance of the first
person I should find, and so be conducted at once to the gentleman’s house;
after which all would go well enough.
But, in truth, I took
but little time for reflection; or perhaps I should not have been in such a
hurry to attempt a transformation. A little prudence might have led me to
inquire into the consequences of the change, inferred from the condition of the
body. Suppose his scull should prove to be broken; who was to stand the woes of
trepanning? I do say, it would have been wiser had I thought of that--but
unluckily I did not: I was in too great a hurry to think of any thing save the
transformation itself; and the result was, that I had a lesson on the demerits
of leaping before looking, which I think will be of service to me for the
remainder of my life, as it might be to the reader, could the reader be brought
to believe that that experience is good for any thing, which costs nothing.
My resolution was
quickened by a step which I heard approaching along the street. “It is a
watchman,” thought I to myself: “I will jump into the body and run out for
assistance.”
I turned to the
defunct.
“Friend Longstraw,”
said I, “or whatever your name is, if you are really dead, I wish to occupy
your body.”
That moment I lost all
consciousness. The reader may infer the transfer of spirit was accomplished.
And so it was. I came
to my senses a few moments after, just in time to find myself tumbling into a
hole in the earth beneath the floor of the hovel, with Mr. John Smith hard by,
dragging to the same depository the mortal frame I had just deserted. I
perceived at once the horrible dilemma in which I was placed; I was on the
point of being buried, and, what was worse, of being buried alive!
“I conjure and beseech
thee, friend John Smith,” I cried--but cried no more. The villain had just
reached the pit, dragging the body of the late Abram Skinner. He was startled
at my voice; but it only quickened him in his labours. He snatched up the corse
and cast it down upon me as one would a millstone; and the weight, though that
was not very considerable, and the shock together, jarred the life more than
half out of me.
“What! old Slabsides,”
said he, “ar’n’t you past grumbling?”
With that, the
bloody-minded miscreant seized upon a fragment of plank, and began to belabour
me with all his strength.
I had entered the
philanthropist’s body only to be murdered. I uttered a direful scream; but that
was only a waste of the breath which Mr. John Smith was determined to waste for
me. He redoubled his blows with a vigour that showed he was in earnest; nor did
he cease until his work was completed. In a word, he murdered me, and so
effectually, that it is a wonder I am alive to tell it. He assassinated me, and
even began to bury me, by tumbling earth down from the floor; when, as my good
fate would have it, the scene was brought to a climax by the sudden entrance of
a watchman, who, running up to the villain, served him the same turn he had
served me, by laying a leaded mace over his head, and so knocking him out of
his senses.
It seems (for I scorn
to keep the reader in suspense, by indulging in mystery) that this faithful
fellow, having made a shorter nap than was warranted by the state of the night,
had taken a stroll into the air, to look about him; that he had passed the
hovel, and, seeing the chair standing at the door, had looked through a crack,
and perceived Mr. Longstraw, with whose person and benevolent character he was
acquainted, and myself--that is, my late self--warming ourselves by the convict’s
fire; and that, after pursuing his beat for a while, he was about to return by
another way, when, to his surprise, he lighted upon the vehicle at more than a
square’s distance from the house; and the horse being tied to a post, it was
evident he had not strayed thither. This awaking a suspicion that all was not
right, he determined to pay a second visit to the hovel; and was on the way
thither when I set up the scream mentioned before. Then quickening his pace, he
arrived in time to witness the awful spectacle of Mr. John Smith thrusting the
two bodies into the pit; which operation the courageous watchman brought to a
close by knocking the operator on the head, as I have related.
What had brought Mr.
John Smith back again, and why he should have troubled himself to conceal the
victim of his murderous cupidity, must be conjectured, as well as the amazement
with which, doubtless, he found he had two bodies to bury instead of one. He
perhaps reflected, that the visit of his patron was known to other persons;
who, upon finding his body, would readily conjecture who was the murderer; and
therefore judged it proper to conceal the evidence of assassination, and leave
the fate of his benefactor in entire mystery.
As it happened, his
return had wellnigh proved fatal to me, and it was any thing but happy for
himself. It caused him to take up his lodgings for a fourth time in the
penitentiary; and there he is sawing stone, I believe, to this day, unless
pardoned out by the Governor of Pennsylvania, according to the practice among
governors in general. The visitation was, however, thus far advantageous to me,
that it caused me to be conducted to the dwelling of Mr. Longstraw with all due
expedition and care; whereas, had it not happened, I might have remained lying
on the floor of my miserable tenement until frozen to death; for the night was
uncommonly bitter.
As for my late body, it
found its way to Abram Skinner’s mansion; whence, having been handsomely
coffined, it was carried to the grave, which, but for me, it would have filled
three months before.
If my first
introduction to the life of the philanthropic Zachariah Longstraw (for that was
his name) was attended with circumstances of fear and danger, I did not thereby
escape those other evils, which, as I hinted before, might have been
anticipated, had I reflected a moment on the situation of his body. It was
covered with bruises from head to foot, and there was scarce a sound bone left
in it; so that, as I may say, I had, in reanimating it, only exchanged anguish
of spirit for anguish of body; and which of these is the more intolerable, I
never could satisfactorily determine. Philosophers, indeed, contend for the
superior poignancy of the former; but I must confess a leaning to the other
side of the question. What is the pain of a broken heart to that of the
toothache? The poets speak of vipers in the bosom; what are they compared to a
bug in the ear? Be this, however, as it may, it is certain I had a most
dreadful time of it in Mr. Longstraw’s body; and it would have been much worse,
had not the blows I had received on the head kept me for a long time in a
delirium, and therefore in a measure unconscious of my sufferings. The truth
is, the body which I so rashly entered was in such a dilapidated condition, so
bruised and mangled, that it was next to an impossibility to restore its vital
powers; and it was more than two weeks, after lying all that time in a state of
insensibility, more dead than alive, before I came to my senses, and remembered
what had befallen me; and it was not until four more had elapsed that I was
finally able to leave my chamber, and snuff the early breezes of spring.
As soon as I began to
take notice of what was passing about me, I perceived that I lay in a good,
though plainly-furnished chamber, and that, besides the physicians and other
persons who occasionally bustled around me, there were two individuals so
constantly in attendance, and so careful and affectionate in all their
deportment, that I did not doubt they were members of my new family. Indeed, I
had no sooner looked upon their faces, and heard their voices, than I felt a
glow of satisfaction within my spirit; which convinced me they were my very
dear and faithful friends, and that I loved them exceedingly.
They were both young
men, the one perhaps of twenty-five, the other six or seven years older. Both
were decked in Quaker garments, the elder being uncommonly plain in his
appearance, wearing smallclothes, shoe-buckles, and a hat with a brim full five
inches wide, which he seldom laid aside. These gave him a patriarchal
appearance, highly striking in one of his youth, which was much increased by an
uncommon air of gravity and benevolence beaming from his somewhat swarthy and
hollow visage.
The younger had no such
sanctimonious appearance. There was a janty look even in the cut of his
straight coat; he had a handsome face, and seemed conscious of it; he swung
about the room at times with a strut that excited his own admiration; and any
three moments out of five he might be seen before the looking-glass, surveying
his teeth, inspecting the sweep of his shoulders, and brushing up his hair with
his fingers. His plain coat was set at naught by a vest and trousers of the
most fashionable cut and pattern; he had a gold guard-chain, worn abroad, and
his watch, which, in all likelihood, was gold also, was stuck in his
vestpocket, in the manner approved of by bucks and men of the world, instead of
being deposited, according to the system of the wise, in a fob over the epigastrium;
and, to crown his list of vanities, he had in his shirt a breastpin, which he
took care to keep constantly visible, containing jewels of seven or eight
different colours. It was manifest the young gentleman, if a Quaker, as his
coat showed him to be, was quite a free one; and, indeed, the first words I
heard him utter (which were also the first that I distinguished after rousing
from my long sleep of insensibility) set the matter beyond question. I saw him
peer into my face very curiously, and directly heard him call out to his
companion --“I say, Snipe, by jingo, uncle Zack’s beginning to look like a man
in his senses!”
These words imparted a
sensation of pleasure to my breast, but I felt impelled to censure the young
man for the freedom of his expressions. My tongue, however, seemed to have lost
its function; and while I was vainly attempting to articulate a reprimand, the
other rushed up, and, giving me an earnest stare, seized upon one of my hands,
which he fell to mumbling and munching in a highly enthusiastic manner, crying
out, with inexpressible joy and fervour, “Blessed be the day! and does thee
open thee eyes again? Verily, this shall be a day of rejoicing, and not to me
only, the loving Abel Snipe, but to thousands. Does thee feel better,
Zachariah, my friend and patron? Verily, the poor man that has mourned for thee
shall be now as one that rejoices; for thee shall again speak to him the words
of tenderness, and open the hand of alms-giving; yea, verily, and the afflicted
shall mourn no more!”
These words were even
more agreeable than those uttered by the junior; and I experienced a feeling of
displeasure when the latter suddenly cut them short by exclaiming, “Come,
Snipe, none of thee confounded nonsense. I reckon uncle Zack has had enough
philanthropy for the season; and don’t thee go to humbug him into it any more.
Thee has made thee own fortune, and should be content.”
“Verily, friend
Jonathan,” said the fervent Abel Snipe, addressing the junior, but still
tugging at my hand, “thee does not seem to rejoice at thee uncle’s recovery as
thee should; but thee jokes and thee jests sha’n’t make my spirit rejoice the
less.”
“Verily,” said
Jonathan, “so it seems; but if thee tugs at uncle Zack in that way, and talks
so loud, thee will do his business.”
“Verily,” said Abel--
“And verily,” said
Jonathan, interrupting him, “thee will say it is thee business to do his
business; which is very true--but not in the sense of murder. So let us hold
our tongues; and do thou, uncle Zachariah,” he added, addressing me, “keep
thyself quiet, and take this dose of physic.”
It was unspeakable how
much my spirit was warmed within me by this friendly contest between the two
young men, and by their looks of affection. I longed to embrace them both, but
had not the strength; and, indeed, it was three or four days more before I felt
myself able, or was allowed by the physicians, to indulge in conversation.
At the expiration of
that period I found myself growing stronger; the twenty thousand different
pangs that had besieged my body, from the crown of my head to the sole of my
foot, whenever I attempted to move, were less racking and poignant; and, waking
from a slumber that had been more agreeable than usual, and finding no one near
me save the ever faithful Abel Snipe, I could no longer resist the impulse to
speak to him.
“Abel Snipe,” said I.
“Blessed be thee kind
voice, that it speaks again!” said Abel Snipe, devouring my hand as before, and
blubbering as he devoured.
“Thy name is Abel
Snipe?” said I.
“Verily and surely, it
is Abel Snipe, and no other,” said he; “I hope thee don’t forget me?”
“Why, really,” said I, “I
can’t exactly say, friend Abel, seeing that there has a confusion come over my
brain. But art thou certain I am no longer Abram Skinner?”
At this question Abel
Snipe’s eyes jumped half out of his head, and they regarded me with wo and
horror. I saw he thought my wits were unsettled, and I hastened to remove the
impression.
“Don’t be alarmed,
friend Abel; but, of a verity, I think I was killed and buried.”
“Yea,” said Abel; “yea,
verily, the vile, ungrateful, malicious John Smith did smite thee over the head
with a club, so that the bone was broken, and thee was as one that was dead;
but oh! the villain! we have him fast in jail; and oh! the unnatural rascal! we’ll
hang him!”
“Verily,” said I,
feeling uncommon concern at the idea, “we will do no such wicked deed; but we
will admonish the poor man of the wickedness of his ways, and, relieving his
wants, discharge him from bondage.”
“Yea,” said Abel Snipe,
with an air of contrition; “so will we do, as becometh the merciful man and
Christian. But, verily, the flesh did quarrel with the spirit, and the old Adam
cried out to me, ‘Blood for blood,’ and the thing that is flesh said, ‘Vengeance
on the wicked man that smote the friend of the afflicted!’ But now thy goodness
reproves me, and teaches me better things: wherefore I say, be not hard with
the miserable man, for such is the wicked, and such is John Smith; who is now
mourning over his foolish acts in the county prison. Yea, verily, we will be
exceeding lenient,” --and so forth, and so forth.
I do not think it
needful to repeat all the wise and humane things said by Abel Snipe: they
convinced me he was the most benevolent of beings, and warmed a similar spirit
that was now burning in my breast, and which burnt on until it became at last a
general conflagration of philanthropy. Yea, the transformation was complete; I
found within me, on the sudden, a raging desire to augment the happiness of my fellow-creatures;
and wondered that I had ever experienced any other passion. The generous Abel
discoursed to me of the thousands I--that is, my prototype, the true Zachariah
--had rescued from want and affliction, and of the thousands whom I was yet to relieve.
My brain took fire at the thought, and I exulted in a sense of my virtue; I
perceived, in imagination, the tear of distress chased away by that of
gratitude; I heard the sob of sorrow succeeded by the sigh of happiness, and
the prayer of beseeching changed to the prayer of praise and thanksgiving. A
gentle warmth flowed from my bosom through the uttermost bounds of my frame,
and I felt that I was a happy man; yea, reader, yea, and verily, I was at last
happy. My only affliction was, that the battered condition of my body prevented
my sallying out at once, and practising the noble art of charity. The tears
sprang into my eyes when Abel recounted the numbers of the miserable who had
besieged my doors during my two weeks of insensibility, crying for assistance.
“Why didst thou not
relieve them, Abel Snipe?” I exclaimed.
“Verily,” said Abel,
turning his eyes to heaven with a look of fervent rapture, “I did relieve the
sorrowing and destitute even to the uttermost penny that was in my pocket.
Blessed be the deed, for I have not now a cent that I can call my own. As for
thine, Zachariah, it became me not to dispense it, without thy spoken
authority; the more especially as thy nephew, Jonathan, did hint, and
vehemently insist, that thou hadst bestowed too much already for thy good, and
his.”
These words filled me
with concern and displeasure.
“Surely,” said I, “the
young man Jonathan is not averse to deeds of charity?”
“Verily,” said Abel,
clasping his hands, and looking as if he would have wept, “the excellent and
beloved youth doth value money more than the good which money may produce; and
of that good he esteemeth chiefly the portion that falleth to his own lot. Of a
surety, I do fear he hath an eagerness and hankering, a fleshly appetite and an
exceeding strong desire, after the things of the world. He delighteth in the
vanity of fine clothes, and his discourse is of women and the charms thereof.
He hath bought the picture of a French dancing-woman, and hung it in his
chamber, swearing (for he hath a contempt for affirmation) that it is a good
likeness of the maiden Ellen Wild; and yesterday I did perceive him squeaking
at a heathenish wind-instrument, called a flute, and thereupon he did avow an
intention to try his hand at that more paganish thing of strings, called a
fiddle; and, oh! what grieved me above all, and caused the spirit within me to
cry ‘avaunt! and get thee away, Jonathan,’ he did offer me a ticket, of the
cost of one dollar, to procure me admission into the place of sin and vanity,
called the theatre, swearing ‘by jingo’ and ‘by gemini’ there was ‘great fun
there,’ and offering to lend me a coat, hat, and trousers, so that the wicked
should not know me. Yea, verily, the young man is as a young lion that roameth
up and down--as a sheep that wandereth from the pinfold into the forbidden
meadows--and as for charity, peradventure thee will not believe me, but he
averred, ‘the only charity he believed in was that which began at home.’ ”
These confessions of
the faithful Abel in relation to the young man Jonathan, caused my spirit to
wax sorrowful within me. But it is fitting, before pursuing such conversations
further, that I should inform the reader who the faithful Abel and the young
man Jonathan were.
The latter, as Abel
himself informed me, was my--or, if the reader will, my prototype’s--nephew,
the only, and now orphan, son of a sister, who had married, as the phrase is, “out
of meeting,” and, dying destitute, left her boy to the charge of the benevolent
Zachariah, who, being himself childless, adopted him as his son and heir, and
had treated him as such, from his childhood up. The great wish of Zachariah was
to make the adopted son a philanthropist, like himself; in which, however, he
was destined to disappointment; for Jonathan was of a wild and worldly turn,
fond of frolic and amusement, and extremely averse to squander in works of
charity the possessions he designed applying in future years to his own
benefit. Nevertheless, he was greatly beloved by his uncle; and I, who was
imbued with that uncle’s spirit, and destined to love and abhor what he had
loved and abhorred, whether I would or not, soon began to regard him as one of
the two apples of my eyes.
The faithful Abel
Snipe, it seems (his history was told me by Jonathan), was a man whom
Zachariah, some years before, while playing the Howard in a neighbouring
sovereignty, had found plunged in deep distress, and making shoes in the
penitentiary. To this condition he had been reduced by sheer goodness; for,
being an amateur in that virtuous art of which Zachariah was a professor, and
having no means of his own to relieve the woes of the wretched, he had borrowed
from the hoards of his employers (the president and directors of a certain
stock-company, in whose office he had a petty appointment), and thus, perforce,
made charitable an institution that was chartered to be uncharitable. He
committed the fault, however, of borrowing without the previous ceremony of
asking--either because he was of so innocent a temper as to think such a
proceeding unnecessary, or because he knew beforehand that the request would
not be granted; and the consequence was, that the president and directors, as
aforesaid, did very mercilessly hand him over to the prosecuting attorney, the
prosecuting attorney to a grand jury, the grand jury to a petit jury, the petit
jury to a penitentiary, and the penitentiary to the devil--or such, at least,
would have been the ending of the unfortunate amateur, had not the
philanthropist, who always ordered his shoes, for charity’s sake, at the
prison, been struck with the uncommon excellence of a pair constructed by Abel’s
hands. He sought out the faithful maker (for sure a man must be faithful to make
a good pair of shoes in a penitentiary), was melted by his tale of wo, even as
the wax through which Abel was then drawing a bunch of ends was melted by the
breath thereof; and shedding tears to find the poor creature’s virtue so
shabbily rewarded, ran to the prosecutors with a petition, which he induced
them to sign, transmitted it to the governor, with a most eloquent essay on the
divine character of mercy, and, in less than a week, walked Abel Snipe out of
prison, a pardoned man.
The charity of the professor
did not end with Abel’s liberation. Enraptured with the fervour of his
gratitude, touched by the artlessness of his character, and moved by the
destitution to which a pardon in the winter-time exposed him, he carried him to
his own land and house, fed, clothed, and employed him upon a new pair of
shoes; and, discovering that he had talents for a nobler business, advanced him
in time to the rank of accountant, or secretary, collector of rents, dispenser
of secret charities, and, in general, factotum and fiduciary at large. Such a
servant was needed by the humane Zachariah; his philanthropy left him no time
to attend to his own affairs, and his nephew Jonathan had fallen in love, and
become incompetent to their management.
Never was experiment
more happy for subject and object: Abel Snipe was made an honest and useful
man; and Zachariah Longstraw obtained a friend and servant without price. The
gratitude of Abel was equal to his ability; humility, fidelity, and religion,
were the least of his virtues--he became a philanthropist, like his master. He
managed his affairs with such skill, that Zachariah had always pennies at hand
for the unfortunate; which, it seems, had not always happened before; and, what
was equally charming, the zealous Abel dived into every lane, alley, and
gutter, to discover new objects of charity for his patron. To crown all, he
felt moved in the spirit to profess the faith so greatly adorned by his
protector; and, after due preparation and probation, appeared in the garb of
peace and humility, and even went so far as to hold forth once at meeting.
In a word, Abel Snipe
was a jewel of the first water, who supplied the place of the idle Jonathan in
all matters of business, and almost in the affections of his kinsman. If not
equally beloved, he was more highly esteemed; and his shining worth consoled
the philanthropist for many of the derelictions of his nephew. He became the
confidant, the coadjutor, and the adviser of Zachariah; and Zachariah never
found occasion to lament the be nevolence that had redounded so much to his own
advantage.
My nephew Jonathan had
no great love for poor Abel; and he did not tell me his story without passing
sundry sarcasms on him, as well as myself, for bestowing so much confidence on
the poor unfortunate man. I rebuked the youth for his freedom and
uncharitableness, and remembering what Abel had told me of his own idle and
trifling course of life, I felt impelled by the new spirit of virtue that
possessed me to take him to task; which I did in the following manner; and it
is wondrous how completely and how soon (for I was yet lying on my back,
groaning with my unhealed wounds and bruises) my spirit assumed and acted upon
all that was peculiar in the nature of Zachariah Longstraw.
“Nevvy Jonathan,” said
I, “the uncharitableness of thy spirit afflicts me. Trouble not thyself to
censure the worthy Abel Snipe; but think how thou shalt amend thine own crying
faults. It has been said to me, Jonathan, my son, and verily I fear it is true,
that thou squeakest upon flutes, and that thou makest profane noises with
fiddles; and, furthermore, that thou runnest after, and dost buy, the vanity of
pictures, and triest thy hand at painting the same.”
“I do,” said Jonathan; “and
I find nothing against them in the Scripture.”
“Verily,” said I, “but
dost thou find nothing against them in thine own spirit?”
“Not a whit,” said
Jonathan; “my heart says love them, and my head approves the counsel. Where’s
the harm in these things? I know thee don’t say they are in themselves sinful.”
“Verily, no,” said I; “but
they are indirectly so; for, being wholly useless, the time bestowed upon them
is time lost and wasted; and that, nevvy Jonathan, I think thee will allow to
be sinful.”
“Not I,” said Jonathan,
stoutly; “I don’t believe the wasting of time to be any such heinous matter as
thee supposes; had it been so, man would not have been made to waste a third of
his existence in slumber. But granting this, for the sake of argument, I deny
thy premises, uncle Zachariah. The time bestowed upon these things is not
wasted. Heaven has given to nine men out of ten a capacity to enjoy both music
and painting; it has done more--it has set an example of both before our eyes,
and thus laid the foundation of the divine arts in Nature. What is the world
around us but a great concert-hall, echoing with the music of bird and beast,
of wind, water, and foliage? what but a great gallery of pictures, painted by
the hand of Providence? Nature is a painter--Nature is a musician; and her sons
can do nothing better than follow her example. But were Nature neither, it is
not the less evident that these arts are lawful and sinless. They can be proved
so, uncle Zachariah, upon thine own system of philanthropy; for they add to the
happiness of our existence, and they do so without corrupting our morals or
injuring our neighbours. I say, uncle,” quoth Jonathan, who had pronounced this
defence with much enthusiasm, and now concluded with a grin of triumph, “I have
thee there dead as a herring!”
“Verily,” said I, more
pleased than offended at the young man’s ingenuity, for my spirit yearned over
him the more at every word, “thee has a talent for argument, which I would thee
would cultivate; for then thee could get into the Assembly, and finally,
perhaps, into Congress, and do much good to thy fellow-men, by reforming divers
crying abuses.”
“Verily,” said he, “the
first thing I should reform would be thy philanthropy.”
“Don’t be funny, nevvy,”
said I, “for I have not done with thee. Thee was dancing last night, in the
house of the vain man Ebenezer Wild.”
“I was,” said Jonathan;
“I was shaking my legs; and I can’t see the harm of it, for the flies do the
same thing all day long.”
“Verily, thee should
remember that a reasonable being, that hath a brain, should rather exercise
that than his heels.”
“I grant thee,” said
Jonathan; “but thee knows brains are not so abundant as heels; and thee should
expect the mass of people to conduct according to their endowments.”
“Jonathan,” said I, “if
thee thinks to make me laugh, thee is mistaken. Of a verity I will not be rigid
with thee; but, verily, I must speak to thee of what I hold thy faults. Thou
hast a vain and eager hankering after the society of giddy women.”
“I have!” said
Jonathan, with great fervour. “Heaven made women to be loved, and I love
them--especially Ellen Wild!”
“Sure,” said I, “I have
heard that name?”
“Sure,” said Jonathan, “it
would be odd if thee had not; for thee knows her well--thine old friend
Ebenezer’s daughter.”
“A giddy girl,
Jonathan, I fear me; a giddy girl!”
“As giddy as the
dev--that is, as giddy as a goose,” said Jonathan.
“What!” said I; “thee meant
something worse! Verily, I have heard thee uses bad language, Jonathan.”
“By jingo!” said the
youth, indignantly, “there is no end to the slanders people will say of one. I
use bad language? By jingo!”
“Why, thee is at it
now,” said I; “let thy yea be yea, and thy nay nay; for all beyond is profanity
or folly. But thee will allow, Jonathan, that when thee is among the people of
the world, thee uses the language thereof, forgetting the language of
simplicity and sobriety, which would best become thy lips?”
“Ay; there I plead
guilty, and with good reason too,” said Jonathan. “When I was a boy, thee had
thoughts of making me a merchant, and thee compelled me to study French and
German. Now, when I meet a Frenchman or a German unacquainted with the English
tongue, in what language does thee suppose I address him?”
“Why, French or German,
to be sure.”
“Verily, I do,” said
the youth; “and when I get among the people of the world, I speak to them in
the language of the world; for, poor ignorant creatures, they don’t understand
Quaker. Moreover, uncle, does thee know Ellen Wild is of opinion we Friends don’t
speak good grammar? Now she and I spent a whole hour the other evening, trying
to parse ‘thee is,’ ‘thee does,’ ‘thee loves,’ and so on, and we could not work
them according to Murray. I say, uncle, does thee know of any command in
Scripture to speak bad grammar?”
“No,” said I; “but it
is not forbidden; and the phrases mentioned, thou knowest, have crept into our
speech as corruptions, and are only used for conversational purposes.”
“Truly,” said Jonathan,
“and the language of the world is used for conversational purposes also. I say,
uncle Zachariah, that now’s a clincher!”
“I won’t quarrel with
thee on this account, Jonathan. But how comes it thou wert seen in that wicked
place, the theatre?”
“By jingo!” said he, “Snipe
has been blabbing there too!”
“What!” said I, “does
thou strive to conceal it?”
“Yea,” said Jonathan; “for
when we do our good deeds, we should do them in secret. Uncle Zachariah, I went
to the theatre in charity.”
“Thee did,” said I,
charmed more than I can express at the thought of the young man’s virtue.
“Yes, uncle,” said the
youth; “and great need have the actors of charity; for a poorer set of fellows
I think I never saw got together.” And here the rogue fell a laughing in my
face: “And so thee need not distress thyself; for I sha’n’t go there again
until they get a better company. But, uncle Zachariah, thee has exhorted me
enough for one time, and it is my turn now. So do thou be conformable, and
answer my questions; for, I can tell thee, I have a fault to find with thee.
According to thine own system of philanthropy, it is thy duty to make thy
fellow-creatures happy. Now I ask thee whether thou dost not think it thy duty
to make me, thy loving nephew, happy, as well as a stranger?”
“Verily,” said I, “I
do.”
“Why then,” said
Jonathan, “there is a short way of doing it. Uncle Zachariah, I want to be
married. Ellen and I have talked the matter over, and she says she’ll have me.
Now, uncle, thee did once talk of giving me a counting-house, and ten or twenty
thousand dollars, as the case might be, to begin a commission business; and Mr.
Wild talked of doing as much in the way of dowry to Ellen. And now I say, uncle
Zachariah, as the shipwrecked sailor did when he prayed among the breakers, if
thee means to help me, now’s the time.”
“What!” said I, “have I
so much property?”
“Thee is joking,” said
the youth; “thee is a rich man, and thee knows thee can afford it. But thee
must do it soon, or it may be too late; for, I can tell thee, folks begin to
talk of thy philanthropy, and say thou art flinging away so much money that
presently thou wilt have nothing left to give me. Mr. Wild is of this mind, and
he has hinted some things to me very plainly. In a word, uncle, if thee does
not permit me to marry Ellen soon, he will break the match. And so, if thee
will make me a happy man--”
“I will,” said I, with
uncommon fervour; “thee shall marry the maiden, and I will straightway see what
I can do for thee. Verily, what is wealth but the dross of the earth, unless
used to purchase happiness for those that are worthy.”
At these words Jonathan
leaped for joy, seized my hand and kissed it, vowed I was “his dear old dad,
for all I was only his uncle,” and ran from the room--doubtless to impart the
happy tidings to his mistress.
How happy was I, to
think I had conferred happiness upon another! how agreeable my sensations! how
delightful the approbation of my own heart! How much I rejoiced that my soul
had at last found a habitation equal to its wishes! an abode of peace! a
dwelling of content! “If I am Zachariah Longstraw,” said I to myself, “I will
show myself worthy of the name; I will spend his money in the great cause of
philanthropy; I will make the afflicted smile; I will win the blessings of the
poor; I will do more good than even Zachariah Longstraw himself: yea, of a
surety, I will devote myself to a life of virtue!”
While I was making
these virtuous resolutions, the faithful Abel Snipe came to my bedside, and
told me there were divers suffering creatures, widows with nine small children,
widowers with fourteen, sick old women, and starving old men, in great need of
relief; and so affecting was the picture he drew of their griefs, that the
tears rolled from my eyes, and I bade him, if there was any money he could
honestly lay his hands on, carry comfort to them all.
“Verily,” said he, “I
have just collected the quarter’s rent of the house in Market-street; and it
will be enough, and more.”
“Relieve the poor
afflicted creatures, then.. And hark thee, Abel Snipe, does thee consider me a
rich man? If so, let me know where I can find twenty thousand dollars to set up
the young man Jonathan in business, and marry him to the maiden Ellen Wild.”
“Alas!” said Abel
Snipe; “of a verity, the young man is in a hurry; and alas! for, of a verity,
if thee takes away at this time such a great sum from thee possessions, thee
will cut off the right hand of thee charity.”
And thereupon the
benevolent creature, after showing me, which it was easy to do, that, with the
mere revenue of the sum demanded, if kept in our own hands, we could carry
smiles and rejoicing into at least a hundred families every year, exhorted me
not to forget that I was the friend of the afflicted, nor to faint in the good
work of philanthropy. Jonathan was a very young man, he said--only
twenty-five--happy in his youth, happy in his affections, happy in the certain
prospect he enjoyed of sooner or later arriving at the fullest felicity. Why
should he not then consent, like us, to forego for a while his selfish desires,
contribute his portion to the wants of the poor, and, by labouring a few years
in their cause, approve himself worthy of fortune? How much better that he
should endure a fancied ill, than that a hundred afflicted families should be
given up to actual want? He contended that the young man’s request was untimely
and selfish, and that I would only harden his heart, while breaking a thousand
others, if I granted it. In short, he said so many things, and painted so many
affecting pictures of the miseries of my fellow-creatures, and the beauties of
charity, that my mind was quite changed on the subject, and I perceived it was
my duty to resist the young man’s wishes.
This change, on the
morrow (being the first day that I was able to sit up), I explained to Jonathan,
exhorting him, with a feeling enthusiasm, to tear all narrow, selfish feelings
from his heart, and embark with me, like a virtuous youth, in the great
enterprise of philanthropy. He fell into a passion, told me my philanthropy was
a fudge, and Abel Snipe a rogue and hypocrite; vowed I had a greater regard for
knaves and paupers than for my own flesh and blood, and was flinging away my
money only to encourage vice and beggary. It was in vain I sought to pacify the
indignant youth. An evil spirit seized upon him. He did nothing for three days
but scold, reproach, and complain. He abused the faithful Abel to his face,
calling him a fox, viper, cormorant, harpy, and I know not what beside; all
which Abel endured with patience and resignation, for he was of a meek and
humble spirit. Nay, not content with this, he proceeded on the third day to
greater lengths, and did very intemperately fall upon the said Abel Snipe,
tweaking him by the nose and ears, until the poor man yelled with pain--and
even endeavoured to kick him out of the house; after which, being censured for
the same, and I siding with Abel, as justice demanded, in the controversy, his
resentment grew to such a pitch that he left the house, declaring he would live
with me no longer, but leave me to ruin myself at my leisure.
This was an occurrence
that caused me much pain, for verily I had an exceeding great love for the
young man, and I perceived that he was treating me with ingratitude. I was,
however, greatly comforted by the increased zeal and affection of the
ever-faithful Abel; who, coming to me with tears in his eyes, declared that he
could not bear the thought of being a cause of dissension between me and my
nephew, and therefore besought me that I would discard him from my presence,
when I could again live happily with my Jonathan.
I resisted, while duly
appreciating the good man’s friendship; and, fortunately, there needed no such
sacrifice on my part; for, on the eleventh day, Jonathan returned of his own
accord, and, confessing his folly, and entreating Abel’s forgiveness, as well
as mine, was restored again to favour. His return itself was grateful to my
feelings; but the reader may judge how great was my rapture, when Jonathan
avowed a change in his sentiments on the subject of philanthropy, and declared
that the spirit at last moved him to think of his suffering fellow-creatures.
He entreated to be conducted to the abodes of affliction, and there the
conversion was completed. He became a changed man, and in a few days was almost
as zealous an alms-giver as myself. I took him to my arms, and said--
“Now, Jonathan, thee is
a man in whom I no longer fear the seductions of the flesh. Thee shall marry
the maid Ellen, and be set up in business.”
“Nay,” said Jonathan; “not
so. I am yet but as a youth in years, and the time sufficeth for all things.
Let not the whirl of business and the joy of the honey-moon disturb the virtue
that is yet young and frail in my bosom. Of a verity, Ellen Wild will wait till
the fall; and if she don’t, and my heart should be broken, verily I shall then
be better enabled to sympathize with the wretched.”
Such was the lofty,
though new-born virtue of my Jonathan!
But of that, as well as
our works of benevolence, I shall speak in the following chapters.
I have already said
that the mere presence of the philanthropic feeling, now infused into my
spirit, filled me with happiness, even while I lay upon my back, aching with
wounds and bruises. It may be inferred, therefore, that my soul was ecstasy
itself, when, restored at last to health and strength, I stalked into the air,
dispensing charity with both hands.
Of a verity, it was--at
least, for a time; and I will say, that, during the first month of my new
existence, I experienced a thousand agreeable sensations, such as had never
occurred to me in my whole life before. And here let me observe, that, if what
I have to add shall show that there are offsets of inconvenience and
tribulation even to the satisfaction of the benevolent, I do not design to
throw any discredit on the virtue of benevolence itself; which I truly regard
as one of the divinest of endowments, angelic in its nature, and blessed in its
effects, when practised with discretion; and amiable, if not lovely, even in
its folly. I believe, indeed, that if Heaven looks with peculiar indulgence on
the errors of any man, it is in the case of him who has the softest judgment
for the errors, and the readiest reparation for the miseries, of his fellows.
What I wish to be understood is, that man is an unthankful animal, and of such
rare inconsistency of temper, that he seldom foregoes an opportunity to punish
the virtue which he so loudly applauds.
I was now a
philanthropist, and I will say (which I think I may do without shame, the merit
being less attributable to me than to that worthy deceased personage whose body
I inhabited), that a truer, purer, or more zealous one never walked the earth.
I should fill a book as big as a family Bible, were I to record all the good
things I did or attempted, while a tenant in Zachariah Longstraw’s body. All my
feelings and desires were swallowed up in one great passion of philanthropy;
universal benevolence was the maxim I engraved upon my heart; I had no thought
but to relieve the distresses, meliorate the condition, and advance the
happiness of my species. My generosity extended equally to individuals and
communities; I toiled alike in the service of the beggar and the million,
putting bread into the mouth of the one, and infusing moral principles into the
breasts of the others. In a word, I was, as I have called myself already, a
philanthropist; and if my virtue was somewhat excessive in degree, it proceeded
from the sincerest promptings of spirit.
It may be supposed that
the treatment I (for, of a verity, I myself came in for some share of the hard
usage that killed the true Zachariah) had received from the base and brutal
John Smith, must have cooled my regard for him, if it did not affect my
feelings of philanthropy in general. I confess that I did regard that personage
with sentiments of disgust and indignation; but, nevertheless, I was very loath
to appear against him when summoned (as I was, soon after leaving my sick-bed)
to give evidence on the charges preferred against him. These were two in
number, and afforded matter for as many separate endictments. In the
first--and, verily, I was startled when I heard it--John Smith was charged with
the murder of Abram Skinner; in the second, with an assault, with intent to
kill, upon myself--that is, my second self, Zachariah Longstraw--and also with
robbery.
Now, if the reader will
reflect a moment upon the relation in which I stood to these charges, he will
allow that the necessity of testifying on them reduced me to a quandary. In the
first place, I knew very well that Mr. John Smith, rogue and assassin as he
was, had not killed Abram Skinner, but that I had finished that unhappy
gentleman myself; and I knew also, in the second, that my admitting this fact
would, without doing Mr. John Smith any good, produce a decided inconvenience
to myself:-- not that there was any fear I should be arraigned for murder, but
because nobody would believe me. I remembered how my telling the truth to my
friend John Darling, the deputy attorney, in regard to my first transformation,
had caused him to believe me mad; and I foresaw that telling the truth on the
present occasion would reduce me to the same predicament, and perhaps the
Friends’ mad-house into the bargain.
There was the same
difficulty in relation to the second charge, accompanied by another still
greater; for, whereas John Smith was there only accused of assault with intent
to kill, he had in reality committed a murder; which if I had affirmed, as I
must have done had I affirmed any thing at all, I should have been a living
contradiction of my own testimony, and thus considered madder than ever.
The truth is, I was in
a dilemma, out of which the truth could not extract me; and the more I thought
the matter over, the greater was my embarrassment. A feeling of integrity
within me (for Zachariah Longstraw was a man of conscience) urged me to speak
the truth; while common sense showed me how much worse than useless truth would
be in such an extraordinary conjuncture.
I received a visit from
the prosecuting attorney, who very naturally expected a clear and satisfactory
account of Mr. John Smith’s doings on the night of the murder; and the
difficulty I had with him (that is, the attorney) gave me a foretaste of what I
was to expect when summoned into the witness’s box in court. I remember that
the gentleman, after plying me with many questions, to which he got that sort
of replies invidiously termed “Quaker answers,” flew into a huff, and
threatened me with what would be the consequence if I should prove backward in
court. And, sure enough, his prediction was verified; for, not giving a
straight answer to any one question when the trial came on, I received divers
reprimands from the court, and was finally committed for a contempt to prison;
where I lay two or three days, until called into court again to give evidence
on the second endictment, Mr. John Smith having been found not guilty on the
first. This was owing in part, I presume, to the testimony of several surgeons,
who deposed that there were no marks of violence upon Abram Skinner’s body;
although the evidence of the watchman, who had seen him alive through the window,
and afterward found John Smith burying his dead body in the same hole with
myself, went rather hard with him. I say the acquittal was perhaps owing in
part to the testimony of the surgeons; though much of it might be attributed to
the marvellous humanity that reigns in the criminal courts of the city of
Brotherly Love, to the great benefit and encouragement of that proscribed and
injured class of men, namely--murderers.
I made little better
work of the second attempt at witnessing; but, as I have matters of much
greater importance to demand my attention, and the reader can easily infer what
I did and what I did not affirm, I must beg to despatch the second trial by
relating that I was packed off a second time to prison for contempt, but that
the evidence of the watchman, and my late wounds and bruises, were esteemed
sufficient to secure the prisoner’s conviction; and accordingly John Smith was
convicted, and accommodated with lodgings in the penitentiary for the fourth
time.
My own incarceration
was of no long duration. My contumacy, as it was called, was considered
extraordinary; but it was generally thought to be owing to a mistaken humanity,
and a perverted, Quixotic conscientiousness, such as are common enough among
persons of the persuasion I then belonged to. This, and perhaps the
circumstance that I was yet in feeble health (for the trial, as I said, took
place soon after I left my bed), caused me to be treated with lenity; and in a
few days I was liberated.
All this, I beg the
reader to understand, happened before the reconciliation with my nephew
Jonathan, and, of course, before I had well begun my career of philanthropy. Of
that career, of some of my deeds of goodness, and of the consequences they
produced, I shall now speak.
My benevolence was of a
two-fold character, being both theoretic and practical. In the latter sense, is
to be regarded the relief which I granted with my own hands to such suffering
persons as I could lay them on; and there was no way in which I did not
personally relieve some one wretch or other. By the former, I understand a
thousand schemes which I devised and framed, to enlist the sympathies of
communities, and so relieve the afflicted in a mass; besides a thousand others
which were designed to bestow upon the poor and vicious that virtuous knowledge
and those virtuous principles, which are better than alms of gold and silver. I
instituted some half a dozen charitable societies, to supply fuel, clothing,
food, and employment to the suffering poor; as well as others to exhort them to
economy, industry, prudence, fortitude, and so forth. I formed societies even
among themselves, classing divers isolated creatures into bands, who wrought in
common, and disposed of their wares, either in a shop kept for the purpose, or
at fairs. I established schools to keep the children of the poor out of
mischief, and one in particular I supported solely from my own, that is to say,
Zachariah Longstraw’s pocket.
I bestowed much of my
regards upon the poor wretches in prison, doing all that I was permitted to
effect a reformation in their habits and feelings; and I took uncommon pains to
scatter light and sentiments of a civilized character among the worthy
representatives of the Green Island, who make up so large a portion of our
suffering population.
And let it not be
supposed that I neglected that other class of poor creatures, called negroes,
whom, although allowed the name, and most of the privileges of freemen, their
white brethren refuse to take to their bosoms, merely because they have black
faces, woolly heads, and an ill savour of body. For myself, verily, if they
were not comely in my sight, nor agreeable to my nostrils, I said, “Heaven hath
made them so;” and although my nephew Jonathan insisted that Heaven had done
the same thing with other animals, and that, upon my principles, men should be
as affectionate with pigs and badgers as they were with cats and lap-dogs, I
perceived that they were my brethern, and that it became me to conquer the
prejudices lying only in my eyes and nostrils. I girded my loins to the work,
and verily, I prevailed over the weakness of the old Adam. Of a verity, I was
the African’s friend.
But, oh! the wickedness
of the world, and the ingratitude thereof! The heart of man is even as the soil
of the earth, which, the more it is stirred up by cultivation, the more barren
and worthless it becomes. It is as the fields of the Ancient Dominion, where,
if a man soweth barley and corn, he shall reap a harvest of Jamestown weed,
poke-berries, and scrub pines. It is as the bulldog that one feedeth with beef
and other wholesome viands, who, the moment he has done his dinner, snaps, for
his dessert, at the feeder’s heel. It is as the tender flowers, which, in the
winter-time, a man taketh from the cold, to warm, by night, in his chamber, and
which smother him with foul air before morning. Verily, it was my lot to find,
even as my nephew Jonathan had once foolishly contended, that even philanthropy
is not secure from the sting of unthankfulness--that benevolence is, in one
sense, the great parent of ingratitude--since it begets it. For a period of
full seven months (for so long did I remain in Zachariah’s body, after recoving
my health), I laboured to do good to my fellows, and, verily, I laboured with
might and main, Yet, had I toiled with the same energy to injure and oppress, I
almost doubt whether I should have been rewarded with more manifold outpourings
of wrath and fury. Verily, as I said before, the world is a wicked world, and I
begin to doubt whether man can make it better.
One of the first
mishaps that befell me was of the following nature. Stepping one morning into
the mayor’s office, which was a favourite haunt with me, seeing that misery
doth there greatly abound, I fell upon a man whom the magistrate was about to
commit to jail, for being drunk and beating his wife and children, he being
unable to pay the fine imposed upon him, and to find surety for his future good
behaviour.
The spirit stirred
within me as I beheld the contrite looks of the culprit, and I said to myself--
“While he lies in jail, his poor wife and his infants may perish with hunger.”
I paid the fine, and, though the mayor did very broadly hint to me that a
little punishment would do the man good, and his wife too, seeing that he was a
barbarous fellow, I offered myself for his security, and thus sent him back to
his rejoicing family. I said to myself-- “This very night will I witness the
happiness I have created.” I went accordingly to the man’s house, where I found
the wicked fellow raving with drink, and beating his wife as before, his
children screaming with terror, and the neighbours crying out for a constable.
I did but say a word of reprehension to him, when the brutish ingrate, leaving
his rib, fell foul of myself, mauling me cruelly; and I believe he would have
beaten me to death, had I not been rescued by the timely appearance of a
constable. “Thee sees the end of thy humanity!” said the mayor, when I entered
his office the next morning, that my black eye and bruised visage might testify
against the ungrateful man; “thee will not object to my committing the fellow
now?”
“Nay,” said I; “it is
drunkenness that has made the poor man mad. Therefore lock him up in prison
until his madness hath departed.”
“I will,” said the
mayor; “and thee will have the goodness to pay over to the clerk the hundred
dollars in which thee bound thyself that the rascal should keep the peace.”
“Verily,” said I, “it
is not just I should pay the money; for the beating was upon my own body.”
“Truly,” said the
mayor, “and so it was; and therefore it is the harder that thee should have to
pay it. But pay it thee must, the man having broken the peace as much in
beating thee, as if it had been any other citizen of the commonwealth.”
And so much
satisfaction I had for befriending the sot; the charity, which did more harm
than good even to the man’s poor family, since it exposed them a second time to
his fury, costing me, without counting the fine paid on the first day, a sore
beating and one hundred dollars.
My next misadventure
was the being cheated in a very aggravated way by a poor man to whom I loaned
money, without exacting bond or voucher, the same being loaned to re-establish
him in a gainful business, which had been interrupted by an unfortunate
accident. For, having prospered in his business, and I requiring that he should
now repay the money, that I might devote it to the service of others, he very
impudently averred that he had never had any thing of me, except advice and a
good word of recommendation here and there; swore that he never paid away or
received a cent without giving or taking a receipt; defied me to prove my claim;
and concluded his baseness by threatening to kick me out of his workshop.
These instances of
ingratitude were followed by others of a still deeper die, and so numerous,
that I can mention only a few of them.
Walking one day to that
infant school which I had established, to keep children out of mischief while
their hard-working parents were at their daily labours, I perceived the urchins
standing at the door, pelting the passers-by with mud. Reproving them for this
misconduct, the graceless vagabonds did speedily turn their battery upon
myself; and, not content to plaster and bespatter me with mudballs from head to
foot, they fell upon me, and, being very numerous, did actually roll me about
in a gutter, where was a deep slough, so that I had nearly perished with
suffocation, being sorely bruised into the bargain. To crown all, having
expelled from my school the ringleaders in this marvellous outbreaking of
precocious ingratitude, I was visited by their parents, all of them abusing me
for my tyrannical usage of their children (although, of a truth, the tyranny
was all on the side of the juveniles), and impudently demanding that I should
pay them for their boys’ time, at the rate of twenty-five cents a week each,
for as many weeks as I had had them at school. Of a surety, some people are
very unreasonable.
It was also my
misfortune to offend divers tailors and shopkeepers, by benevolently taking
part in the efforts of their poor unfortunate needle-women to obtain better
wages; and one day, in the streets, these angry men did hustle me, and tear a
tail from my coat. But I consoled myself for this violence, by thinking of the
gratitude of the poor creatures I was defending; when, making my way, the
following evening, to their place of assembly, I was set upon by the whole
crew, for that I did hint, that, as their difficulties did chiefly proceed from
their numbers, there being more hands at the business of sewing than were
required, they would greatly benefit themselves, and the community too, by
going, two thirds of them at least, into service, there being ever a great want
of domestics in our respectable families. I say, I did but hint this reasonable
and undeniable truth, together with a friendly remark upon the exposed state of
their morals, when there arose such a storm among them as was never perhaps
witnessed by any other human being. “Hear the old hunks!” said one: “he wants
to make niggur servants of us! us, that is freeborn American girls!”--“Yes,
ladies!” said another, “and he is insinivating we are no better nor we should
be!”--“Turn the old rip out!” said a third; and “Turn him out!” cried the other
three hundred and fifty there present. Of a verity, they did assail me with
both tongue and nail, testifying such vigour of spirit and strength of arm,
that, were I a philanthropist now, which I fortunately am not, and were I moved
to consult their interests as before, I should endeavour to form them into a
regiment of soldiers, not doubting that they would, at any moment, prevail over
twice their numbers of male fighting men. Of a verity, I say, they did
violently pull me about, thrusting me at last from the apartment: and their
ingratitude was a sore wound to my spirit.
Another evil that
befell me about the same time, was equally afflicting. A negro-man that had
fled from bondage in a neighbouring state, being sharply hunted, and about to
be captured by the person that called him his property, I carried him to my
house, and there concealed him for three days and mights, until his master had
departed; “For,” said I, “of a surety, slavery is a bitter pill, and one that
cures neither the rheumatism nor the ague; and, therefore, why should my
brother Pompey be compelled to swallow it?” My brother Pompey, having eaten,
drunk, and slept at my expense for the three days mentioned, disappeared on the
morning of the fourth before daylight, carrying with him twenty-seven pounds of
silver, in spoons, teapots, and other vessels, the three watches belonging to
myself, my nephew, and Abel Snipe, as well as Jonathan’s best coat and
trousers. Verily, I was confounded at the fellow’s ingratitude, and the loss of
my valuables, all of which, however, though broken up, it was my good fortune
to recover, together with the three watches. The thief himself, being taken,
was clapped into jail for a while, and then surrendered to his master, and
carried back to bondage; and this stirring up the choler of the free Africans
in town, they did naught but cry out upon me as the author of his misfortune,
surrounding my house with a mob, and proceeding to the length of even burning
it down. At least, the house taking fire, and manifestly by the act of an
incendiary, it was charged by my friends upon these raging foolish people,
though I was never able to prove it upon any one in particular. As my good
fortune would have it, Abel Snipe had taken out a policy of ensurance, so that
I recovered the money from the company; but not without going to law, the
company averring that my humanity rendered me careless.
I caused another
dwelling to be built; and, in building it, received another strong and
inconvenient proof, not merely of man’s ingratitude, but of his natural
hostility to the charity which benefits his neighbours. I bought my marble out
of the prison, in order to encourage industry among the prisoners, and thus
lighten the load of taxation on the community at large. This being known, the
marble-cutters fell into wrath, denounced me as the friend of villany and the
enemy of honest industry; and being joined by the shoemakers, who had put me
down in their character-book as a patron to none but prison-workmen, and by
divers other mechanics that had some grudge of the same kind, they seized upon
me, as I stood surveying my rising mansion, and bedaubed me from head to foot
with thick whitewash, painting in great black letters, on the broad of my back,
the following words, namely--“The Rogue’s Friend;” which caused me, after I had
escaped from their hands, to be hooted at by boys and men along the street, and
to be bitten by a great cur-dog, that was amazed at my appearance.
Another misfortune,
still more distressing, befell me one day, as I walked among the western
suburbs, seeking whom I might relieve. I espied a company of men surrounding a
ring, made with stakes and ropes, in which two wretched creatures were
stripping off their garments, with the intention to do battle upon one another
with their fists. These were gentlemen of the fancy, as it is called; though
imagination can paint nothing of a more grossly animal and brutish character,
afar from all that is fanciful, than that very class that calls itself of the
fancy. I was shocked that the poor creatures should, in their ignorance, agree
to maul and beat one another, for the amusement of a mob; and I was concerned
that a mob, containing so many rational beings, should be willing to harry on
two such silly fellows to harm each other for their pastime. I stepped among
them, therefore, and addressed them, exhorting them to peace and harmony; and
this producing but little effect on them, I upbraided them with breaking the
laws, both human and divine, and assured them I would go hunt up the police, to
prevent the mischief they meditated. Alas! how ungratefully they used me! There
was a man at a distance who was heating a great pot of tar, to pay the bottom
of a canal-boat; and just a moment before, a carter had stopped to look on the
affray, leaving on the roadside his cart, on which, among other articles of
domestic furniture, was an old feather-bed, lying on the top of all. The devil
had surely brought these things upon the ground, that his sinful children, the
gentlemen of the fancy, might be at no loss how to testify their hatred of
humanity. The very combatants themselves were the first to seize me, and cry
out, “Tar and feather the old Bother’em! Douse down the bed, and dab the pot
off the fire.” And “Daub him well!” they cried, all the while that their
wretched companions, drowning the cries I made for assistance, with savage
yells of rage and merriment, covered me from head to foot with the nasty pitch,
and then, tearing the bed to pieces, emptied its contents over my reeking body.
Then, having feathered me all over, and so transformed me that I looked more
like an ostrich than a human being, they tied me to a post, where I was forced
to remain, looking upon the fight that immediately ensued between the
champions. A horrid sight it was; but I was so devoured with shame and
indignation, that I should have cared little had they dashed each other’s brains
out. So much I endured for exhorting men to live together in peace and amity.
The very beasts seemed
to conspire to treat me with ingratitude. My first effort in their cause was an
attempt I made one day, on the tow-path near the Water-Works, to protect a poor
brokendown barge-horse, which the driver was cruelly beating. My interference
cost me a dip in the basin, the man, who was both savage and strong, pitching
me in headlong, and (what I deemed still more provoking) a kick from the horse,
who let fly at me with his heels, merely because mine, as they were tripped
into the air, came in contact with his hind-quarters; so that I was both lamed
and half drowned for my charity.
In the same way, I was
scratched half to death, and much more savagely than I had been before by the
needle-women, by a cat that I took out of a dog’s mouth,--without counting upon
a nip that I had from the cur also. And, to end this small catalogue of animal
ingratitude, I may say, that, within a fortnight after, I was served in the
same way by a rat that I strove to liberate from the fangs of my own gray
tabby; for, while Tabby was clawing at my fingers, the rat took me by the
thumb; and between them I was near perishing with lockjaw, the weather being
uncommonly hot, and the time midsummer.
There were a thousand
other mischances of a like nature which befell me, but which I have not leisure
to describe, nor even to enumerate. Some few of them, however, I think proper
to record; but, to save space, I will clap them into a short list, along with
those already mentioned, where they may be examined at a glance, and where, in
that glance, the reader may perceive what are sometimes the rewards of
philanthropy.
Beaten by a drunkard
whom I had taken out of prison, and bailed to keep the peace.
Mulcted out of $100
surety-money, because my gentleman broke the peace by beating me.
Driven, and almost
kicked, out of a man’s workshop, because I asked payment of a loan made without
bond or voucher.
My nose pulled by a
merchant to whom I had (out of charity to the latter, who was unfortunate)
recommended a customer, who swindled him.
Rolled in the mud by
the boys of my own charity-school, whom I had exhorted not to daub the
passers-by.
Abused by their parents
for not paying them 25 cents per week for the time I had the boys at school.
Hustled by tailors,
slop-shopkeepers, and others, for taking part with the needle-women in a
strike.
Scolded, scratched, and
tumbled down stairs by the needle-women, for advising them to go into domestic
service, and take care of their morals.
Robbed by a fugitive
slave whom I had concealed three days and nights in my house from his master.
House burnt down by the
free blacks (or so it was suspected) for putting the thief as aforesaid into
jail, so that his master got him.
Whitewashed and
libelled on my own back by the stonecutters, for buying wrought marble out of
the prison.
Tarred and feathered by
a gang of the fancy, whom I exhorted at the ring to peace and amity.
Scalded at my own house
(which I had converted, at a season of suffering, into a gratis soup-house),
and with my own soup, by a beggar, because there was too little meat and too
much salt in it.
Soused in the canal by
a boat-driver, for rebuking his cruelty to an old barge-horse.
Kicked by the horse for
taking his part.
Scratched by a cat, for
taking her out of a dog’s mouth: item, bitten by the dog.
Bitten by a rat, which
I rescued from a cat: item, scratched by the cat.
Gored by a cow for
helping her calf out of the mire: item, the calf splashed me all over with mud.
Beaten about the ears
with a half-skinned eel, by a fishwoman, whom I reproved for skinning it alive.
Such were some of the
unhappy circumstances that rewarded a seven months’ life of philanthropy. But
there were others to follow still more discouraging and afflicting.
It is a common belief
among those who are more religious than wise, that a man never catches a cold
going to church of a wet Sunday, or being baptized in midwinter. I am myself of
opinion, the belief of such good people to the contrary notwithstanding, that
many devout persons, by wading to church in the slush, or washing out their
sins in snow-water, have gone to heaven much sooner than they expected. In the
same way, and on the same principle of distrusting all miraculous interposition
of Heaven in cases where human reason is sufficient for our protection, I have
my doubts in the truth of another maxim of great acceptation in the
world,--namely, “that a man never grows poor by giving.” I believe, indeed,
that the charity of a discreet and truly conscientious man never injures his
fortune, but may, in many instances, actually tend to its increase; since the
love of benevolence may stimulate him to new labours of acquisition, that he
may have the greater means of doing good. But I am also of opinion, and I think
it may be demonstrated by a good accountant, that a man who has a revenue of a
thousand a year, and bestows fifteen hundred in charity, will, in due course of
time, find himself as poor as his pensioners. When a man hath a goose with
golden eggs, whatever he may do with the eggs, he should take great care of the
goose.
The reader may infer
from these remarks, that my philanthropy was as little profitable to my pocket
as it proved to my person; and such indeed was the truth. I am of opinion I
should myself, in a very few years, have consumed the whole estate of Zachariah
Longstraw, ample as it was, in works of charity. How much faster it went with
my nephew and my friend Abel to assist me, may be imagined. My nephew became a
very dragon of charity, and dispensed my money upon such objects of pity as he could
find (for he soon began to practise the profession upon what Abel called his
own hook), with a zeal little short of fury; so that, to supply his demands, I
was sometimes obliged even to stint myself. Had Abel Snipe been equally
profuse, there is no saying how soon I might have found myself at the end of my
estate. But Abel Snipe was a jewel; his charity was great, but his
conscientiousness was greater; he had ever a watchful eye to my good; and his
solicitude to husband and improve my means kept his benevolence within the
bounds of discretion.
But, notwithstanding
all his care, Abel perceived that our philanthropy was beginning to eat holes
into my possessions; and coming to me one day with a long face, he assured me,
that, unless some means were devised to increase my income, we should soon find
ourselves driven to resort to the capital.
“Verily, and of a
truth,” said I, not a whit frighted at this communication, “and why should that
chill us in the good work, Abel Snipe? Of a surety, all that I possess, is it
not the property of the poor?”
“Verily,” said Abel, “verily
and yea; but if we betake us to the capital, verily, it will happen that sooner
or later it shall be consumed, and nothing left to us wherewithal to befriend
the afflicted. I say to thee, Zachariah, thy wealth is, as thou sayest, the
property of the poor; and it becomes thee, as a true and faithful servant
thereof, to see that it be not wasted, but, on the contrary, husbanded with
care and foresight, and put out to profit, so that the single talent may become
two, and peradventure three; whereby the poor, as aforesaid, shall be twice,
and, it may be, thrice benefited.”
“Thou speakest the
words of sense and seriousness,” said I, struck by the new view of the case. “But
how shall this happy object be effected? What shall we do, Abel Snipe, to make
the one talent three, and thereby increase our means of doing good?”
“Thee nephew Jonathan,”
said Abel Snipe, with a look of devout joy, “is now a changed man, a man of
seriousness and virtue, a scorner of vain things, and a giver of alms--a man
whom we can trust. I say to thee, Zachariah, thee shall establish thee nephew
in a gainful business, and he shall make money; thee shall give him what is
thee property for his capital, remaining theeself but as a sleeping partner:
and thus it shall happen that thee capital shall be turned over three times a
year, producing, on each occasion, dividends three times as great as now accrue
from thy investments: and thus, Zachariah (and verily it is pleasant to think
upon), where thee now has a thousand dollars of revenue, thee shall then have
nine; and where thee now relieves nine afflicted persons, thee shall there-upon
relieve nine times nine, which is eighty-one.”
I need not assure the
reader that this proposition of Abel’s fastened mightily upon my imagination,
and that I was eager to embrace it; and Jonathan coming in at the moment, I
repeated the conversation to him, assuring him that, if he thought himself
able, with Abel’s assistance, to undertake such a business, he should have my
money to begin upon instanter, and marry the maiden Ellen into the bargain.
“Nay, verily,” said
Jonathan, “I will not marry, and I will not do this thing whereof thee speaks.
Uncle Zachariah, thee may think me light of mind thus to speak of Ellen Wild,
who is much lighter; but, of a surety, I find the spirit moves me to regard her
as one not to be regarded any longer. In the matter of the money-making, I say,
let Abel Snipe be thy merchant, or whatsoever it may be thee has determined on;
for Abel Snipe is a good business man, and he knows how to make money. He shall
have my advice and assistance, as far as may be in my power. But, truly, my
thoughts now run in the paths of the unfortunate; and thither let my footsteps
follow also.”
To this proposal the
faithful Abel, with tears in his eyes (for he was moved that Jonathan should
express such confidence in him at last), demurred, averring that it would be
better, and more seemly, for Jonathan himself to undertake the affair, he, Abel
Snipe, giving help and counsel, according to his humble ability. Jonathan
objected as before, and again declared that Abel, and Abel alone, was, as he
expressed it, “the man for my money.” In short, the two young men, now the best
friends in the world, contested the matter, each arguing so warmly in favour of
the other, that it was plain the thing could never be determined without my
casting vote, which I, seeing that Jonathan was positive, and bent upon a life
of virtue, gave in Abel’s favour, and it was resolved accordingly that Abel
should be made the money-maker.
And now, the question
occurring to me, I demanded into what kind of business we should enter.
“That,” said Jonathan, “is
a question more easily made than answered, seeing that there are so many ways
of making money in this wicked world, that an honest man can scarce tell which
to choose among them;” and then proceeded with great gravity to indicate divers
callings, which he pronounced the most gainful in the world, and all or any of
which, he thought, Abel could easily turn his hand to.
The first he advised
was quackery--the making and vending of nostrums to cure all manner of
diseases, including corns and the toothache; which was a business that had the
merit of requiring no previous study or education, a tinker or cobbler being
just as fit to follow it as a man that had read Paracelsus; and which, besides,
as was evident from the speed with which its professors in general stepped from
the kitchen-pot to the carriage, was the quickest way of making a fortune that
could be imagined. I should have thought the young man was joking (for he had
that vice in him to the last), had it not been for the fervour with which he
pointed out the advantages of the vocation. A great recommendation, he averred,
was, that it required no capital beyond a few hundred dollars, to be laid out
in bottles and logwood, or some other colouring material. Pump-water, he said,
was cheap; and as for the other sovereign ingredient, it was furnished by the
buyer himself. “Yes!” said Jonathan, “faith is furnished by the buyer, who pays
us for the privilege of swallowing it; we sell men their own conceits, bottled
up with green, red, and brown water; and thereby we make them their own
doctors. Who then can say the calling of the quack is not honest--nay, even
philanthropic? He is a public benefactor--a friend even of physicians; for he
frees them from the painful necessity of killing, by making men their own
executioners.”
And thus he went on
until I cut him short by averring, that the whole business was little better
than wholesale cheating and murder. He then recommended we should make Abel a
tailor, solemnly declaring that, next to quackery, tailoring, which was a quackery
of another sort, was the most profitable trade that could be followed; the mere
gain from cabbaging, considering that an ingenious tailor got at least one inch
of cloth out of every armhole, without counting the nails cribbed from other
parts of a coat, being immense, and his profits, seeing that he lost nothing by
a bad customer that he did not charge to a good one, as certain and immutable
as the laws of the Medes and Persians.
In short, my nephew
Jonathan was in the mood for expatiating on the merits of all money-making
vocations; in which I should follow him, were I not urged by the exigencies
arising from limited time and space to adhere to my story. He made divers
recommendations, none of which I thought of weight; and upon Abel, who had
heard him with gravity and attention, I was at last forced to call for advice
and assistance. It was his opinion, and he advised accordingly, that all the
money I could raise should be thrown into the stock-market, where, being
applied to purchase and sale in the usual way, he had no doubt it could be made
to yield a revenue of at least twenty per cent., and perhaps twice as much; and
this proposal, strange as it may seem to the reader, after the experience Abram
Skinner had given me in such matters, I did, after sundry doubts and
hesitations, finally agree to.
“Verily,” said I, “this
is a gainful business, friend Abel; but, of a surety, neither honest nor
humane, seeing that it is practised at the expense of the ignorant, and often
the needy.”
“Verily, no,” said Abel
Snipe, with fervour; “it shall be at the expense of the rich and niggardly--
the man that is a miser and uncharitable--the broker and the gambler--the bull
and the bear. Our dealings shall not be with the poor and ignorant man that
dabbleth in stocks; but him will we charitably pluck from the grasp of the
covetous, and thus protect, while drawing from the covetous man those alms of
benevolence which he would never himself apply to the use of the afflicted.”
“Verily,” said I,
pleased with the idea, “if we can make the covetous man charitable, it will be
a good thing; and if we can protect the foolish ignorant person from his grasp,
it will be still better. But, of a surety, Abel Snipe, this business will be as
gambling?”
“Yea, and verily,” said
Abel Snipe, “it is as gambling when a gambler follows it; but in the hands of
an honest man it is an honest profession. Is not money, bagged up in stocks and
other investments, as merchandise? and, as merchandise, shall it not be
lawfully bought and sold?”
“And moreover,” said
Jonathan, with equal earnestness, “if it be no better than cheating and
swindling, this same buying and selling, are we not embarking in it out of
charity? Verily, uncle Zachariah, in such a case as this, the end sanctifies
the means. Behold what is the crying evil arising from money that is chartered
in stocks, whether it be in banks, rail-roads, loans, or otherwise. This is
money that is not taxed for charitable purposes; it is money appropriated
solely to the purposes of gain. Why is it that a private man should be taxed to
support the poor, and a bank, that has greater facilities for making money, be
not taxed for the purpose at all? Verily, uncle Zachariah, we will do what the
commonwealth should be doing; we will impose a tax upon the gains of chartered
money, and distribute the proceeds among the needy.”
To make short work of
the matter, I will not pursue our debate further, but merely state that I was
soon brought to consider Abel Snipe’s scheme the best, honestest, and most
philanthropic in the world, and to agree that he should open an office as a
stock-broker, turning a penny or two in that way, while making much more by
buying and selling on his own account. To this I was brought, in a great
measure, by the representations and arguments of Jonathan, among which I esteem
as still worthy of consideration that which stands above expressed in his own
words. I am still of opinion that a tax, and a round one, should be imposed
upon the profits of all banks and other money-making corporations, the same to
be specifically appropriated to hospitals, and other charitable foundations,
and perhaps also to public schools. In this way evil might be made productive
of good, and our avarice rendered the parent of benevolence and knowledge. Of a
verity, my philanthropy is not yet got out of me!
The aforementioned
arrangement was made at an early period of my new existence, that is to say, at
the close of spring; and the faithful Abel soon began to render a good account
of his stewardship, by handing me over divers handsome sums of money, the
profits of his speculations, which Jonathan and myself disbursed with rival
enthusiasm. The experiment was continued in a prosperous manner until the month
of September, when there happened a catastrophe not less unexpected than
calamitous.
The various mischances
and afflictions, as narrated in the preceding chapter, which rewarded my
virtue, had begun to affect my mind with sundry pangs of melancholy and
misgiving. I perceived that the world was ungrateful, and I had my doubts
whether it was a whit the better for my goodness. These doubts and this
persuasion were confirmed by the experience of each succeeding day; and by the
month of September as aforesaid, I found myself becoming just as miserable a
man as I had ever been before, and perhaps more so, being pierced not merely
with the ingratitude of those I had befriended, but convinced that the
unworthiness of man was a thing man was determined to persevere in.
It was at the moment of
my greatest distress, that the catastrophe alluded to before happened; and this
was nothing less than the sudden bankruptcy of Abel Snipe, whereby I was
reduced in a moment from affluence to destitution; and what made the calamity
still more painful, was a conviction forced upon me by my own reflections, as
well as the representations of others, that the failure could not have happened
without a fraudulent design on the part of the fiduciary. It is true, this
worthy gentleman was the first to inform me of his mishap, which he did with
tears in his eyes, and with divers outbreaks of self-accusation and despair; he
declared that his imprudence had ruined me, his benefactor, and implored me,
his benefactor, to knock him on the head with a poker I had begun to embrace in
my agitation; but how he had effected such a catastrophe I could not bring him
clearly to explain. The only answers I could get from him were, “Speculation,
speculation--bad speculation!--ruined my benefactor! might as well have murdered
thee!” and so on; and having given vent to some dozen or more of such frantic
interjections, he ran out of the house.
Enter Jonathan the very
next moment. The sight of him renewed my grief; he, poor youth, was ruined as
well as myself, yet not wholly; for, as good luck would have it, I had, a week
or two before, after long cogitation on the subject, resolved to marry him to
the maid Ellen Wild, and so secure his happiness more certainly than, it
appeared to me, it could be secured by a life of philanthropy. To effect this
desirable purpose I bestowed upon him the only property which I had not thought
fit to put into Abel Snipe’s hands, being the new house I was then building,
promising also to add a sum of money, as soon as it could be conveniently withdrawn
from the concern. He received the gift and the promise with much joy and
gratitude, but betrayed surprising indifference on the score of matrimony,
saying that he was in no great hurry, and in fact giving me to understand that
there was a difference between him and the maiden.
“Jonathan,” said I, as
soon as I saw him, “thee is a ruined young man. Abel has broken.”
“All to smash!” said
Jonathan; “I know all about it. Horrible pickle we’re in. But I say, uncle, if
thee can borrow twenty thousand dollars, we can save friend Abel yet.”
“Does thee say so?”
said I; “is it true?”
“Verily,” said
Jonathan, “I have looked over the demands, and twenty thousand dollars by nine
o’clock to-morrow will make all straight. But where will thee get twenty
thousand dollars?”
“Where?” said I, fairly
dancing for joy. “It was but two days since that thy friend Ebenezer Wild did
offer me exactly the sum of twenty thousand dollars for the new house as it
stood, not knowing I had conveyed it to thee, until I told him the same, as a
reason why I could not take such a handsome offer.”
“Well,” said Jonathan,
opening his eyes, “what then?”
“Surely,” said I, “if
he would give twenty thousand then, he will give twenty thousand now. And so,
Jonathan--”
“And so,” said Jonathan,
“thee wants me to sell the house, does thee? and give thee back the money?
Uncle Zachariah, thee should be a little more reasonable. Thee must remember
that the house is mine; and as it seems to be all I am ever to get, why, uncle,
thee must excuse me, but--I have no notion of parting with it.”
If Jonathan had picked
up the poker and served me the turn Abel Snipe had so piteously entreated me to
serve him--that is, knocked me on the head, I could not have been more shocked
and horror-struck than I was by these words.
“What, Jonathan,” said
I, “does thee refuse to save me from ruin--me, who have been a father to thee,
and given thee all that thou hast?”
“No,” said Jonathan,
coolly, “I am not so bad as that; but as this house is all I have, I can’t
think of running too much risk with it. Suppose thee borrows that twenty
thousand dollars that Ebenezer Wild has so handy: he is thy friend as well as
mine. Or suppose thee tries some of thy other friends. Thee has often loaned to
them, and not often borrowed. Sure thee has many friends who can spare money
better than I can.”
“Oh, thou ungrateful
young man!” said I.
“Don’t go to call me
hard names,” said the perfidious and unfeeling youth; “for, if thee comes to
that, uncle Zachariah, I can tell thee, thee is the ungrateful man--though not
a young one. Haven’t I been as a son to thee for eighteen long years? haven’t I
humoured all thy foolish old notions, even to the point of giving alms, talking
about virtue and philanthropy, and so on? haven’t I given up Ellen Wild to
please thee? And hasn’t thee, after all my pains, choused me out of the portion
I had a right to expect of thee, except a poor beggarly unfinished house, only
worth twenty thousand dollars? Yes, thee has, uncle Zachariah, thee can’t deny
it. Don’t thee talk to me of ingratitude.”
“Thou art a viper,”
said I.
“If I am,” said
Jonathan in a huff, “I won’t stay to be trodden on.”
And with that, the
heartless creature, tossing up his head like an emperor, stalked out of the
house, leaving me petrified by the enormity of his baseness.
I was, indeed, so
shocked, so overwhelmed, by ingratitude coming from such a quarter, that it was
some time before I could recover myself sufficiently to think of the steps
necessary to be taken for my preservation. I remembered, however, that he, even
he, my thrice unfeeling nephew, had recommended me to borrow of my friends what
would be enough to retrieve my affairs from ruin. I ran from the house, not
doubting that I could easily raise the sum. Fifty paces distant was my new
house--that is, Jonathan’s. My old friend Ebenezer, the father of the maid
Ellen, was standing before it, looking up to the carpenters, who were nailing
the shingles on the roof.
“Ebenezer,” said I, “thee
is my friend--does thee know I am on the brink of ruin?”
“Very sorry,” said Ebenezer--“all
the town-talk; looked for nothing better. Perhaps thee will sell the
house--pho! I forgot; thee gave it to Jonathan.”
“Ebenezer Wild,” said
I, “if thee is my friend, lend me that twenty thousand dollars. It will save me
from ruin.”
“Really, Mr. Longstraw,”
said Ebenezer Wild, (who was no Quaker, though his father had been before him),
“I am surprised a reasonable man should make such a request. I have told you
twenty times you would ruin yourself by your cursed philanthropy--can’t consent
to be ruined with you. Pity you, Mr. Longstraw--awfully swindled; wonder you
could trust such a knave as Abel Snipe --sorry to hear matters look so black
for Jonathan --thought better of him--quite unnatural to be defrauded by one’s
own flesh and blood.”
What Ebenezer meant by
his concluding remarks I did not, at that moment, understand. But I
comprehended them well enough when I had run to five or six other friends, rich
men like him, all of whom treated my request to borrow with as little respect,
while all wound up their commonplace condolings by assuring me, first, that
Abel Snipe had swindled me; and, secondly, that there was much reason to
believe my nephew Jonathan had done the same thing.
Reader, this is a very
wicked world we live in. My philanthropy did not make me, as philanthropy often
does, selfish with my friends. I felt as much pleasure in obliging one who
happened to be in a difficulty, with a loan of any sum within my reach, as in
relieving actual distress. Of twelve different persons whom I now sought in my
dilemma, I had in this manner, at different times, obliged no less than eleven;
of not one of whom could I now borrow a dollar. Every man pitied my misfortune,
every one inveighed with becoming severity against the villany of those by whom
I was ruined, but every one was astonished that a reasonable man like me should
expect another reasonable man to part with his money. In short, it was evident
that my friends loved borrowing better than lending; and I left the door of the
twelfth with the agreeable conviction on my spirit, that human nature was of
the nature of a stone, I being the only man of the thousand million in the
world that had actually a heart in my bosom.
This consideration was
racking enough; but it made a small part of my distress. Every man had charged
my friend, honest Abel Snipe, with having swindled me, as Ebenezer Wild had
charged before; and every one, in like manner, swore that my nephew Jonathan
had borne a part in the nefarious transaction. This seemed to me incredible
enough; but when I remembered Jonathan’s late behaviour, his unexpected
defection, his hard, unfeeling, nay, his treacherous selfishness, I felt
prepared to believe almost any wickedness that might be said of him.
I ran to Abel’s office,
resolved to sift the affair to the bottom. The work was already done to my
hands; I found the office full of people, some of whom were officers of the
police, who had seized upon books and papers, and (awful to be said!) the body
of Abel Snipe; and all raging with vociferation and confusion, except the
latter worthy, who looked as if astounded out of his senses. “It’s a clear case
of swindling,” cried a dozen voices as I entered, “a design to defraud--fraud
from beginning to end; flagrant, scandalous, scoundrelly swindling--nay, worse
than swindling--it is a conspiracy! Jonathan has confessed it--been going on
this three months;--Jonathan has confessed it!”
Jonathan had confessed
it! confessed what? Why, confessed, as every one gave me to understand, and
confessed in the hands of justice (for it seems he had been arrested), that he
and Abel Snipe had entered into a conspiracy to defraud me of my property,
which had been carried on from the moment that the latter was established in
business, and was now completed by a long-designed bankruptcy.
Let the reader imagine
my feelings at this disclosure of ingratitude and villany so monstrous. My best
friend--a man whom I had wrested from the extremity of poverty and disgrace,
and my only relative--a youth whom I had adopted and reared as my son, who was
my heir at law, and the living partner, as I may say, in all my
possessions--had leagued together feloniously to deprive me of what I never
denied them the privilege to share,--to rob, to fleece, to reduce me to
beggary.
Words cannot paint my
grief. I crept away from the scene of confusion, ashamed of my manhood, ashamed
even of my philanthropy. I reached the door of my house; it was just dusk; a
poor man standing at the door implored my charity for a miserable creature, as
he called himself. “Go to the devil!” said I.
“You are Zachariah
Longstraw?” said another man, tapping me on the shoulder. “I am,” said I,
supposing he was a beggar like the other; “and you may go to the devil too.”
“Very much obliged to
you,” said the man; “but you’re my prisoner; and so come along, if you please.”
And with that he took me by the arm, and began to march me down the street.
Why I was arrested, and
at whose instance, I knew not; I was too downcast and spirit-broken to inquire.
I had, doubtless, divers small debts due to persons with whom I was accustomed
to deal; and it seemed to me natural enough, as all men were ungrateful
rascals, that all such persons, now that I was known to be penniless, should fall
upon me without shame or mercy, demanding their dues. I say I thought such a
consummation was natural enough, and I asked no questions of my captor. I let
my head drop upon my bosom, and, without resisting or remonstrating, and
looking neither to the right nor the left, suffered him to conduct me whither
he would.
Our progress was rapid,
our journey short; in a few moments I found myself led into a house, and
ushered into a lighted apartment.
I looked up, to see
into what alderman’s hands I had fallen. The reader may judge of my surprise,
amounting almost to consternation, when I beheld myself in an elegant saloon,
brilliantly lighted, and surrounded by a dozen or more gayly-dressed people of
both sexes, among whom was my friend Ebenezer Wild, and two or three others
whose countenances seemed familiar, but whom, in my surprise and confusion, I
did not immediately recognise.
A maiden, beautiful as
the morning, and smiling as if her little heart was dancing out of her eyes,
ran from the throng, and seized me by the hands, crying,--
“Now, uncle Zachariah,
thee shall pay me what thee owes me, or be turned over to some other creditor!”
I looked upon her in
astonishment, and began to fancy I was in a dream.
“What!” said my friend
Ebenezer, “don’t you know my little Ellen?” And thereupon he added other
expressions, but what they were I retain no remembrance of, my wits being
utterly amazed and confounded.
To make my confusion
still greater, the door suddenly opened, and in rushed my nephew Jonathan,
dressed, like a dandy of the first water, in a blue cloth coat with shining
buttons, white trousers, and satin waistcoat, and exclaiming “Bravo!” and “Victoria!”
as if a very demon of joy and exultation possessed him. As soon as he beheld me
he ran forward, snatched one of my hands from the maiden, and, dropping on his
knees, cried, with a comical look of contrition,--
“Forgive me all my
sins, uncle Zachariah, and I’ll behave better for the future.”
“Oh thou ungrateful
wretch!” said I, “how canst thou look me in the face, having ruined me?”
“Don’t say so!” cried
Ellen Wild; “you don’t know how Jonathan has saved you.”
“The deuse he don’t!”
said Jonathan, jumping up; “why then we’ve got the play all wrong. I say,
uncle, don’t look so solemn and wrathful. You are no more ruined than I am, and
you are out of the clutches of the harpy!”
“Haven’t I been
swindled?” said I.
“Unutterably!” said
Jonathan; “but, as the swindler has been swindled also, there’s no great harm
done. Uncle Zachariah, a’n’t you satisfied Abel Snipe is a rascal?”
“I am,” said I; “but
what shall I say of thee?”
“That I have broken the
spell the villain cast over your senses,” said Jonathan, “and so saved you from
the ruin your confidence invited him to attempt. Uncle Zachariah, you think I
am as bad as Abel. Now listen to my story. I knew that Abel Snipe was a rogue
and hypocrite, but could not make you believe it; I saw that he was daily fleecing
you of sums of money under pretence of giving to the poor; that he was artfully
goading and inflaming your benevolence into a passion, nay, into a monomania
(for, uncle, everybody said you were mad), for his own base purposes; and that,
sooner or later, he would strip you of every thing. This I could not make you
believe; I resolved you should see it. I turned hypocrite myself, and began to
fleece you ten times harder than Abel. The rogue was alarmed; he perceived I
was ousting him from his employment--that I had greater facilities for cheating
(having more of your affection) than himself. His alarm, added to another
feeling which you shall hear all about, brought him into the trap from which
cautiousness at first secured him. I convinced him I was as great a rogue as
himself, and he then agreed with me--yes, uncle, formally agreed--to join in a
plan to strip you of fortune. We arranged the whole scheme from beginning to
end--the business, the speculations, the bankruptcy. Abel was to play Sir
Smash--his reputation could stand it. The sums received from you were to be
handed over to me, and accounted for as lost in bad speculations; to make which
appear straight, his books were filled with fictitious sales and purchases,
very ingeniously got up. After the grand crash we were to make a division of
the plunder, he being content, honest man, to receive one fourth, of which he
considered himself secure enough as long as I had any value for good name or
fear of the penitentiary. Now you may wonder how such a cautious rogue could be
so easily gulled. Here stands the fairy,” said Jonathan, pointing to the maid
Ellen, “who dazzled the eyes of his wisdom. Yes, uncle, would you believe it?
the impudent, the audacious fellow had the vanity to think he had found favour
in her eyes, at a time when I had lost favour in those of her father. You must
know we had a coolness--that is, father Wild and I; it was about you--that
confounded philanthropy--but we’ll say nothing of that. I used to communicate
with Ellen by letter, and Abel was often my Ganymede. Now, you must know, Ellen
is a coquette--’
“Fy, Jonathan!” said
the damsel; “it was all that vicious Abel’s presumption and folly. Because I
was glad to see him, and treated him well, just because he brought me letters--oh,
the monster! I soon saw what was running in his head!”
“Yes,” said Jonathan, “Ellen’s
a much smarter girl than people suppose her.”
“Oh! you great Quaker
bear!” said the maiden.
“Well,” continued
Jonathan, “she boasted her conquest, and then I saw I had the ogre by the nose.
It was this put me upon turning swindler; I had a talk with father Wild, who
approved my plan, and Ellen agreed to cultivate Abel’s good opinion as far as a
smile or two. We affected to quarrel; I began to coquet with another, abusing
poor Ellen to Abel as hard as I could, until he was persuaded the breach
between us was incurable. Ellen gave him a smile--her papa became
condescending. In a word, the rascal thought nothing was wanting to make him
the happiest man in the world, save the one full fourth of his patron’s estate,
and as much more as he could cheat me of. Here was the rock upon which Abel
split, and split he has; he is now safe. The moment matters came to a crisis,
which was this afternoon, I ran to a magistrate--my friend Jones there”
(pointing to an elderly gentleman who had entered with him), “and made
confession of our roguery; deposed the whole matter; accused myself and Abel of
conspiracy to defraud, and so forth, and so forth; and was admitted to the
honourable privileges of evidence for the commonwealth, and allowed to walk
about on bail, while my rascally colleague takes up his lodgings in prison.
There’s the whole story; I have exposed Snipe’s rogueries, and secured his
conviction; and, what is equally agreeable, I have saved your property. Here,
uncle--you called me a viper--I only wanted to make you believe I could be
ungrateful, as well as others. By-the-way, that was a plan of father Wild’s, to
have your friends refuse to assist you; they were let into the secret, and I
recommended you to apply to them. Here, uncle, you’ll see what a viper I am,”
he continued, a little impetuously; “here are the deeds for the house; here is
a roll of bank-notes I cheated you of, to play the philanthropist; you will be
surprised at the amount, but I did spend some, I confess, for there are
wretches who deserve our charity. And here, and here, and here you have the
property out of which Abel and I conspired to cheat you--at least, the chief
part of it; the rest we will soon get possession of, having laid the villain in
limbo. Here, uncle Zachariah, take them, and be as philanthropic as you please;
we have no fear of you, now your familiar is tied up; take your property, and
much good may it do you. As for me, I am content to take Ellen--that is, if you
have no objection.”
This was a turn of
circumstances that confounded me more than ever; and, verily, I knew not
whether I was standing on my head or feet. I stood staring Jonathan in the
face, without saying a word, until the youth was seized with the idea that the
surprise of the thing had turned my wits; at which, being alarmed, he took me
again by the hand, and said, with the tears in his eyes,--
“Oh, my dear uncle! do
consider it is nothing more than a joke, and that I never meant to offend thee.”
“No,” said I, “thee did
not. Therefore thee shall have it all, and thee shall marry the maiden.”
And with that, being
seized with uncommon generosity, or perhaps not well knowing what I did, I put
into his hands the conveyance of the house, the bank-bills, and other papers
which he had given me but a moment before, and turned to leave the house.
“Stay, uncle--I am just
going to be married,” said he; and “Stay, Zachariah!” said a dozen others; when
some one suddenly calling out, “Let him go; he is afraid of being turned out of
meeting if he witnesses the ceremony,” I was suffered to obey the impulses of
the spirit within me, and walk out of the house; which I did without exactly
knowing what I was doing.
To tell the honest
truth--as, indeed, I have been trying to do all along--I was in a kind of maze
and bewilderment of mind, which the first shock of ruin had produced, and which
Jonathan’s story rather increased than diminished. The effect of this was
divided in my brain with the impression of the various proofs of ingratitude
and baseness to which the day had given birth, the latter, however, being
greatly preponderant. Of one feeling only I had entire consciousness, and that
was a hearty disgust of philanthropy, coupled with a sense of shame at having
been so basely cheated as I seemed to have been on all sides. I had been
cheated out of my senses, as the saying is; and the only cure for me was to be
cheated into them again; which was not an agreeable reflection, the whole
affair being a reproach on my good sense.
On the whole, I felt
very melancholy and lugubrious, and began to have my thoughts of leaving
Zachariah Longstraw’s body at the first convenient opportunity. The great
difficulty was, however, to find a tenement in which I might promise myself
content, the disappointment I had experienced in my present adventure having
filled me with doubts as to the reality of any human happiness. “At least,”
said I to myself “I will henceforth look before I leap. I will cast mine eyes
about me, I will gird up my loins and look abroad into the human family, and
peradventure I shall find some man whose body is worth reanimating. Yea,
verily, I will next time be certain I am not putting my soul, as the pickpocket
did his hand, into a sack of fish-hooks.”
With this resolution on
my mind I walked towards my house, and was just about to pass the door, when an
adventure befell me which knocked the aforesaid resolution entirely on the
head. But before I relate it my conscience impels me to make one remark, which
I beg the reader, if he be a man of fortune and blood, to peruse, without
excusing himself on the score of its dulness.
There are other persons
besides Zachariah the philanthropist, who have experienced the ingratitude of
the poor; and, truth to say, if we can believe the accounts of those who
profess to have the best means of judging, there is more of it among that class
of beings in the United States than in any other Christian land. If it be so,
let not the reader wonder at its existence. It springs, like a thousand other
evils of a worse, because of a political complexion, from that constitution of
society which, notwithstanding its being in opposition to all the interests of
the land and the character of our institutions, is founded in, and perpetuated
by, the folly of the richer classes. It lies, not in the natural enmity
supposed to exist between the rich and the poor, but in the unnatural hatred provoked
in the bosoms of the one by the offensive pride and arrogance of the other. The
poor man in America feels himself, in a political view, as he really is, the
equal of the millionaire; but this very consciousness of equality adds double
bitterness to the sense of actual inferiority, which the richer and more
fortunate usually do their best, as far as manners and deportment are
concerned, to keep alive. Why should the folly of a feudal aristocracy prevail
under the shadow of a purely democratic government? It is to the stupid pride,
the insensate effort at pomp and ostentation, the unconcealed contempt of
labour, the determination, manifested in a thousand ways, and always as
unfeelingly as absurdly, to keep the “base mechanical” aware of the gulf between
him and his betters--in a word, to the puerile vanity and stolid pride of the
genteel and refined, that we owe the exasperation of those classes in whose
hands lie the reins of power, and who will use them for good or bad purposes,
according as they are kept in a good or bad humour. It is to these things we
trace, besides the general demoralization ever resulting from passions long
encouraged, besides the unwilling and unthankful reception of benefits coming
from the hands of the detested, all those political evils which demagoguism,
agrarianism, mobocracism, and all other isms of a vulgar stamp, have brought
upon the land. There is pride in the poor, as well as the rich: the wise man
and the patriot will take care not to offend it.
Reader, if thou art a
rich man, and despisest thy neighbour, remember that he has a thousand friends
of his class where thou hast one of thine, and that he can beat thee at the
elections. If thou art a gentleman, remember that thy cobbler is another, or
thinks himself so--which is all the same thing in America. At all events,
remember this--namely, that the poor man will find no fault with thy wealth, if
thou findest none with his poverty.
I said that, just as I
arrived at the door of my dwelling, an adventure befell me; and truly, it was
such an extraordinary one as has happened to no other individual in the land
since the days of the unfortunate William Morgan. As I passed towards the door,
a man whose countenance I could not see, for it was more than two hours after
nightfall, and who seemed to have been lying in wait on the stoop, suddenly
started up, exclaiming, in accents highly nasal, and somewhat dolorous,
“Well! I guess, if
there’s no offence, there’s no mistake. I rather estimate that you’re Mr.
Zachariah Longstraw?”
“Well, friend! and what
is that thy business?” said I, in no amiable tone.
“Well, not above more
than’s partickilar,” said the stranger; “but I’ve heern tell much on your
goodness, and I’m in rather a bit of the darnedest pickle jist now, with a sick
wife and nine small children, the oldest only six years old, that ever you
heerd tell on. And so, I rather estimated--”
“Thee may estimate
theeself to the devil,” said I. “How can the oldest child of nine be only six
years old?”
“Oh, darn it,” said the
fellow, “there was three on ’em twins. But if you’ll jest step round to my
wife, she’ll tell you all about it. Always heern you was a great andyfist, or
what-d’-ye-call-it.”
“Then thee has heard a
great lie,” said I, “and so thee may go about thee business, for I’ll give thee
nothing.”
“Well now, do tell!”
said the man, with a tone of surprise that conveyed a part of the emotion to
myself, particularly when, by way of pointing his discourse with the broadest
note of admiration, he suddenly clapped a foot to my heels, and laid me
sprawling on the broad of my back.
My astonishment and
wrath may well be imagined; but they were nothing to the terror that beset me,
when, recovering a little from the stunning effects of the fall, I opened my
mouth to cry aloud, and found it instantly stuffed full of handkerchiefs, or
some such soft material, which the pretended beggar took that opportunity to
gag me with. The next moment I felt myself whipped up from the ground and borne
aloft, like a corpse, on the shoulders of two men, who trudged along at a rapid
pace, and apparently with the greatest unconcern possible; for some of the
people in the street hearing my groans, which were the only sounds I could
make, and demanding what was the matter, were answered by my cool captors, “Oh,
nothing more than’s partickilar--only a poor mad gentleman that broke hospital;
guess he won’t do it again. Raving mad, and hollers a gag out. I say, Sam, hold
fast to his legs, and don’t let him jump; for I rather estimate, if he gets
loose, he’ll kill some on these here people.”
The villain! I had
begun to hope my moans and struggles, which I made for the purpose as loud and
furious as I could, having no other way of calling for help, would cause some
of the persons collected to arrest the rogues, and inquire into the matter a
little more closely; but no sooner had the villain expressed his fears of the
mischief I might do, than all inquiries ceased, and a horrible scraping and
rattling of feet told me that assistance and curiosity had scampered off
together.
In three minutes more I
found myself clapped into a little covered, or rather boxed wagon, such as is
used by travelling tinmen, and held fast by one of the rogues, while the other
seized upon the reins, and whipping up a little nag that was geared to it, we
began to roll through the streets at a round gait, and with such a rattle of
wheels and pattypans, that there was little hope of making myself heard, had I
possessed the voice even of an oysterman. My companion took this opportunity to
secure my wrists in a pair of wooden handcuffs, and to lock my feet in a sort
of stocks, secured against the side of the wagon. Then, overhauling the
handkerchiefs, and arranging them more to his liking, though not a whit more to
mine, he opened his mouth and spoke, saying,
“Now, uncle Longlegs, I
estimate we’ll be comfortable. So keep easy; or, if you will grunt, just grunt
in tune, and see what sort of a bass you’ll make to Old Hundred.”
With that the rascal,
after pitching his voice so as to accommodate mine as much as possible, began
to sing a song; of which all that I recollect is, that it related the joys of a
travelling tinman-- tricks, rogueries, and all;--that it began somewhat in the
following fashion;--
“When I was a driving
along Down East,
I met old Deacon Dobbs
on his beast;
The beast was fat, and
the man was thin--
‘I’ll cheat Deacon
Dobbs,’ says I, ‘to the skin,--’ ”
Verily, reader, the
thing was to me as an amazement and a marvel, and the wonder thereof filled my
spirit with anguish and perturbation. But if I was dismayed at my seizure and
abduction, at my involuntary journey, prolonged through the space of a whole
night, how much greater was my alarm to find it continued for five days and
nights longer, during which I was never allowed to speak or breathe the fresh
air, except when my captors halted to rest and eat, which they did at irregular
intervals, and always in solitary places among woods and thickets. It was in
vain that I demanded by what authority they treated me with such violence, what
purpose they had in view, and whither they were conducting me. The rogues
assured me they were very honest fellows, who made their living according to
law, and had no design to harm me; and as to what they designed doing with me,
that, they said, I should know all in good time; recommending me, in the
meanwhile, to take things patiently. I studied their appearance well. They were
common-looking personages, with a vulgar shrewdness of visage, and would have
been readily taken for Yankee pedlers of the nutmeg and side-saddle order--that
is, of the inferior branch of that adventurous class --as indeed they were.
There was nothing of the cut-throat about them whatever, and I soon ceased to
feel any apprehension of their doing me a personal injury. But what did the
villains mean? what was their object in carrying me off? what did they design doing
with me? To these questions, which I asked myself and them in vain, I had, on
the sixth day of my captivity, an answer; and verily it was one that filled me
with horror and astonishment. Oh! the wickedness of man! the covetousness, the
depravity, the audacity! the enterprise and originality thereof!
During the first three
days of my captivity, my roguish captors had taken great pains to conceal me
from, and to prevent any noises I might make from being heard by, any persons
they met on the road. On the fourth day they relaxed somewhat from their
severity; on the fifth they unbound my arms; and on the sixth they even removed
the gag from my mouth, assuring me, however, that it should be replaced if I
attempted any outcries, and giving me, moreover, to understand, that I was now
in a land where outcries would be of no service to me whatever; and, indeed, I
had soon the most mournful proof that, in this particular, they spoke nothing
but the truth.
The evening before, I
heard, while passing by a farmhouse, a great sawing of fiddles and strumming of
banjoes, with a shuffling of feet, as of people engaged in a dance, while a
voice, which I knew, by its undoubted Congo tang, could be none but a negro’s,
sang, in concert with the fiddles,--
“Ole Vaginnee! nebber
ti--ah!
Kick’m up, Juba, a
leetle high--ah,--”
or something to that effect. And, while I was marvelling what could make
a negro in Pennsylvania chant the praises of Virginia, having rolled a little
further on, I heard, far in the distance, while our little nag stopped to drink
from a brook, the sound of many voices, which I knew also were those of
negroes. They were labourers husking corn in the light of the moon, and singing
as they laboured; and, verily, there was something uncommonly agreeable in the
tones, now swelling, now dying in the distance, as many or fewer voices joined
in the song. There was a pleasing wildness in the music; but it was to me still
more enchanting, as showing the light-heartedness of the singers. “Verily,”
said I, forgetting my woes in a sudden impulse of philanthropy, “the negro that
is free is a happy being”--not doubting that I was still in Pennsylvania. But oh, how grievously this conceit was
dispersed on the following morning! I was roused out of sleep by the sound of
voices and clanking of chains, and looking from the door of my prison, which my
conductors had left open to give me air, I spied, just at the tail of the cart,
a long train of negroes, men, women, and children, of whom some of the males
were chained together, the children riding for the most part in covered wagons,
while two white men on horseback, armed with great whips and pistols, rode
before and behind, keeping the whole procession in order.
“What!” said I, filled
with virtuous indignation, and thrusting my head from the cart so as to address
the foremost rider, “what does thee mean, friend? Are these people slaves or
freemen? and why dost thou conduct them thus in chains through the free state
of Pennsylvania?”
“Pennsylvanee!” cried
the man, with a stare; “I reckon we’re fifty miles south of Mason’s and Dixon’s,
and fast enough in old Virginnee.”
“Virginia!” said I,
seized with dismay. Before I could add any thing farther, one of my captors,
jumping from the front of the cart, where he had been riding with the other,
clapped to the door of the box, swearing at me for an old fool, who could not
keep myself out of mischief.
“Hillo, stranger!” I
heard the horseman cry to my jailer, “what white man’s that you’ve got locked
up thaw?”
“Oh, darn it,” was the
answer, “it’s an old fellow of the north, jist as mad as the dickens.”
“Friend!” cried I from
my prison, seized with a sudden hope of escape, “the man tells thee a fib. If
thee is an honest man and a lover of the law, I charge thee to give me help;
for these men are villains, who have dragged me from my home contrary to law,
and now have me fastened up by the legs.”
“I say, strange-aw! by
hooky!” cried the horseman, in very emphatic tones, addressing himself to my
captor, as I saw through a crack, while his companion rode up to his
assistance, “what’s the meaning of all this he-aw? What aw you doing, toting a
white man off in this style, like a wild baw?”
What a “wild baw” was I
could not conveniently comprehend; but I saw that I had lighted on a friend,
who had the power to deliver me from thraldom.
“My name,” said I, “is
Zachariah Longstraw, and I can reward thee for thy trouble.”
“You hear him!” said my
jailer, with all imaginable coolness. “Well now, darn it, if I must tell, it is
Zachariah Longstraw, the famous Zachariah Longstraw. You understand!” And here
he nodded and winked at the questioner with great significancy; but, as it
appeared, all in vain.
“Never heard of the man
in my life,” said my friend, “and I’ve followed niggur-driving ever since I
could hold a two-year-old bo’ pig.”
“What!” cried my
jailer, “never heard of Zachariah Longstraw, the famous abolitionist?”
“Abolitionist!” cried
the two horsemen together, and they cried it with a yell that made my hair
stand on end. “Can’t say ever heard the name, but reckon he’s one of them ’aw
New-Yorkers and Yankees what sends ’cendiary things down he-aw! I say,
strange-aw! is it a true, right up-and-down, no-mistake abolitionist?”
“Darn it, I think you’d
say so, if you had ever read the papers.”
“Jist open the box
then, and if I don’t take the scalp off him, call me a black man!”
You won’t do no sitch
thing, meaning no offence,” said my jailer. “Didn’t go to the expense to fetch
him so far for nothing; and don’t mean him for the Virginnee market. Bound down
to Louisianee, stranger; that’s the best market for abolitionists; seen a
public advertisement offering fifty thousand dollars for fellers not half so
bad. I rather estimate we’ll get full price for our venture.”
With that my jailers
whipped up, and succeeded in putting a proper distance betwixt them and that
ferocious person who had such a desire to rob me of my scalp.
Reader, if thou art an
abolitionist (and, verily, I hope thou art not), thou wilt conceive the mingled
wo and astonishment with which I listened to these words of the chief
kidnapper--whose Christian name, by-the-way, was Joshua, though as for his
surname, I must confess I never heard it--and appreciate, even to the cold
creeping of the flesh, the terrible situation in which I was placed. I was an
abolitionist--or, at least, my captors chose so to consider me, and they were
now carrying me down south, to sell me on speculation. For this they had
kidnapped me! for this they had fastened me up by the legs like a “wild baw!”
for this--but it is vain to accumulate phrases expressive of their villany and
my distresses. What mattered it to my captors if, after all, I was no
abolitionist? (for, of a verity, though opposed in principle to the whole
institution of slavery, my mind had been so fully occupied with other philanthropic
considerations that I had had no time to play the liberator)-- it was all one
to my captors. The genius which could convert a hemlock-knot into a shoulder of
bacon, a bundle of elder twigs into good Havana cigars, and bags of carpet-rags
into Bologna sausages, could be at no fault when the demand was only to
transform a peaceable follower of George Fox into a roaring lion of abolition.
I felt that they had got me into a quandary more dreadful than any that had
ever before afflicted my spirit. I knew we were already far south of Mason’s
and Dixon’s.
The moment my vile
kidnappers slackened their speed a little, having ridden hard to escape the
negro-drivers, I called a parley, in the course of which two circumstances were
brought to light, which greatly increased the afflictions of my spirit. I began
by remonstrating with the villains upon the wickedness, cruelty, and injustice
of their proceedings; to which Joshua made answer, that “times was hard--that a
poor man was put to a hard shift to get a living--that, for his part, he was an
honest man who turned his hand to any honest matter-- that he knew what was
lawful, and what was not --that he was agin all abolition, which was
anti-constitutional, and clear for keeping the peace betwixt the North and South”--and
twenty other things of a like nature, of which the most important was, a
declaration that the good people of some parish or other in Louisiana had
offered a reward of fifty thousand dollars for either of two individuals whose
names I have forgotten, though they were very famous abolitionists, and
although Joshua, to settle the matter at once, showed me their names in the
advertisement, which he had cut from a newspaper.
“Friend,” said I, “I
don’t see that these foolish people have offered any reward for me.”
“Well, darn it, I know
it,” said Joshua; “but I rather estimate they’ll give half price for you; and
that will pay us right smart for the venture. For, you see, what they want is
an abolitionist, and I rather estimate they’re not over and above partickilar
as to who he may be. Now I have heern tell of a heap of incendiary papers you
sent down south to free the niggurs--”
“I never did any such
thing!”
“Oh, well,” said
Joshua, “it’s all one; them there sugar-growing fellers will think so; and so it’s
all right. And there’s them runaway niggurs you Phil’delphy Quakers are always
hiding away from their masters. I rather estimate we’ll make a good venture out
of you.”
“What!” said I, “will
you sell my life for money?”
“No,” said the vile
Joshua, “it’s a mere trade in flesh and blood--wouldn’t take a man’s life on no
consideration.”
“Friend, thee shall
have money if thee will permit me to escape.”
“Well,” said Joshua,
with an indifferent drawl, “I estimate not. Abel Snipe told me you was cleaned
out as clear as a gourd-shell.”
“Abel Snipe!” said I; “is
thee a friend of that villain, Abel Snipe?”
“A sorter,” said
Joshua; “or rather Sam is. Him and Abel was friends together at Sing--”
“Oh, blast your jaw,”
said Sam, speaking for almost the first time on the whole journey, for he had
been, until then, uncommonly glum and taciturn; “where’s the difference where
it was? Says Abel Snipe to me, says he, ‘If you want’s an abolitionist, there’s
my old friend Zachariah; he’s your true go.’ And so, d’ye see, that’s what made
us snap you; for we was thinking of snapping another.”
“Oh, the wretch! the
base, ungrateful, hypocritical wretch!”
“Come, blast it,” said
Sam, “don’t abuse a man’s friends.”
“Fellow,” said I, “hast
thou no human feeling in that breast of thine? Wilt thou sell me to violent men
and madmen, who will wrongfully take my life? Think what thou doest! Hast thou
no conscience? Thou art selling a fellow-being! Hast thou no fear of death and
judgment? of the devil and the world of torment?”
“Oh, hold your gab,”
said the ruffian. “As for selling fellow-critters, why, that was once a
reggelar business of mine; for, d’ye see, I was a body-snatcher. And I reckon I
was more skeared once snapping up a dead body, than ever I shall be lifting a
live one. You must know, I was snatching for the doctors, over there in Jarsey;
for, d’ye see, I’m a Jarseyman myself: I reckon it was some fourteen months
ago: it was summer. What the devil-be-cursed the doctor wanted with a body in
summer, I don’t know; but it was none on my business. So we, went, me and Tim
Stokes, and the doctor, to an old burying-ground where they had just earthed a
youngster that the doctor said would suit him. Well, d’ye see, when we came to
the grave, up jumps a blasted devil, as big as a cow, or it might ha’ been a
ghost, and set up a cry. So we takes to our heels. But the doctor said ’twas a
man’s cry, and no ghost’s. And so, d’ye see, blast it, we was for going back
again, after having a confab; when what should we do but find a poor devil of a
feller lying dead by a hole under a beech-tree. The doctor said he would do
better nor the other; and so, blast it, d’ye see, we nabbed him.”
“Of a surety,” said I,
eagerly, “it was the beech-tree at the Owl-roost! and that was the body of poor
Sheppard Lee!”
“Well, they did call
him summat of that like; and they made a great fuss about him in the papers.
But I’m hanged if I wasn’t skeared after that out of all body-snatching.”
“Friend,” said I, “can
thee tell me what the doctor did with that body?”
“Why, cut him up, blast
him, and made a rawhead-and-bloody-bones of him. The doctor was so cussed
partickilar, he wouldn’t let us even knock the teeth out; though that was no
great loss, for Jarseymen hasn’t no great shakes in the tooth way.”
Alas! what an ending
for poor Sheppard Lee! His body subjected to the knife of an anatomist, his
bones scraped, boiled, bleached, hung together on wires, and set up in a
museum, while his spirit was wandering about from body to body, enduring more
afflictions in each than it had ever mourned even in that unlucky original
dwelling it was so glad to leave! I am not of a sentimental turn, and I cannot
say that, as Zachariah Longstraw, I felt any peculiar sorrow for the woes of
Sheppard Lee. Nevertheless, I did not hear this account of the brutal way in
which his body had been stolen and anatomized, without some touch of
indignation and grief; which, perhaps, I should have expressed, had not there
arisen, before the brutal Samuel had quite finished his remarks on Jerseymen’s
teeth, an occasion to exercise those feelings on my own immediate behalf.
This was produced by
the vile Joshua, who had then the reins, telling a brace of horsemen whom we
met that he had “the great abolitionist, the celebrated Zachariah Longstraw, in
his cart,” and was carrying him to be Lynched in Louisiana; a confession that
threw the strangers into transports of satisfaction, one of them swearing he
would accompany my captors to the Mississippi, or to the end of the earth, for
the mere purpose of seeing me get my deservings.
And now arose a train
of incidents, by which I was taught three things, namely--first, the manner in
which my merchants designed giving a value to their merchandise not inherent
and intrinsic to it (for, of a truth, my abolition principles, as I said
before, had never been carried to the point of notoriety, or even notice);
secondly, the love with which a southron regards those pious philanthropists
who will have him good and virtuous against his own will; and, thirdly, the
religious respect for law and order which is so prominent a feature in the
American character.
To make me valuable, it
was necessary I should be made famous; and this was easily accomplished in a
land where men make up their opinions for themselves, according as they are
instructed. It was only necessary to assure some half dozen or more independent
sovereigns that I was famous, to ensure their making me so. And this my
kidnappers did. They told everybody they met that they had secured Zachariah
Longstraw, the famous abolitionist, the very life and soul of northern
incendiarism, whom they were carrying to Louisiana, to be Lynched according to
law; and as the circumstance would, of course, get into every patriotic
newspaper along the way, it was certain I should be made famous enough before I
got there, and they thus enjoy the advantage of advertising their commodity
without paying a cent to the printer.
It was astonishing (and
to none more than myself) to witness the suddenness with which I was exalted
from obscurity to distinction, and the readiness with which every living soul,
upon being told my name, character, and reputation, remembered all about me and
my misdeeds. “Yes,” cried one worthy personage, shaking at me a fist minus two
fingers and a half, “I have heerd of him often enough: he lives in New-York,
and he sells sendary pictures, packed up between the soles of niggur shoes.”--“Yes!”
cried another, who had but one eye, “I have read all about him: he lives in
Boston, keeps a niggur school, and prints sendary papers, a hundred thousand at
a time, to set niggurs insurrecting.” In short, they remembered not only all
that the unworthy Joshua told them to my disparagement, but a thousand things
that the imagination of one suggested to the credulity of another. It was in
vain that I endeavoured to say any thing in denial or defence; ridicule and
revilement, threats and execrations, were my only answers. It was clear, that
by the time we reached the Mississippi, I should be the most important
personage in America; and that, if my value as an article of merchandise was to
be determined by the distinction I won on the road, my friends, Joshua and
Samuel, would make their fortunes by the speculation. But it was not my fate to
travel beyond the bounds of the Ancient Dominion.
It happened, that on
this day an election was held in the district through which we were travelling,
to return a representative to Congress, in lieu of one who had fought his way
into the shoes of a chargé. All the world--that is, all the district--was
therefore in arms; and men and boys, Americans and Irishmen, were making their
way to the polls as fast and comfortably as two-mile-an-hour hardtrotting
horses could carry them; and thither also, as it appeared, or in that
direction, we were ourselves bending our course. As we advanced, therefore, we
found ourselves gliding into a current of human bodies--honest republicans,
moving onward to the polls, all of whom were ready to add their approval to my
claims, or those the kidnappers made for me, to the honour of Lynchdom. The
word was passed from one to another, that the Yankee cart contained the famous
abolitionist, Zachariah Longstraw; they pressed around to look at and revile
me, to discourse with the kidnappers on my demerits, and to express their
delight that such a renowned member of the incendiary gang, as they called that
class of conscientious people, should at last be on the road to justice.
And thus I was rolled
along, attended by sundry groups, which grew fast into crowds, consisting of
persons who rejoiced over my capture, and painted to my ears, in words
uncommonly rough and ferocious, the fate that awaited me when arrived at my
place of destination.
That place, as it
chanced, was nearer than I either expected or desired. As the crowd thickened,
the sounds of wrath and triumph increased, becoming more terrible to my
auditories. A new idea came into the minds of the sovereigns. A villain, seven
feet and a half high, mounted on a horse just half that altitude, who had a
great knife-scar across his nose and cheek, and a dozen similar seams on his
hands, rode up to the cart, and giving me a diabolical look, cried out “Whaw!
what aw the use of carrying the crittur so faw? I say, Vawginnee is the place
for Lynching, atter all. I say, gentlemen and Vawginians! I go for Lynching
right off-hand. Old Vawginnee for evvaw!”
Loud and terrible was
the roar of voices with which the throng testified their approbation of the
barbarian’s proposal. It was agreed I ought to be, and should be, Lynched on
the spot. The kidnappers appealed to the justice of “Virginians,” requesting
them not to invade “the sacred rights of private property,”--“they could not
think of giving up their prisoner for nothing; they meant him solely for the
Louisiana market.” But things were coming to a crisis, and that my conductors
perceived. They whipped up to escape the throng; but in vain. The further they
went, the more they became involved in the crowd, having now arrived at the
village where the favourite candidate was stumping among his constituents, and
promising them worlds of reform, retrenchment, and public virtue, provided they
would send him to Congress. I could hear from my box (my friend Joshua having
taken care to lock me up at the first sign of danger), as we entered the
village, the distant cries of “Hampden Jones for ever!” mingled with those
nearer ones of my persecutors, “Lynch the abolitionist!” and the
loudly-expressed remonstrances of my friends against invasion of their rights,
coupled with threats to have the law of any one who robbed them of their
property.
But threats and appeals
were alike wasted on the independent freemen of that district. Joined by the
voters and others already assembled at the polls, who, at the cry of “Lynch the
abolitionist!” had deserted their orator, to join in the nobler sport of
Lynching, they increased in wrath and enthusiasm; and, stopping the cart and
breaking open my prison-house, they dragged me into the light of day, one man
calling for a pistol, another a knife, a third a rope, and a fourth a cord of
good dry wood and a coal of fire, to “burn the villain alive.” Such a horrible
clamour never before afflicted my ears or soul. I saw that, abolitionist or
not, it was all over with me; and so saw honest Joshua and Samuel, whose only
solace for this unlucky interruption to their speculation, was a call some one
generously made to take up a subscription for their benefit, seeing that it was
“beneath the dignity of the chivalry of Virginia to cheat even a Yankee of what
was justly his due.”
At this moment the orator
and candidate of the day, stalking up in high dudgeon to find what superior
attraction had robbed him of his audience, laid eyes upon me. I thought I had
seen him before; and verily I had. He was that identical gentleman, the master
of the fugitive slave whom I had concealed in my house in Philadelphia, and
then clapped into prison for robbing me, whence his master recovered him. There
was no mistaking the gentleman: He was a young man of twenty-six or seven, six
feet high and one foot wide, long-limbed, with small feet and huge hands, a
great shock of Indian-looking hair, vast, solemn black eyes, a mouth wide and
square, and a brow that might have suited a patriarch, it was so wide, and
lofty, and wrinkled. He was evidently a man destined to shake the walls of the
Capitol, and cause stenographers to groan; the Tully shone in his eye, the
Demosthenes moved on his lip--there was genius even in the shape of his nose.
“I recollect the man,”
said he, with a voice that might have come from the bowels of a double-bass, it
was so deep, rolling, and sonorous; “he hid my boy Pompey. His name is
Longshanks; he is a Quaker, a philanthropist--an abolitionist!”
“Hampden Jones for
ever!” cried the delighted sovereigns. “We’ll hang him” (meaning me, however,
and not the orator) “over the poll-window, and then vote for Hampden Jones, the
friend of the law, the friend of the constitution, the friend of the south!”
“Stay, friends,” said
Hampden Jones, and his voice stilled the tumult; “I have a word to say on the
subject of abolition.”
“Hampden Jones for
ever!” cried the republicans; and Hampden Jones stepped up on the head of a
barrel, and stretched forth his right arm. He stretched forth his left also,
and then, clinching both fists, and pursing his brows together until the balls
beneath them looked like rolling grape-shot, he said,--
“Gentlemen--fellow-freemen
of Virginia! The bulwarks of a nation’s liberties are the virtues of her
children. Compared with these, what is wealth? what is grandeur? what even are
power and glory? These--riches and greatness, power and renown--are the
possessions of the Old World; yet what have they availed her? Look around that
ancient hemisphere, and tell me where among its blood-stained battle-fields!
where under its polluted palaces! where in its haunts of the despot and the
slave! you can find the love of liberty, the love of law, the love of order,
the love of justice, that give permanence to the institutions they adorn, and,
like the laurel crown of the Cesars, guard from the thunderbolt the temples
they bind in the wreath of honour? Look for them in the Old World, but look in
vain. The mighty Colossus of Christendom, once vital with virtue, lifts its
decrepit bulk beyond the verge of the Atlantic, a vast and mournful monument of
decay! Age and the shocks of the elements, the wash of the tempest and the
lightning-stroke, have ploughed its marble forehead with wrinkles; mosses hang
from its brows, and the dust of its own ruin--dust animated only by insects and
reptiles, the offspring of corruption--moulders over its buried feet! The
virtues that once distinguished--that almost deified--the immortal Colossus,
have fled from the old, to find their home in the New World. I look for them only
in the bosoms of Americans!”
Here the orator, who
had pronounced this sublime exordium with prodigious earnestness and effect,
paused, while the welkin rung with the shouts of rapture its complimentary
close was so well fitted to inspire. As for me, I felt a doleful skepticism as
to the justness of the compliment, having the very best reason to distrust that
love of liberty, law, order, and justice, which was about to consign me to
ropes and flames, without asking the permission of a judge and jury. Moreover,
I could not exactly see how Mr. Hampden Jones’s remarks on the old and new
world had any thing to do with the subject of abolition, which he had risen to
discuss; and, indeed, this difficulty seemed to have beset others as well as
myself, several crying out with great enthusiasm, “Let’s have something on
abolition; and then to the Lynching!” while others exclaimed, “Let’s have the
Lynching first, and the speech afterward.”
“Abolition, my
fellow-citizens!” said the orator, “it is my intention to address you on the
subject of abolition. But first let me apply what I have already said. I have
said, and I repeat, that the love of liberty, of law, of order, of justice,
belongs peculiarly to the free sons of America. Let me counsel, let me advise,
let me entreat you, to have this noble truth in remembrance on this present
occasion. Beware lest, in what you now intend to do, you give occasion to the
enemies of freedom to doubt your virtue, to suspect the reality of your love of
law, order, and justice, to stigmatize you as friends only of riot and outrage.”
These words filled me
with joyful astonishment. I began to believe the youthful Tully was about to
interfere in my favour, to rebuke the violence of his adherents, and so save
them from the sin of bloodguiltiness. So also thought the indignant sovereigns
themselves; and many, elevating their voices, demanded furiously, “if he meant
to protect the bloody abolitionist?”
“By no means,” said Mr.
Hampden Jones, with great emphasis; “what I have to advise is, that if we are
to do execution upon the wretch, we shall proceed about it in an orderly and
dignified way, resolve ourselves into a great and solemn tribunal, and so
adjudge him to death with a regularity and decorum which shall excite the
admiration and win the approbation of the whole world.”
“Hampden Jones for
ever!” cried the sovereigns; and so it appeared that all the benefit I was to
derive from his interference, was only to be despatched in an orderly manner.
Seeing this, I became
horribly frightened--indeed, so much so, that I was incapable of observing
properly what ensued. I have a faint recollection that Mr. Hampden Jones
resumed his discourse and harangued those who would listen, on the subject he
had promised to discuss; and I remember that his auditors echoed every tenth
word with tremendous shouts. But what I remember better than all was, a
spectacle that soon attracted my attention, being nothing less than the apparition
of five or six stout negroes climbing up a tree hard by, dragging a rope after
them, and tying it round a branch; all which they executed with uncommon spirit
and zeal, shaking their fists at me all the time, and calling me a “cussed
bobolitionist.”
What was to become of
me now? Had I entered the body of the most generous and humane of men only to
be hanged? A cold sweat broke over me; my knees knocked together. The men who
held me, held me faster. My judges, the members of the great and solemn tribunal,
began to decide upon my fate with the regularity and decorum (advised by their
orator) which were to win the approbation and admiration of the whole world--
that is to say, by each man marching up to the orator’s barrel, where stood a
committee appointed to receive the votes, pronouncing his name, and voting to “hang
the incendiary.”
All this while, I
believe, I was endeavouring to say something in my defence; but I have not the
slightest recollection of what it was. Matters were coming--I may say had
come--to a crisis, and my life hung upon a thread; when suddenly a negro, who
had been among the most active and zealous of the volunteers on the tree, fell
from a high branch to the ground, and besides breaking his own neck, as I
understood by the cry that was set up, crushed two or three white men that
stood below.
This produced a great
hubbub, and those who had stationed themselves about me as guards ran forward
to see what mischief had been done. As they ran one way, I betook me to my
heels and ran another. I rushed into the nearest house; but, being instantly
pursued and ousted, I fled into a garden, from which I was as quickly chased by
men and dogs, the first screaming, and the second howling and barking, so that
the uproar they made was inexpressible.
Fear lent me wings; but
I was surrounded; and run whithersoever I might, I always found myself brought
up by some party or other presenting itself in front. The exercise, while it
inflamed my own terrors, only exasperated the rage of my persecutors; and I was
persuaded they would tear me to pieces the moment they caught me. Judge of my
feelings, then, when I found myself hemmed in on all sides in a little field on
the skirts of the village, with a party close at my elbow, on which I had
stumbled without seeing it until roused by its cries.
I looked up and saw
that it consisted of about a dozen negroes, who were carrying the body of their
companion, the unlucky volunteer who had broken his neck falling from the tree;
but which body they now threw upon the ground, and with loud screams of “He-ah,
mossa John!” and “He-ah, mossa Dickey!” began to scamper after me with all
their might.
There was but one
resource left me, and that let the reader determine hereafter of how deplorable
a character. I made a successful dodge, followed by a dash right through the
screaming Africans, who perhaps hesitated to lay a rough hand on one of my
colour, and, reaching the body of their companion, cried, half to myself and
half to the insensible clay, “It is better to be a slave than a dead man; and
the scourge, whatever romantic persons may say to the contrary, is preferable,
at any time, to the halter. If thou art dead, my sable brother, yield my spirit
a refuge in thy useless body!”
That was the last I
remember of the adventure, for I had no sooner uttered the words than I fell
into a trance.
When I opened my eyes I
found that I was lying in a hovel, very mean of appearance, yet with a certain
neatness and cleanliness about it that prevented it from looking squalid. It is
true that the floor, which was of planks, was somewhat awry and dilapidated;
that the little window, which, with the door, furnished, or was meant to
furnish, its only light, was rather bountifully bedecked with old hats and
scraps of brown paper; and that the walls of ill-plastered logs displayed
divers gleaming chinks, and vistas through them of the sunny prospects without.
Nevertheless, the place did not look amiss for a poor man, and, in my
experience as a philanthropist, I had seen hundreds much more miserable.
An old woman sat at the
fireplace, nodding over a stew, the fumes of which were both savoury and
agreeable. The old woman was, however, as black as the outside of her
stew-pan--in other words, a negress; and this circumstance striking upon the
chords of association, I began to remember what had lately befallen me. A
terrible suspicion flashed into my mind. Had I not--but before I could ask
myself the question, my hand, which I had raised to scratch my head, came into
contact with a mop of elastic wool, such as never grew upon the scalp of a
white man. I started up in bed and looked at my hands and arms; they were of
the hue of ebony--or, to speak more strictly, of smoked mahogany. I saw a
fragment of looking-glass hanging on the wall within my reach. I snatched it
down, and took a survey of my physiognomy. Miserable me! my face was as black
as my arms --and, indeed, somewhat more so--presenting a sable globe, broken
only by two red lips of immense magnitude, and a brace of eyes as white and as
wide as plain China saucers, or peeled turnips.
“Whaw dah!” cried the
old woman, roused by the noise I made; “whaw dat, you nigga Tom? what you doin’
dah? Lorra bless us! if a nigga break a neck, can’t a nigga hold-a still?”
Alas! and had my fate
brought me to this grievous pass? Was there no other situation in life
sufficiently wretched, but that I must take up my lot in the body of a
miserable negro slave? How idle had been all my past discontent! how foolish
the persuasion I had indulged five different times, that I was, on each
occasion, the most unhappy of men! I had forgotten the state of the bondman,
the condition of the expatriated African. Now I was at last to learn in reality
what it was to be the victim of fortune, what to be the exemplar of
wretchedness, the true repository of all the griefs that can afflict a human
being. Already I felt, in imagination, the blow of the task-master on my back,
the fetter on my limb, the iron in my soul; and when the old woman made a step
towards me, perhaps to discover why I made no reply to her questions, I was so
prepossessed with the idea of whips and lashes, that I made a dodge under the
bedclothes, as if to escape a thwack.
“Golly matty! is de
nigga mad?” cried the Jezebel. “I say, you nigga Tom, what you doin’? How you
neck feel now?”
“My neck?” thought I,
recollecting that it had been broken, and wondering in what way it had been
mended. I clapped my hands to it; it was very stiff and sore: while I felt at
it, the old woman told me some great doctor had twisted a great “kink” out of
it; but I bestowed little notice on what she said. My mind ran upon other
matters; I could think of nothing but cowhides and cat-o’nine-tails nine-tails,
that were to welcome me to bondage.
“Aunty,” said I--why I
addressed the old lady thus I know not; but I have observed that negroes always
address their seniors by the titles of uncle and aunt, and I suppose the
instinct was on me-- “am I a slave?”
“What a fool nigga to
ax a question!” said she. “What you gwying to be, den, but old Massa Jodge’s
nigga-boy Tom? What you git up faw, ha?” --(I was making an attempt to rise)-- “Massa
docta say you stay a-bed. What you git up faw, ha?”
“I intend to run away,”
said I; and truly that was the notion then uppermost in my mind; and it is very
likely I should have made a bolt for the door that moment, had I not discovered
an uncommon weakness in my lower limbs, which prevented my getting out of bed.
“Whaw! what a fool!”
cried the beldam, regarding me with surprise and contempt; “what you do when
you run away, ha? Who’ll hab you? who’ll feed you? who’ll take care of you? who’ll
own a good-fo’-nothin’ runaway nigga, I say, ha? Kick him ’bout h’yah, kick him
’bout dah, poor despise nigga wid no massa, jist as despise as any free nigga!
You run away, ha? what den?” continued my sable monitress, warming into
eloquence as she spoke: “take up constable, clap him in jail, salt him down
cowskin. Dat all? No! sell him low price, send Mississippi--what den? Work in
de cotton-field, pull at de cane. Dat all? No! cussed overseer wid a long
whip--cut h’yah, cut dah, cut high, cut low--whip all day, cuff all night--take
all de skin off--oh! dey do whip to de debbil in de Mississippi!” And as the
old lady concluded, to give more effect to her expressions, she fell to rubbing
her back and dodging her head from side to side, until I had the liveliest idea
in the world of that very castigation of which I stood in such horror.
Just at this moment, to
make my anguish more complete, in stepped a tall and dignified person, bearing
a huge walking-stick; with which I was so certain he would proceed to maul me,
that I made a second dive under the bedclothes, loudly beseeching him for
mercy.
To my surprise,
however, instead of beating me, he spoke to the old woman, whom he called aunt
Phœbe (and who, in return, entitled him Massa Jodge), asked “if I was not
light-headed?” said that “it was a great pity I had so hard a time of it,” that
“I was very much hurt,” that “he would be sorry to lose me,” and so on; and, in
fine, expressed what he said in accents so humane and gentle, that I was
encouraged to steal a peep at him; seeing which he sat down on a stool, felt my
pulse, and giving me quite a good-natured look, asked me “if I felt in much
pain?”
I was astonished that
he should treat me thus, if my master. But, surveying him more intently, I
perceived there was little in his appearance to justify any fears of cruelty.
He was an aged man, with a head of silver that gave him an uncommonly venerable
air; and, though his visage was grave, it expressed a native good-humour and
amiableness.
My terrors fled before
his soothing accents and benevolent looks; but being still confused, I was
unable to reply in proper terms to his questions; so that when he asked me, as
he soon did, what I meant by crying for mercy, I made answer, “Oh Lord, sir, I
was afraid you was going to beat me!” at which he laughed, and said “my
conscience was growing tenderer than common;” adding, that “there was no doubt
I deserved a trouncing, as did every other boy on his estate; for a set of
greater scoundrels than his was not to be found in all Virginia; and if they
had their deserts, they would get a round dozen apiece every day.”
He then began to ask me
particularly about my ailments; and I judged from his questions and certain
occasional remarks which he let fall, that I had been lying insensible for
several days, that my neck had been put out of place, or dislocated, and
reduced again by some practitioner of uncommon skill. And here, lest the reader
should think such a circumstance improbable, I beg leave to say that I have
lately seen an account of a similar operation performed by an English surgeon
on the neck of a fox-hunting squire; and as the story appeared in the
newspapers, there can be no doubt of its truth.
While the gentleman--my
master--was thus asking me of my pains, and betraying an interest in my welfare
that softened my heart towards him, there came into the hovel a young lady of a
very sweet countenance, followed by two or three younger girls and a little
boy, all of whom seemed glad to see me, the little boy in particular, shaking
me by the hand, while his youthful sisters (for all were my master’s children)
began to drag from a basket and display before my eyes the legs of a roasted
chicken, a little tart, a jelly, and divers other dainty viands, which they had
brought with them, as they said, “for poor sick Tom,” and insisted upon seeing
him eat on the spot. As for the young lady, the eldest sister, she smiled on
them and on me (for I was not backward to accept and dispose of the savoury
gifts), but told me I must not be imprudent, nor eat too much, and I would soon
be well. “What!” thought I, “does a slave ever eat too much?”
It is astonishing what
a revolution was effected in my feelings by the gentle deportment of my master,
and the kindly act of his children. I looked upon them and myself with entirely
new eyes; I felt a sort of affection for them steal through my spirit, and I
wondered why I had ever thought of them with fear. I took a particular liking
to the little boy, who, by-the-by, was a namesake of mine, he being Massa
Tommy, and I plain Tom, and I had an unaccountable longing come over me to take
him on my back and go galloping on allfours over the grass at the door. I had
no more thoughts of running away to avoid the dreadful lash, and the shame of
bonds; and, my master and his children presently leaving the hovel, having
first charged me to keep myself quiet and easy, I fell sound asleep, and
dreamed I lay a whole day on my back on a clay-bank, eating johnny-cake and
fried bacon.
The next day I was
visited again by my master, and by other members of his family whom I had not
seen before, and of whom I shall say nothing now, having occasion to mention
them hereafter. The children brought me “goodies” as before, and little Tommy
told me to “make haste and get well, for there were none of the other ‘boys’ ”--meaning
negroes--“who knew how to gallop the cock-horse half so well as I.” In short, I
was treated like a human being, and fed like a king, and began to grow wondrous
content with my situation. The doctor also came, and having fingered about my
neck for a while, declared my case to be the most marvellous one ever known,
and concluded by telling me I was well enough to get up, and that I might do so
whenever I chose.
Now this was a matter
of which I was as well satisfied as he could be, being quite certain I never
was better in my life; but I felt amazing delight in lolling a-bed, doing
nothing except feeding on the good things with which my master’s children so
liberally supplied me; and, I believe; had they left the matter to be decided
by my own will, I should have been lying on that bed, luxuriating in happy
laziness, to this day. It is certain I fabricated falsehoods without number,
for the mere purpose of keeping my bed; for whenever my master, who came to
inquire about me at least once a day, ventured to hint I was well enough to get
up if I would but choose to think so, I felt myself unaccountably impelled to
declare, with sighs and groans, that I could scarce move a limb, and that I
suffered endless pangs; all which was false, for I was strong as a horse, and
without any pain whatever.
“Well, well,” my
venerable master used to say, “I know you are cheating me, you rascal. But that’s
the way with you all. A negro will be a negro; and, sure, I have the laziest
set of scoundrels on my estate that ever ate up a good-natured master.”
Unhappily, for so I
then thought it, old aunt Phœbe, who had been appointed to nurse me, and who
was very conscientious about her master’s interest in all cases where her own
was not involved, was by no means so easily imposed upon as the old gentleman;
and on the seventh day after I opened my eyes, she dispelled a pleasing revery
in which I was indulging, by bidding me arise and begone. I began to plead my
pains: “Can’t play ’possum with me!” said she; “good-for-nothin’ nigga, not
worth you cawn!” and, not deigning to employ any other argument, she took a
broomstick to me, and fairly beat me out of the hovel. I thought it was very
odd I should get my first beating of a fellow-slave, and I was somewhat
incensed at the old woman for her cruelty; but by-and-by, when I had taken a
seat in the sunshine, snuffed the fresh autumn air, and looked about me a
little, I fell into a better humour with her, and--if that were possible--with
myself.
My master’s lands lay
on and near the Potomac, and his house was built on a hill, which bore his own
name, and gave name also to the estate--that is, Ridgewood Hill. It overlooked
that wide and beautiful river, being separated from it only by a lawn, which in
the centre was hollow, and ran down to the river in a ravine, while its flanks
or extremities, sloping but gently in their whole course, suddenly fell down to
the shore in wooded bluffs, that looked very bold and romantic from the water.
In the hollow of the lawn was a little brook, that rose from a spring further
up the hill, and found its way to the river through the ravine, where it made
many pretty little pools and cascades among the bushes; while a creek, that was
wide but shallow, swept in from the river above, and went winding away among
the hills behind.
My master’s house was
ancient, and, I must say, not in so good repair as it might have been; but
there were so many beautiful trees about it that one would not think of its
defects, the more especially as it appeared only the more venerable for them.
It looked handsome enough from the river; and even from the negro-huts, which were
nearer the creek, it had an agreeable appearance; particularly when the
children were playing together on the lawn, which they did, and sometimes white
and black together, nearly all day long. They were thus engaged in their sports
when aunt Phœbe drove me from the hovel; and I remember how soon my indignation
at the unceremonious ejection was pacified by looking on the happy creatures,
thus enjoying themselves on the grass, while my master and his eldest daughter
sat on the porch,.regarding them with smiles.
How greatly I had
changed within a few short days! Instead of being moved by the sight of
juvenile independence and happiness to think of my own bitter state of
servitude, I was filled with a foolish glee; and little Tommy running up to me
with shouts of joy, down I dropped on my hands and knees, and taking him on my
back, began to trot, and gallop, and rear, and curvet over the lawn, to the
infinite gratification of himself, his little sisters, and the children of my
own colour, all of whom rewarded my efforts of horseship with screams of
approbation. Now the reader will be surprised to hear it, but I, Tom the slave
(I never remember to have heard myself called any thing but Tom), enjoyed this
foolish sport just as much as Tommy the rider, to whom I felt, I think, some
such feelings of affection--I know not how I got them, but feel them I did--as
a father experiences while playing the courser to his own child. Nay, I was
thrown into such good-humour, and felt so content with myself, that when my master
came to me, and bade me “take care lest I should hurt myself by my exertions,”
I told him, in the fervour of my heart, I was doing very well, and that I was
as strong as ever I had been; which caused him to laugh, and say I was growing
marvellous honest of a sudden.
About this time the
field-hands returned from their daily labour, and, having despatched their
evening meal, they came, the women and children with them, under the trees
before the door, with banjoes, fiddles, and clacking-bones (that is, a sort of
castanets made of the ribs of an ox), and began to sing and dance, as was their
custom always every fair evening; for my master greatly delighted, as he said,
to see the poor devils enjoy themselves; in which the poor devils were ever
ready to oblige him. They had no sooner begun the diversion, than I was seized
with an unaccountable desire to join them, which I did, dancing with all my
might, and singing and clapping my hands, the merriest and happiest of them
all. And this sort of amusement, I may as well now inform the reader, we were
in the habit of repeating so long as the mildness of the weather permitted.
Having thus shown
myself to be perfectly cured of my broken neck, it followed that, as a slave, I
was now compelled to go into the fields and labour. This I did, at first, very
reluctantly; but by-and-by I discovered there was but little toil expected of me,
or indeed of any other bondman; for the overseer was a good-natured man like
his employer, and lazy like ourselves. I do not know how it may be with the
slaves on other estates; but I must confess that, so far as mere labour went,
there was less done by, and less looked for from, my master’s hands, than I
have ever known to be the case with the white labourers of New-Jersey. My
master owned extensive tracts of land, from which, although now greatly
empoverished and almost exhausted, he might have drawn a princely revenue, had
he exacted of his slaves the degree of labour always demanded of able-bodied
hirelings in a free state. But such was not the custom of Virginia, or such, at
least, was not the custom of my master. He was of a happy, easy temper, neglectful
of his interest, and though often--nay, I may say incessantly--grumbling at the
flagrant laziness of all who called him master, and at the yearly depreciation
of his lands, he was content enough if the gains of the year counterbalanced
the expenses; and as but a slight degree of toil was required to effect this
happy object, it was commonly rendered, and without repugnance, on the part of
his slaves. His great consolation, and he was always pronouncing it to himself
and to us, was, “that his hands were the greatest set of scoundrels in the
world,”-- which, if unutterable laziness be scoundrelism, was true. He was
pretty generally beloved by them; which, I suppose, was because he was so
good-natured; though many used to tell me they loved him because he was their “right-born
master,”-- that is, put over them by birth, and not by purchase; for he lived
upon the land occupied by his fathers before him, and his slaves were the
descendants of those who had served them.
The reader, who has
seen with what horror and fear I began the life of a slave, may ask if, after I
found myself restored to health and strength, I sought no opportunity to give
my master the slip, and make a bold push for freedom. I did not; a change had
come over the spirit of my dream: I found myself, for the first time in my
life, content, or very nearly so, with my condition, free from cares, far
removed from disquiet, and, if not actually in love with my lot, so far from
being dissatisfied, that I had not the least desire to exchange it for another.
Methinks I see the
reader throw up his hands at this, crying, “What! content with slavery!” I
assure him, now I ponder the matter over, that I am as much surprised as
himself, and that I consider my being content with a state of bondage a very
singular and unaccountable circumstance. Nevertheless, such was the fact. I was
no longer Sheppard Lee, Zachariah Longstraw, nor anybody else, except simply
Tom, Thomas, or Tommy, the slave. I forgot that I once had been a freeman, or,
to speak more strictly, I did not remember it, the act of remembering involving
an effort of mind which it did not comport with my new habits of laziness and
indifference to make, though perhaps I might have done so, had I chosen. I had
ceased to remember all my previous states of existence. I could not have been
an African had I troubled myself with thoughts of any thing but the present.
Perhaps this defect of
memory will account for my being satisfied with my new condition. I had no
recollection of the sweets of liberty to compare and contrast with the disgusts
of servitude. Perhaps my mind was stupified--sunk beneath the ordinary level of
the human understanding, and therefore incapable of realizing the evils of my
condition. Or, perhaps, after all, considering the circumstances of my lot with
reference to those of my mind and nature, such evils did not in reality exist.
The reader may settle
the difficulty for himself, which he can do when he has read a little more of
my history. In the meanwhile, the fact is true: I was satisfied with my lot--I
was satisfied even with myself. The first time I looked at my new face I was
shocked at what I considered its ugliness. But having peeped at it a dozen
times or more, my ideas began to alter, and, by-and-by, I thought it quite beautiful.
I used to look at myself in aunt Phœbe’s glass by the hour, and I well remember
the satisfaction with which I listened to the following rebuke of my vanity
from her, namely, “All you pritty young niggurs with handsome faces is good for
nothin, not wuth so much as you cawn!” In short, I was something of a coxcomb;
and nothing could equal the pride and happiness of my heart, when, of a Sabbath
morning, dressed in one of my master’s old coats well brushed up, a bran-new
rabbit-fur hat, the gift of little Tommy, a ruffled shirt, and a white
neckcloth, with a pair of leather gloves swinging in one hand, and a peeled
beechen wand by way of cane in the other, I went stalking over the fields to
church in the little village, near to which my master resided.
I say again, I cannot
account for my being so contented with bondage. It may be, however, that there
is nothing necessarily adverse to happiness in slavery itself, unaccompanied by
other evils; and that when the slave is ground by no oppression and goaded by
no cruelty, he is not apt to repine or moralize upon his condition, nor to seek
for those torments of sentiment which imagination associates with the idea of
slavery in the abstract.
Of one thing, at least,
I can be very certain. I never had so easy and idle a time of it in my whole
life. My little master Tommy had grown very fond of me. It is strange anybody
should be fond of a slave; but it is true. It appears I was what they call a
mere field-hand, that is, a labourer, and quite unfit for domestic service.
Nevertheless, to please Tommy, I was taken from the tobacco-fields, and,
without being appointed to any peculiar duty about the house, was allowed to do
what I pleased, provided I made myself sufficiently agreeable to young master.
So I made him tops, kites, wind-mills, corn-stalk fiddles, and little shingle
ships with paper sails, gave him a trot every now and then on my back, and had,
in return, a due share of his oranges and gingerbread.
In this way my time
passed along more agreeably than I can describe. My little master, it is true,
used to fall into a passion and thump me now and then; but that I held to be
prime fun; particularly as,--provided I chose to blubber a little, and pretend
to be hurt,--the little rogue would relent, and give me all the goodies he
could beg, borrow, or steal, to “make up with me,” as he called it.
Little Tommy and his
sisters, four in number, were the children of my master by a second wife, who
had died two years before. The oldest was the young lady of whom I have already
spoken, and she was, I believe, not above seventeen. Her name was Isabella, and
she was uncommonly handsome. A young gentleman of the neighbourhood, named
Andrews, was paying court to her. Indeed, she had a great many admirers, and
there was much company came to see her.
My master’s oldest son,
the only child left by his first wife, lived on a plantation beyond the creek,
being already married, and having children. His name was George, like his
father, and the slaves used to distinguish them as “Massa Cunnel Jodge,” and “Massa
Maja Jodge;” for all the gentlemen in those parts were either colonels or
majors. The major’s seat being at so short a distance, and the plantation he
cultivated a part of the colonel’s great estate of Ridgewood Hill, we used to
regard him as belonging still to our master’s family, and the slaves on both
plantations considered themselves as forming but a single community.
Nevertheless, we of the south side had a sort of contempt for those of the
north; for “Massa Maja,” though a good master, was by no means so easy as his
father. He exacted more work; and when he rode into the fields on our side, as
he often did, he used to swear at us for lazy loons, and declare he would, some
day or other turn over a new leaf with us.
I must again repeat
what I have said, namely, that I was contented with my servile condition, and
that I was so far from looking back with regret to my past life of freedom,
that I ceased at last to remember it altogether. I was troubled with no sense
of degradation, afflicted with no consciousness of oppression; and instead of
looking upon my master as a tyrant who had robbed me of my rights, I regarded
him as a great and powerful friend, whose protection and kindness I was bound
to requite with a loyal affection, and with so much of the labour of my hands
as was necessary to my own subsistence. What would have been my feelings had my
master been really a cruel and tyrannical man, I will not pretend to say; but
doubtless they would have been the opposite of those I have confessed.
The above remarks apply
equally to my fellowbondmen, of whom there were, young and old, and men and
women together, more than a hundred on the two estates. The exact number I
never knew; but I remember there were above twenty able-bodied men, or “full
hands,” as they were called, when all were mustered together. There were many,
especially among the women, who were great grumblers; but that was their
nature: such a thing as serious discontent was, I am persuaded, entirely
unknown. The labours of the plantation were light, the indulgences granted
frequent and many. There was scarce a slave on the estate who, if he laboured
at all, did not labour more for himself than his master; for all had their little
lots or gardens, the produce of which was entirely their own, and which they
were free to sell to whomsoever they listed. And hard merchants they were
sometimes, even to my master, when he would buy of them, as he often did. I
remember one day seeing old aunt Phœbe, to whom he had sent to buy some
chickens, fall into a passion and refuse to let the messenger have any, because
her master had forgotten to send the money. “Go tell old Massa Jodge,” said
she, with great ire, “I no old fool to be cheated out of my money; and I don’t
vally his promise to pay not dat!”--snapping her fingers--“he owe me two
ninepence already!” And the old gentleman was compelled to send her the cash
before she complied with his wishes.
The truth is, my master
was, in some respects, a greater slave than his bondmen; and all the tyranny I
ever witnessed on the estate was exercised by them, and at his expense; for
there was a general conspiracy on the part of all to cheat him, as far as was
practicable, out of their services, while they were, all the time, great
sticklers for their own rights and privileges. He was, as I have said before,
universally beloved; but his good-nature was abused a thousand times a day.
There existed no
substantial causes for dissatisfaction; and there was therefore the best reason
for content. Singing and dancing were more practised than hard work. In a word,
my master’s slaves were an idle, worthless set, but as happy as the day was
long. I may say the same of myself; I certainly was a very merry and joyous
personage, and my companions, who envied me for being the favourite of young
master, used to call me Giggling Tom.
But there is an end to
the mirth of the slave, as well as the joy of the master. A cloud at last came
betwixt me and the sun; a new thought awoke in my bosom, bringing with it a
revolution of feeling, which extended to the breasts of all my companions. It
was but a small cause to produce such great effects; but an ounce of gunpowder
may be made to blow up an army, and a drop of venom from the lip of a dog may
cause the destruction of a whole herd.
Beneath the bluff, and
at the mouth of the creek which divided the two plantations, was a wharf or landing,
where our fishing-boats (for we had a good fishery hard by) used to discharge
their cargoes, and where, also, small shallops, coming with supplies to the
plantation, put out their freight. Here, one day, some seven or eight of the
hands were engaged removing a cargo of timber, which had just been discharged
by a small vessel; my master having bought it for the express purpose of
repairing the negro-houses, and building a new one for a fellow that was to be
married; for it seems, his crops of corn and tobacco had turned out unusually
well, and when that happened the slaves were the first who received the
benefit.
Hither I strolled,
having nothing better to do, to take a position on the side of the bluff, where
I could both bask in the sunshine, which was very agreeable (for it was now the
end of October, though fine weather), and overlook the hands working--which was
still more agreeable; for I had uncommon satisfaction to look at others
labouring while I myself was doing nothing.
Having selected a place
to my liking, I lay down on the warm clay, enjoying myself, while the others
intermitted their labour to abuse me, crying, “Cuss’ lazy nigga, gigglin’ Tom
dah! why you no come down work?” having employed themselves at which for a
time, they resumed their labours; and I, turning over on my back and taking a
twig that grew nigh betwixt my teeth, began to think to myself what an
agreeable thing it was to be a slave and have nothing to do.
By-and-by, hearing a
great chattering and laughing among the men below, I looked down and beheld one
of them diverting himself with a ludicrous sport, frequently practised by
slaves to whom the lash is unknown. He was frisking and dodging about pretty
much as aunt Phœbe had done when endeavouring to show me how the whip was
handled in Mississippi; and, like her, he rubbed his back, now here, now there,
now with the right, now with the left hand; now ducking to the earth, now
jumping into the air, as though some lusty overseer were plying him, whip in
hand, with all his might. The wonder of the thing was, however, that Governor
(for that was the fellow’s name) had in his hand a pamphlet, or sheet of
printed paper, the contents of which he was endeavouring both to convey to his
companions and to illustrate by those ridiculous antics. The contents of the
paper were varied, for varied also was the representation.
“Dah you go, nigga!” he
cried, leaping as if from a blow; “slap on’e leg, hit right on’e shin! yah,
yah, yah--chah, chah, ch-ch-ch-ch-ah! chah, chah, massa!--oh de dam overseeah!
dat de way he whip a nigga!” Then pausing a moment and turning a leaf of the
book, he fell to leaping again, crying--“What dat? dat you, Rose? what you been
doin? stealin’ sugah?
“Jump! you nigga gal!
Hab a hard massa! So much you
git for stealin’ sugah!
So much for lickin’ lassa! “Dem
hard massa, licky de gals!
“Ole Vaginnee, nebber
ti-ah!
what ’e debbil’s de use
ob floggin’ like fia-ah!”
Then came another
scene. “Yah, yah, yah!-- what dat? Massa Maja kickin’ de pawson! I say, whaw
Pawson Jim? you Jim pawson, he-ah you git’em!” And then another--“Lorra-gorry,
what he-ah? He-ah a nigga tied up in a gum--
“Oh! de possum up de
gum-tree,
’Coony in de hollow: Two white men
whip a nigga,
How de nigga holla! “Jump, nigga,
jump! yah, yah, yah! did you ebber see de debbil? jump, nigga, jump! two white
men whip a nigga? gib a nigga fay-ah play!
When de white man comes
to sticky, sticky,
Lorra-gorr! he licky,
licky!
“Gib a nigga fay-ah
play!”
And so he went on, describing
and acting what he affected to read, to the infinite delight of his companions,
who, ceasing their work, crowded round him, to snatch a peep at the paper,
which, I observed, no one got a good look at without jumping back immediately,
rubbing his sides, and launching into other antics, in rivalry with Governor.
I wasmoved with
curiosity to know what they had laid their hands on, and I descended the bank
to solve the mystery. The paper had passed from the hands of Governor to those
of a fellow named Jim, or Parson Jim, as we usually called him; for he was fond
of praying and preaching, which he had been allowed to do until detected in a
piece of roguery a few weeks before by Master Major, who, besides putting a
check on his clerical propensities for the future, saluted him with two or
three kicks well laid on, on the spot. It was to this personage and his
punishment that Governor alluded, when he cried, “What he-ah? Massa Maja kickin’
de pawson!” as mentioned above. Although a great rogue, he was a prime
favourite among the negroes, who had a great respect for his learning; for he
could read print, and was even thought to have some idea of writing. This
fellow was employed, on the present occasion, at the ox-cart; and, as it is no
part of a slave’s system to do the work of others, he had been sitting apart
singing a psalm, while the others were loading his cart; and apart he had
remained, until a call was made upon him to explain so much of the paper, being
the printed portion, as Governor could not. The paper, it is here proper to
observe, had been found by Governor among the boards and scantling; though how
it got there no one knew, nor was it ever discovered. It was a pamphlet, or
magazine, I know not which (and the name I have unfortunately forgotten),
containing, besides a deal of strange matter about slavery, some half a dozen
or more wood-cuts, representing negroes in chains, under the lash, exposed in
the market for sale, and I know not what other situations; and it was these
which had afforded the delighted Governor so much matter for mimicry and
merriment. There was one cut on the first page, serving as a frontispiece; it
represented a negro kneeling in chains, and raising his fettered hands in
beseeching to a white man, who was lashing him with a whip. Beneath it was a
legend, which being, or being deemed, explanatory of the picture, and at the
same time the initial sentence of the book, Parson Jim was essaying to read:
and thus it was he proceeded:--
“T-h-e, the--dat’s de;
f-a-t-e, fat--de fat; o-f, ob--de fat ob; t-h-e, de--de fat ob de; s-l-a-v-e,
slave--de fat ob de slave. My gorry, what’s dat? Brederen, I can’t say as how I
misprehends dat.”
“Yah, yah, yah!” roared
Governor; “plain as de nose on you face. De fat ob de slave--what he mean, heh?
Why, gorry, you dumb nigga, he mean--massa, dah, is whippin de fat out ob de
nigger! Dem hard massa dat-ah, heh? Whip de fat out!
“Lorra-gorry, massa,
don’t like you whippy:
Don’t sell Gubbe’nor
down a Mississippi!”
“Let me read it,” said
I.
“You read, you nigga!
whar you larn to read?” cried my friends. It was a question I could not well
answer; for, as I said before, the memory of my past existence had quite faded
from my mind: nevertheless, I had a feeling in me as if I could read; and
taking the book from the parson, I succeeded in deciphering the legend--“The
Fate of the Slave.”
“Whaw dat?” said
Governor; “de chain and de cowhide? Does de book say dat’s de luck for nigga?
Don’t b’leeb ’m; dem lie: Massa Cunnel nebber lick a nigga in ’m life!”
The reading of that
little sentence seemed, I know not why, to have cast a sudden damper on the
spirits of all present. Until that moment, there had been much shouting,
laughing, and mimicking of the pains of men undergoing flagellation. Every
picture had been examined, commented on, and illustrated with glee; it
associated only the idea of some idle vagabond or other winning his deserts. A
new face, a new interpretation was given to the matter by the words I had read.
The chain and scourge appeared no longer as the punishment of an individual;
they were to be regarded as the doom of the race. The laughing and mimicry
ceased, and I beheld around me nothing but blank faces. It was manifest,
however, that the feeling was rather indignation than anxiety; and that my
friends looked upon the ominous words as a libel upon their masters and
themselves.
“What for book say dat?”
cried Governor, who, from being the merriest, had now become the angriest of
all; “who ebber hear of chain a nigga, escept nigga runaway, or nigga gwyin’
down gin’ will to Mississippi? Who ebber hear of lash a nigga, escept nigga
sassbox, nigga thief, nigga drunk, nigga break hoss’ leg?”
“Brudders,” said Parson
Jim, “this here is a thing what is ’portant to hear on; for, blessed be
Gorra-matty, there is white men what writes books what is friends of the
Vaginnee niggur.”
“All cuss’
bobbolitionist!” said Governor, with sovereign contempt--“don’t b’leeb in ’m.
Who says chain nigga in Vaginnee? who says cowhide nigga in Vaginnee? De fate
ob de slave! Cuss’ lie! An’t I slave, hah? Who chains Gubbe’nor? who licks
Gubbe’nor? Little book big lie!”
And “little book big lie!”
echoed all, in extreme wrath. The parson took things more coolly. He rolled his
eyes, hitched up his collar, stroked his chin, and suggesting the propriety of
reading a little farther, proposed that “brudder Tom, who had an uncommon good
hidear of that ar sort of print, should hunt out the root of the matter;” and
lamented that “it was a sort of print he could not well get along with without
his spectacles.”
Thus called upon, I
made a second essay, and succeeded, though not without pain, in deciphering
enough of the text to give me a notion of the object for which the tract had
been written. It was entitled “An Address to the Owners of Slaves,” and could
not, therefore, be classed among those “incendiary publications” which certain
over-zealous philanthropists are accused of sending among slaves themselves, to
inflame them into insurrection and murder. No such imputation could be cast
upon the writer. His object was of a more humane and Christian character; it
was to convince the master he was a robber and villain, and, by this pleasing
mode of argument, induce him to liberate his bond-men. The only ill consequence
that might be produced was, that the book might, provided it fell into their
hands, convince the bondmen of the same thing; but that was a result for which
the writer was not responsible--he addressed himself only to the master. It
began with the following pithy questions and answers--or something very like
them-- for I cannot pretend to recollect them to the letter.
“Why scourgest thou
this man? and why dost thou hold him in bonds? Is he a murderer? a
house-burner? a ravisher? a blasphemer? a thief? No. What then is the crime for
which thou art punishing him so bitterly? He is a negro, and my slave.”
Then followed a demand “how
he became, and by what right the master claimed him as a slave;” to which the
master replied, “By right of purchase,” exhibiting, at the same time, a bill of
sale. At this the querist expressed great indignation, and calling the master a
robber, cheat, and usurper, bade him show, as the only title a Christian would
sanction, “a bill of sale signed by the negro’s Maker!” who alone had the right
to dispose of man’s liberty; and he concluded the paragraph by averring, “that
the claim was fraudulent; that the slave was unjustly, treacherously,
unrighteously held in bonds; and that he was, or of right should be, as free as
the master himself.”
Here I paused for
breath; my companions looked at me with eyes staring out of their heads.
Astonishment, suspicion, and fear were depicted in their countenances. A new
idea had entered their brains. All opened their mouths, but Governor was the
only one who could speak, and he stuttered and stammered in his eagerness so
much that I could scarcely understand him.
“Wh-wh-wh-wh-what dat!”
he cried; “hab a right to fr-fr-fr-freedom, ’case Gorra-matty no s-s-s-sell
sell me? Why den, wh-wh-wh-who’s slave? Gorra-matty no trade in niggurs! I say,
you Pawson Jim, wh-wh-wh-what you say dat doctrine?”
The parson was
dumb-founded. The difficulty was solved by an old negro, who rolled his quid of
tobacco and his eyes together, and said,
“Whaw de debbil’s de
difference? Massa Cunnel no buy us; we born him slave, ebbery nigga he-ah!”
Unluckily, the very
next paragraph was opened by the quotation from the Declaration of
Independence, that “all men were born free and equal,” which was asserted to be
true of all men, negroes as well as others; from which it followed that the
master’s claim to the slave born in thraldom was as fraudulent as in the case
of one obtained by purchase.
“Whaw dat?” said
Governor; “Decoration of Independence say dat? Gen’ral Jodge Washington, him
make dat; and Gen’ral Tommie Jefferson, him put hand to it! ‘All men born free
and equal.’ A nigga is a man! who says no to dat? How come Massa Cunnel to be
massa den?”
That question had never
before been asked on Ridgewood Hill. But all now asked it, and all, for the
first time in their lives, began to think of their master as a foe and usurper.
The strangely-expressed idea in the pamphlet, namely--that none but their Maker
could rightfully sell them to bond-age, and that other in relation to natural
freedom and equality, had captivated their imaginations, and made an impression
on their minds not readily to be forgotten. Black looks passed from one to
another, and angry expressions were uttered; and I know not where the
excitement that was fast awaking would have ended, had not our master himself
suddenly made his appearance descending the bluff.
For the first time in
their lives, the slaves beheld his approach with terror; and all, darting upon
the timber, began to labour with a zeal and bustling eagerness which they had
never shown before. But, first, the pamphlet was snatched out of my hands, and
concealed in a hollow of the bank. Our uncommon industry (for even Parson Jim
and myself were seized with a fit of zeal, and gave our labour with the rest)
somewhat surprised the venerable old man. But as the timber was destined to
contribute to our own comforts, he attributed it to a selfish motive, and
chiding us good-humouredly and with a laugh, said, “That’s the way with you,
you rogues; you can work well enough when it is for yourselves.”
“Dat’s all de tanks we
gits!” muttered Governor, hard by. “Wonder if we ha’n’t a better right to work
than Massa Jodge to make us?”
We had seen the last
day of content on Ridgewood Hill. That little scrap of paper, thrown among us
perhaps by accident, or, as I have sometimes thought, dropped by the fiend of
darkness himself, had conjured up a thousand of his imps, who, one after
another, took up their dwelling in our breasts, until their name was Legion. My
fellow-slaves cared little now for singing and dancing. Their only desire, in
the intervals of labour, was to assemble together below the bluff, and dive
deeper into the mysteries of the pamphlet; and as I was the only one who could
explain them, and was ready enough to do so, I often neglected my little friend
Tommy to preside over their convocations.
Nor were these meetings
confined to the original finders of the precious document. The news had been
whispered from man to man, and the sensation spread over the whole estate, so
that those who lived with the major were as eager to escape from their labours
and listen to the new revelation as ourselves. Nay, so great was the curiosity
among them, that many who could not come when I was present to expound the
secrets of the book, would betake themselves to the bluff, to indulge a look at
it, and guess out its contents as they could from the pictures. And by-and-by,
the news having spread to a distance, we had visiters also from the gangs of
other plantations.
It was perhaps a week
or more before the composition was read through and understood by us all; and
in that time it had wrought a revolution in our feelings as surprising as it
was fearful. And now, lest the reader should doubt that the great effects I am
about to record should have really arisen from so slight a cause as a little
book, I think it proper to tell him more fully than I have done what that
little book contained.
It was, as I have said,
an address to the owners of slaves, and its object purported to be to awaken
their minds to the cruelty, injustice, and wickedness of slavery. This was
sought to be effected, in the first place, by numerous cuts, representing all
the cruelties and indignities that negro slaves had suffered, or could suffer,
either in reality, or in the imaginations of the philanthropists. Some of these
were horrible, many shocking, and all disgusting; and some of them, I think,
were copied out of Fox’s Book of Martyrs, though of that I am not certain. The
moral turpitude and illegality of the institution were shown, or attempted to
be shown, now by arguments that were handled like daggers and broad-axes, and
now by savage denunciations of the enslaver and oppressor, who were proved to
be murderers, blasphemers, tyrants, devils, and I know not what beside. The
vengeance of Heaven was invoked upon their heads, coupled with predictions of
the retribution that would sooner or later fall upon them, these being borne
out by monitory allusions to the servile wars of Rome, Syria, Egypt, Sicily,
St. Domingo, &c. &c. It was threatened that Heaven would repeat the
plagues of Egypt in America, to punish the task-masters of the Ethiopian, as it
had punished those of the Israelite, and that, in addition, the horrors of Hayti
would be enacted a second time, and within our own borders. It was contended
that the negro was, in organic and mental structure, the white man’s equal, if
not his superior, and that there was a peculiar injustice in subjecting to
bondage his race, which had been (or so the writer averred), in the earlier
days of the world, the sole possessors of knowledge and civilization; and there
were many triumphant references to Hannibal, Queen Sheba, Cleopatra, and the
Pharaohs, all of whom were proved to have been woolly-headed, and as bright in
spirit as they were black in visage. In short, the book was full of strange
things, and, among others, of insurrection and murder; though it is but
charitable to suppose that the writer did not know it.
There was scarce a word
in it that did not contribute to increase the evil spirit which its first
paragraph had excited among my companions. It taught them to look on themselves
as the victims of avarice, the play-things of cruelty, the foot-balls of
oppression, the most injured people in the world: and the original greatness of
their race, which was an idea they received with uncommon pleasure, and its
reviving grandeur in the liberated Hayti, convinced them they possessed the
power to redress their wrongs, and raise themselves into a mighty nation.
With the sense of
injury came a thirst for revenge. My companions began to talk of violence and
dream of blood. A week before there was not one of them who would not have
risked his life to save his master’s; the scene was now changed-- my master
walked daily, though without knowing it, among volcanoes; all looked upon him
askant, and muttered curses as he passed. A kinder-hearted man and easier
master never lived; and it may seem incredible that he should be hated without
any real cause. Imaginary causes are, however, always the most efficacious in
exciting jealousy and hatred, In affairs of the affections, slaves and the
members of political factions are equally unreasonable. The only difference in
the effect is, that the one cannot, while the other can, and does, change his
masters when his whim changes.
That fatal book
infected my own spirit as deeply as it did those of the others, and made me as
sour and discontented as they. I began to have sentimental notions about
liberty and equality, the dignity of man, the nobleness of freedom, and
so-forth; and a stupid ambition, a vague notion that I was born to be a king or
president, or some such great personage, filled my imagination, and made me a
willing listener to, and sharer in, the schemes of violence and desperation
which my fellow-slaves soon began to frame. It is wonderful, that among the
many thoughts that now crowded my brain, no memory of my original condition
arose to teach me the folly of my desires. But, and I repeat it again, the past
was dead with me; I lived only for the present.
A little incident that
soon befell me will show the reader how completely my feelings were identified
with my condition, and how deeply the lessons of that unlucky pamphlet had sunk
into my spirit. My little playmate, master Tommy, who was not above six years
old, being of an irascible temper, sometimes quarrelled with me; on which
occasions, as I mentioned before, he used to beat me; a liberty I rather
encouraged than otherwise, since I gained by it--though my master strictly
forbade the youth to take it. Now, as soon as my head began to fill with the
direful and magnificent conceptions of a malecontent and conspirator, I waxed
weary of child’s play and master Tommy, who, falling into a passion with me for
that reason, proceeded, on a certain occasion, to pommel my ribs with a fist
about equal in weight to the paw of a gadfly. I was incensed, I may say
enraged, at the poor child, and repaid the violence by shaking him almost to
death. Indeed, I felt for a while as if I could have killed him; and I know not
whether I might not have done it (for the devil had on the sudden got into my
spirit), had not his father discovered what I was doing, and run to his
assistance. I then pretended that I had shaken him in sport, and thus escaped a
drubbing, of which I was at first in danger. The threat of this, however, sank
deeply into my mind, and I ever after felt a deep hatred of both father and
son. This may well be called a blind malice, for neither had given me any real
cause for it.
In the meanwhile the
devil was doing his work among the others, and disaffection grew into wrath and
fury, that were not so perfectly concealed but that my master, or rather his
eldest son, who was of a more observant disposition, began to suspect that
mischief was brewing; and in a short time it was reported among us that our
master had marked some of us as being dangerous, and was resolved to sell us to
a Mississippi trader who was then in the county. This was reported by a spy, a
house-servant, who professed to have overheard the conversation, and who
reported, besides, that our master and his son were furbishing up their
fire-arms, and laying in terrible supply of balls and powder.
Now whether this
account was true or not I never knew, and I suppose I never shall until I am in
my grave. It was enough, however, to drive us to a phrensy, those in particular
who had been indicated as the intended victims of the Mississippi trader; and
the more especially, as those men had wives and children, from whom they were
told they were to be parted. One of these was the blacksmith of the estate,
who, being a resolute and fierce-tempered fellow, instantly began to convert
all the old horseshoes and iron hoops about his shop into a kind of blades or
spear-heads, which we fastened upon poles, and hid away in secret places. There
were among us three or four men who had muskets, with which they used to shoot
wild fowl on the river, there being great abundance at this season. These
weapons were also put into requisition; besides which we stored away
butcherknives and bludgeons, old scythe-blades and sickles beaten straight,
until we could boast quite an armory. And here I may observe, that the faster
these weapons increased upon our hands, the more deadly became our resolutions,
the more fierce and malignant our desires; until, having at last what we
thought a sufficiency for our purpose, we gave a loose to our passions, and
determined upon a plan of proceedings that may well be called infernal.
I believe that when we
began to collect these offensive weapons we had but vague ideas of mischief,
thinking rather of defending ourselves from some meditated outrage on the part
of our master, than of beginning an assault upon him ourselves. But now, the armory
being complete, and several cunning fellows, who had been spying out among the
surrounding plantations, bringing us word that the gangs (so they sometimes
call the whole number of hands on a farm) of most of them were ready to strike
with us for freedom; another having brought us word that a great outbreaking
had already taken place south of James river, which, however, was not true; a
third reminding us that we were more numerous than our masters; and a fourth
bidding us remember that the negroes had once, as the little book told us, been
the masters of all the white men in the world, and might be again; I say, these
things being represented to us, as we were handling our arms and thinking what
execution we could do with them, we shook hands together, and kissing the
little pamphlet (for which we had conceived a high regard), as we had seen
white men kiss the book in courts of law, we swore we would exterminate all the
white men in Virginia, beginning with our master and his family.
The chief men in the
conspiracy were, by all consent, the fellow called Governor, of whom I have
said so much before; Parson Jim, who, although a little in the background at
first, had soon taken a foremost stand, and was, indeed, the first to propose
murder; myself,--not that I was really very active or fiery in the matter, but
because I had become prominent as the reader of the little book; Cesar, the
blacksmith; and a fellow named Zip, or Scipio, who was the chief fiddler and
banjo-player, and had been therefore in great favour with the family, until he
lost it by some misconduct.
The parson having
uttered the diabolical proposal I mentioned before, and seeing it well
received, got up to make a speech to inflame our courage. There was in his
oration a good deal of preaching, with a considerable sprinkling of scraps from
the Bible, such as he had picked up in the course of his clerical career. What
he chiefly harped on was that greatness of the negro nation spoken of before,
and he discoursed so energetically of the great kings and generals, “the great
Faroes and Cannibals,” as he called them, who had distinguished the race in
olden time, that all became ambitious to figure with similar dignity in story.
“What you speak faw,
pawson?” said Governor, interrupting him, and looking round with the air of a
lord; “I be king, hah? and hab my sarvants to wait on me!”
“What you say dah, Gub’nor?”
cried Zip the fiddler, with equal spirit: “You be king, I be president.”
“I be emp’ror, like dat
ah nigga in High-ty!” said another.
“I be constable!” cried
a fourth.
“You be cuss’! you no
go for de best man!” cried Governor, in a heat: “I be constable myself, and I
lick any nigga I like! Who say me no, hah? I smash him brain out--dem nigga!”
Governor was a tyrant already, and all began to be more or less afraid of him. “I’ll
be de great man, and I shall hab my choice ob de women: what you say dat? I
sall hab Missa Isabella faw my wife! Who say me no dah?”
“Berry well!” cried
Scipio: “I hab Missa Edie”--that is, Miss Edith, the next in age, who was,
however, not yet thirteen, and therefore but a poor little child.
“Brudder Zip,” said Jim
the parson, “I speak fust dah! The labourer is wordy ob his hiah--I shall put
my hand to de plough, and I shall hab Missa Edie for my wife. Arter me, if you
please, brudder Zip!”
“Hold you jaw, Zip,”
said King Governor to the fiddler, who was ready to knock the parson down. “You
shall hab Massa Maja’s wife, and you shall cut his head off fust. As faw de
oder niggas he-ah, what faw use ob quar’lin? We shall have wifes enough when we
kills white massas; gorry! we shall hab pick!”
And thus my companions
apportioned among themselves, in prospective, the wives and daughters of their
intended victims; and thus, doubtless, they would have apportioned them in
reality, had the bloody enterprise been allowed the success its projectors
anticipated. I remember that my blood suddenly froze within my veins when the
conspiracy had reached this point; and the idea of seeing those innocent,
helpless maidens made the prey of brutal murderers, was so shocking to my
spirit that I lost speech, and could scarce support myself on my feet.
While I stood thus
confused among them, the conspirators determined upon a plan of action by
which, as far as I understood it, the houses of my master and his son, the two
being previously murdered, were to be set on fire at the same moment, on the
following night, and at the sight of the flames the slaves on several
neighbouring plantations were to fall upon their masters in like manner: after
which, the gangs from all the burnt estates were to meet at a common
rendezvous, and march in a body against the neighbouring village, the sacking
of which they joyously looked forward to as the first step in a career of
conquest and triumph--in other words, of murder and rapine.
Who would have thought
that a little book, framed by a philanthropist, for the humane purpose of
turning his neighbour from the error of his way, should have lighted a torch in
his dwelling only to be quenched by blood! I am myself a witness that the
pamphlet was not one of those incendiary publications of which so much is said,
as being designed for the eyes of slaves themselves, to exasperate them to
revolt. By no means; it was addressed to the master, and of course was only
designed for him. Why the pictures were put in it, however, I cannot imagine,
since it may be supposed the master could understand the argument and
exhortation of the writer well enough without them. Perhaps they were intended
to divert his children.
The book, however,
whatever may have been the object for which it was written, had the effect to
make a hundred men, who were previously contented with their lot in life, and
perhaps as happy as any other men ordained to a life of labour, the victims of
dissatisfaction and range, the enemies of those they had once loved, and, in
fine, the contrivers and authors of their own destruction.
I said, that when the
conspiracy reached the crisis mentioned before, I was suddenly seized with
terror. I began to think with what kindness I had been treated by those I had
leagued to destroy; and the baseness and ingratitude of the whole design struck
me with such force, that I was two or three times on the point of going to my
master, and revealing it to him while he had yet the power to escape. But my
fears of him and of my fellow-ruffians deterred me. I thought he looked fierce
and stern; and as for my companions, I conceited that they were watching me,
dogging my every step, prepared to kill me the moment I attempted to play them
false. It was unfortunate that my rudeness to Master Tommy had caused me to be
banished the house; for although my master did not beat me, he was persuaded my
violence in that case was not altogether jocose, and therefore punished me by
sending me to the fields. Hence I had no opportunity to see him in private,
unless I had sought it, which would have exposed me to observation.
The night came, and it
came to me bringing such gloom and horror, that my agitation was observed by
Governor and others, who railed at me for a coward, and threatened to take my
life if I did not behave more like a man. This only increased my alarm; and,
truly, my disorder of mind became so great, that I was in a species of stupid
distraction when the moment for action arrived; for which reason I retain but a
confused recollection of the first events, and cannot therefore give a clear relation
of them.
I remember that there
was some confusion produced by an unexpected act on the part of our master,
who, it was generally supposed, designed crossing the creek to visit the major,
having ordered his carriage and the ferry-boat to be got ready, and it was
resolved to kill him while crossing the creek on his return; after which we
were to fire a volley of guns, as a signal to the major’s gang, and then
assault and burn our master’s dwelling. Instead of departing, however, when the
night came, he remained at home, shut up with the overseer and young Mr.
Andrews, his daughter’s lover; and it was reported that they had barred up the
doors and windows, and were sitting at a table covered with loaded pistols;
thus making it manifest that they suspected our intentions, and were resolved
to defend themselves to the last.
For my part, I have
never believed that our master suspected his danger at all; he perceived,
indeed, that an ill spirit had got among his people, but neither he nor any of
his family really believed that mischief was intended. Had they done so, he
would undoubtedly have procured assistance, or at least removed his children.
The windows were barred indeed, and perhaps earlier than usual, which may have
been accidental; and as for the fire-arms on the table, I believe they were
only fowling-pieces, which my master, Mr. Andrews, and the overseer, who was a
great fowler, and therefore much favoured by my master, who was a veteran
sportsman, were getting ready to shoot wild ducks with in the morning.
My companions, however,
were persuaded that our victims were on their guard; and the hour drawing nigh
at which they had appointed to strike the first blow, and give the signal to
the neighbouring gangs, they were at a loss, not knowing what to do; for they
were afraid to attack the house while three resolute men, armed with pistols,
stood ready to receive them. In this conjuncture it was proposed by Governor,
who, from having been a fellow notorious for nothing save monkey tricks and
waggery, was now become a devil incarnate, he was so bold, cunning, and eager
for blood, to fire the pile of timber where it stood near the quarters, or
negro-huts; the burning of which would serve the double purpose of drawing our
intended victims from the house, and giving the signal to the neighbouring
estates.
The proposal was
instantly adopted, and in a few moments the pile of dry resinous wood was in a
flame, burning with prodigious violence, and casting a bright light over the
whole mansion, the lawn, and even the neighbouring river. At the same moment,
and just as we were about to raise the treacherous alarm, we heard a sudden
firing of guns and shouting beyond the creek at the major’s house, which made
us suppose the negroes there had anticipated us in the rising.
Emulous not to be
outdone, our own party now set up a horrid alarm of “Fire!” accompanied with
screams and yells that might have roused the dead, and ran to the mansion door,
as if to demand assistance of their master.
Never shall I forget
the scene that ensued. I stood rooted to the ground, not twenty steps from the
house, when the door was thrown open, and my master rushed out, followed by
Andrews and the overseer. They had scarce put foot on the porch before six or
seven guns, being all that the conspirators could muster, and which the owners
held in readiness, were discharged at them, and then they were set upon by
others with the spears, The light of the fire illuminated the porch, so that
objects were plainly distinguishable; yet so violent was the rush of
assailants, so wild the tumult, so brief the contest, that I can scarce say I
really witnessed the particulars of the tragedy. I beheld, indeed, my master’s
gray hairs, for he was of towering stature, floating an instant over the heads
of the assailants; but the next moment they had vanished; and I saw but a
single white man struggling in the hall against a mass of foes, and crying out
to Miss Isabella by name, “to escape with the children.” Vain counsel, vain
sacrifice of safety to humanity; the faithful overseer (for it was he who made
this heroic effort to save his master’s children, his master and young Andrews
lying dead or mortally wounded on the porch) was cut down on the spot, and the
shrieks of the children as they fled, some into the open air by a back door,
and others to the upper chambers, and the savage yells of triumph with which
they were pursued, told how vainly he had devoted himself to save them.
While I stood thus
observing the horrors I had been instrumental in provoking, as incapable of
putting a stop to as of assisting in them, I saw two of the children, little
Tommy and his youngest sister, Lucy, a girl of seven or eight years, running
wildly over the lawn, several of my ruffian companions pursuing them. The girl
was snatched up by old aunt Phæbe, who, with other women, had come among us,
wringing her hands, and beseeching us not to kill their young misses, and was
thus saved. As for the boy, he caught sight of me, and sprang into my arms,
entreating me “not to let them kill him, and he would never hurt me again in
all his life, and would give me all his money.”
Poor child! I would
have defended him at that moment with my life, for my heart bled for what had
already been done; but he was snatched out of my hands, and I saw no more of
him. I heard afterward, however, that he was not hurt, having been saved by the
women, who had protected in like manner his two little sisters, Jane and Lucy.
As for the others, that is, Isabella and Edith, I witnessed their fate with my
own eyes; and it was the suddenness and horror of it that, by unmanning me
entirely, prevented my giving aid to the boy when he was torn from my arms.
The fire had by this
time spread from the timber to an adjacent cabin, and a light equal to that of
noon, though red as blood itself, was shed over the whole mansion, on the roof
of which was a little cupola, or observatory, open to the weather, where was
room for five or six persons to sit together, and enjoy the prospect of the
river and surrounding hills; and on either side of this cupola was a platform,
though without a balustrade, on which was space for as many more.
The observatory being
strongly illuminated by the flames, and my eyes being turned thitherward by a
furious yell which was suddenly set up around me, I beheld my master’s daughter
Isabella rush into it,--that is, into the observatory,--from the staircase
below, hotly pursued, as was evident from what followed. She bore in her arms,
or rather dragged after her, for the child was in a swoon, her sister Edith,
who was but small of stature and light; and as she reached this forlorn place
of refuge, she threw down the trapdoor that covered its entrance, and
endeavoured to keep it down with her foot. There was something inexpressibly
fearful in her appearance, independent of the dreadfulness of her situation,
separated only by a narrow plank from ruffians maddened by rage and carnage,
from whom death itself was a boon too merciful to be expected, and from whom
she was to guard not only herself, but the feeble, unconscious being hanging on
her neck. Her hair was all dishevelled, her dress torn and disordered, and her
face as white as snow; yet there was a wild energy and fierceness breathing
from every feature, and she looked like a lioness defending to the last her
young from the hunters, from whom she yet knows there is no escape.
The trapdoor shook
under her foot, and was at last thrown violently up; and up, with screams of triumph,
darted the infuriated Governor, followed by Jim and others, to grasp their
prey. Their prey had fled: without uttering a word or scream, she sprang from
the cupola to the platform at its side, and then, with a fearlessness only
derived from desperation, and still bearing her insensible sister, she stepped
upon the roof, which was high and steep, and ran along it to its extremity.
Even the ferocious
Governor was for a moment daunted at the boldness of the act, and afraid to
follow; until the parson--well worthy he of the name!--set him the example by
leaping on the shingles, and pursuing the unhappy girl to her last refuge. He
approached--he stretched forth his arm to seize her; but he was not destined to
lay an impure touch on the devoted and heroic creature. I saw her lay her lips
once on those of the poor Edith--the next instant the frail figure of the
little sister was hurled from her arms, to be dashed to pieces on the stones
below. In another, the hapless Isabella herself had followed her, having thrown
herself headlong from the height, to escape by death a fate otherwise
inevitable.
Of what followed I have
but a faint and disordered recollection. I remember that the fall of the two
maidens caused loud cries of horror from the men, and of lamentation from the
women; and I remember, also, that these were renewed almost immediately after,
but mingled with the sound of fire-arms discharged by a party of foes, and the
voices of white men (among which I distinguished that of my master’s son, the
major) calling upon one another to “give no quarter to the miscreants.” A party
of armed horsemen had in fact ridden among us, and were now dealing death on
all hands from pistols and sabres. From one of the latter weapons I myself
received a severe cut, and was at the same time struck down by the hoofs of a
horse, and left insensible.
When I recovered my
senses I found myself a prisoner, bound hand and foot, and lying, with six or
seven of my late companions, in a cart, in which, groaning with pain, for most
of us were wounded, and anticipating a direful end to our dreams of conquest
and revenge, we were trundled to the village, and there deposited in the county
jail, to repent at leisure the rashness and enormity of our enterprise.
The power of that
little pamphlet, of which I have said so much, to produce an effect for which
we must charitably suppose it was not intended, was shown in the numbers of
wretches by whom the prison was crowded; for it had been used to inflame the
passions of the negroes on several different estates, all of whom had agreed to
rise in insurrection, although, as it providentially happened the revolt
extended to the length of murder only on Ridgewood Hill. The conspiracy was
detected--I believe confessed by a slave--on a plantation adjacent to that of
my master’s son; who, being informed of it, and assisted by a party that
brought the news, proceeded to seize the ringleaders in his own gang, some of
whom, attempting to make their escape, were fired on; and this was the cause of
the volley which we had heard, and supposed was fired by our
fellow-conspirators beyond the creek. The major then crossed over to his father’s
estate, but too late to avert the tragedy which I have related. His father, his
eldest sister, and her lover were already dead; as for the younger, Edith, she
was taken up alive, but cruelly mangled, and she expired in a few hours. The
faithful and devoted overseer, I have the happiness to believe, ultimately
escaped with his life; for, although covered with wounds, and at first reported
dead, he revived sufficiently to make deposition to the facts of the assault
and murder, as far as he was cognizant of them, and I heard he was expected to
recover.
Of those who perished,
the father, the children, and the gallant friend, there was not one who was
not, a fortnight before, respected and beloved by those who slew them; and at
their death-hour they were as guiltless of wrong, and as deserving of affection
and gratitude, as they ever had been. How, therefore, they came to be hated,
and why they were killed, I am unable to divine. All that I know is, that we
who loved them read a book which fell in our way, and from that moment knew
them only as enemies--objects on whom we had a right to glut our fiercest
passions.
As for ourselves--my
deluded companions, at least--their fate can be easily imagined. Some were
killed at the scene of murder; among others the chief leader, Governor, who was
shot on the roof of the house. Parson Jim was wounded on the same place, and,
rolling from the roof, was horribly crushed by the fall, but lingered in
unspeakable agonies for several days, and then died. Scipio, the fiddler, was
taken alive, tried, condemned, and executed, with many others whose
participation in the crime left them no hope of mercy.
With these, I was
myself put upon trial and adjudged to death; for although it was made apparent
that I had not lifted my hand against any one, it was proved that I was more
than privy to the plot--that I had been instrumental in fomenting it; and the
known favour with which I had been treated, added the double die of ingratitude
to my offence. I was therefore condemned, and bade to expect no mercy; nor did
I expect it; for the fatal day appointed for the execution having arrived, a
rope was put round my neck, and I was led to the gibbet.
And now I am about to
relate what will greatly surprise the reader--I was not only found guilty and
condemned--I was hanged! Escape was impossible, and I perceived it. The anguish
of my mind--for in anguish it may be supposed I looked forward to my fate--was
increased by the consciousness--so long slumbering--that flashed on it, as I
was driven to the fatal tree, that I was, in reality, not Tom the slave, but
Sheppard Lee the freeman, and that I possessed a power of evading the halter,
or any other inconvenience, provided I were allowed but one opportunity to
exercise it. But where was I now to look for a dead body? It is true, there
were bodies enough by-and-by, when my accomplices were tucked up around me; but
what advantage could I derive from entering any one of them, since my fate must
be equally certain to be hanged?
My distress, I repeat,
was uncommonly great, and in the midst of it I was executed; which put an end
to the quandary.
Here, it would seem,
that my history should find its natural close; but I hope to convince the world
that a man may live to record his own death and burial. I say burial; for, from
all I have heard, I judge that I was buried as well as hanged, and that I lay
in the earth in a coarse deal coffin, from two o’clock in the afternoon of a
November day, until nine at night; when certain young doctors of the village,
who were desirous to show their skill in anatomy, came to the place of
execution, and dug up the three best bodies, of which, as my good luck would
have it, my own was one-- Zip the fiddler’s being another, while the third was
that of a young fellow named Sam, notorious for nothing so much as a great
passion he had for butting with his head against brick walls, or even stone
ones, provided they were smooth enough.
The young anatomists,
previous to hacking us, resolved to try some galvanic experiments on us, having
procured a battery for that purpose; and they invited a dozen or more
respectable gentlemen to be present, and witness the effects of that
extraordinary fluid, galvanism, on our lifeless bodies.
The first essayed was
that of the unfortunate Scipio, who, being well charged, began, to the
admiration of all present, to raise first one arm, and then the other, then to
twist the fingers of his left hand in a peculiar way, as if turning a screw,
inclining his head the while towards his left shoulder, and then to saw the
air, sweeping his right hand to and fro across his breast, with great briskness
and energy, the fingers of his left titillating at the air all the while, so as
to present the lively spectacle of a man playing the fiddle; and, indeed, it
was judged, so natural was every motion, that had the party been provided with
a fiddle and bow to put into his hands, they would have played such a jig as
would have set all present dancing.
The next experiment
tried was upon the body of Sam, whose muscles were speedily excited to exercise
themselves in the way to which they had been most accustomed, though not in one
so agreeable to the chief operator; for, in this case, the lifeless corse
suddenly lifting up its head, bestowed it, with a jerk of propulsion equal in
force to the but of a battering-ram, full against the stomach of the operator,
whereby he was tumbled head over heels, and all the breath beaten out of his
body.
The reader may suppose,
as it was proved to be the virtue of galvanism to set the dead muscles doing
those acts to which the living ones had been longest habituated, that I, upon
being charged, could do nothing less than throw myself upon my hands and knees,
and go galloping about the table, as I had been used to do over the lawn, when
master Tommy was mounted upon my back.
Such, however, was not
the fact. The first thing I did upon feeling the magical fluid penetrate my
nerves, was to open my eyes and snap them twice or thrice; the second to utter
a horrible groan, which greatly disconcerted the spectators; and the third to
start bolt upright on my feet, and ask them “what the devil they were after?”
In a word, I was suddenly resuscitated, and to the great horror of all present,
doctors and lookers-on, who, fetching a yell, that caused me to think I had got
among condemned spirits in purgatory, fled from the room, exclaiming that I “was
the devil, and no niggur!” What was particularly lamentable, though I was far
from so esteeming it, one of them, a young gentleman who had come to the
exhibition out of curiosity, being invited by one of the doctors, was so
overcome with terror, that before he reached the door of the room he fell down
in a fit, and being neglected by the others, none of whom stopped to give him
help, expired on the spot.
As for me, the cause of
all the alarm, I believe I was ten times more frightened than any of the
spectators, especially when I came to recollect that I had just been hanged,
and that I would, in all probability, be hanged again, unless I now succeeded
in making my escape. As for the cause of my resuscitation, and the events that
accompanied it, I was then entirely ignorant of them; and, indeed, I must
confess I learned them afterward out of the newspapers. I knew, however, that I
had been hanged, and that I had been, by some extraordinary means or other,
brought to life again; and I perceived that if I did not make my escape without
delay, I should certainly be recaptured by the returning doctors.
I ran towards the door,
and then, for the first time, beheld that unfortunate spectator who had fallen
dead, as I mentioned before, and lay upon the floor with his face turned up. I
recollected him on the instant, as being a young gentleman whom I had once or
twice seen at my late master’s house. All that I knew of him was, that his name
was Megrim, that he was reputed to be very wealthy, and a great genius, or, as
some said, eccentric, and that he was admired by the ladies, and, doubtless,
because he was a genius.
As I looked him in the
face, I heard in the distance the uproar of voices, which had succeeded the
flight of the doctors, suddenly burst out afresh, with the sound of returning
footsteps; and a loud bully-like voice, which I thought very much like that of the
under-turnkey at the prison--a man whom I had learned to fear--cried out, “Let
me see your devil; for may I be cussed up hill and down hill if I ever seed a
bigger one than myself.”
Horrible as was the
voice, I was not dismayed. I saw at my feet a city of refuge, into which my
enemies could not pursue me. My escape was within my own power.
“Master,” said I,
touching my head (for I had no hat) to the corpse, “if it is all the same to
you, I beg you’ll let me take possession of your body.”
As I pronounced the
words the translation was effected, and that so rapidly, that just as I drew my
first breath in the body of Mr. Megrim, it was knocked out of me by the fall of
my old one, which --I not having taken the precaution to stand a little to one
side--fell down like a thunderbolt upon me, bruising me very considerably about
the precordia.
In this state, being
half suffocated, and somewhat frightened, I was picked up and carried away by
my new friends, and put to bed, where, having swallowed an anodyne, I fell
directly sound asleep.
And here, before
proceeding farther, I will say, that the doctors and their friends were greatly
surprised to discover my late body lying dead, having expected to find it as
animated as when they left it. But by-and-by, having reflected that the
galvanism, or artificial life, infused into its nerves had been naturally
exhausted at last, whereupon it as naturally followed that the body should
return to its lifeless condition, they began to aver that the most surprising
part of the business was, that it had kept me alive so long, and enabled me,
after groaning and speaking as I had actually done, to walk so far from the
table on which I had been lying.
On the whole, the
phenomenon was considered curious and wonderful; and an account of it having
been drawn up by the doctors, and headed “Extraordinary Case of the Effects of
Galvanism on a Dead Body,” it was printed for the benefit of scientific men
throughout the world, in a medical journal, where, I doubt not, it may be found
at this day.
Having been carried
from the scene of my late transformation, as I mentioned before, physicked, put
to bed, and allowed to sleep off my troubles, I awoke late on the following
morning, feeling very comfortable, notwithstanding the bruises on my ribs, and
with an uncommonly agreeable, though lazy sense of the enjoyment of lying
a-bed. Indeed, this was my only feeling. I woke to a consciousness, though a
vague one, of the change in my condition; and this, together with what I saw
around me, when I had succeeded, after some effort, in getting my eyes a little
opened, it may be supposed, would have filled me with surprise, and excited in
me a great curiosity to inquire into matters relating to Mr. Arthur Megrim.
Such, however, was not
the case. I looked upon the elegantly-adorned chamber in which I lay, and the
sumptuous robes of my bed, with as much indifference as if I had been
accustomed to them all my life; and as for the happy destiny that now seemed
opening upon me, I scarce thought on it at all.
Nor can I say that I
felt in any way elated at my fortunate escape from the hangman and the
anatomists. I remembered that affair with a drowsy indifference, as being a
matter of no further consequence to me; and as for Mr. Arthur Megrim’s friends
and kinsmen, his interests and relations in life, I thought to myself, with a
yawn, “I shall know them all in good time.”
I was content to take
things as they might come, and eschew labours of mind as well as efforts of
body. Curiosity, I felt, was a tumultuous passion, and I therefore resolved to
avoid it. In this mood I turned over on the other side, and took a second nap.
From this I was roused,
after a time, by some one tugging at my shoulder, who proved, upon examination,
to be a very elegant-looking mulatto-boy --that is, a boy of twenty-five years
or thereabouts --who signified, in language as genteel as his person, that it
was exactly half past eleven o’clock, and therefore time for me to get up.
“Augh--well!” said I,
taking about thirty seconds to gape out each word, it seemed such tiresome work
to articulate; “what do you want?”
“Want you to get up,
sah. Missie Ann says it does you no good to sleep so long.”
“Augh--who is Missie
Ann?”
“Lar bless us,” said
the gentleman, turning up the white of his eye, “Missie Ann is massa’s sister!”
“Who is massa?”
“You, massa--Massa
Arthur!”
“Augh--well; and who
are you?”
“’Paminondas, massa.
Coat very nicely brushed; very fine day; will do you good, sah, to get up and
taste the air. Regular Indian summer, sah.”
“You may go to the
devil.”
“Yes, sah.”
With that I turned over
for another nap, which I should undoubtedly have taken, had I not been
interrupted, just as I was falling asleep, by the entrance of a lady of a
somewhat starched and venerable appearance, though not more than six or seven
years older than myself, I being perhaps twenty-five or six.
“A’n’t you ashamed of
yourself, Arthur!” said she. “Do tell me--do you intend to lie a-bed for ever?”
“Augh--pshaw!” said I. “Pray,
madam, be so good as to inform me who you are, and--augh --what you want in my
chamber?”
“Come,” said the lady, “don’t
be ridiculous, and fall into any of your hyppoes again. Don’t pretend you don’t
know your own sister, Ann Megrim.”
“I won’t,” said I; “but--augh--sister,
if you have no objection, I should like--augh--to sleep till dinner is ready.”
“Dinner!” screamed my
sister, Ann Megrim; “don’t suppose you will ever be able to eat a dinner again.
You know the doctor says it is your hard eating and your laziness together that
have destroyed your digestive apparatus; and that, if you don’t adhere to the
bran bread and hickory ashes tea, you’ll never be cured in the world.”
“What!” said I, “am I
sick?”
“Undoubtedly,” said my
sister Ann; “your digestive apparatus is all destroyed, and your nerves too.
Did not you faint last night when they were galvanizing the bodies? Have you
not lost all muscular power, so that you do nothing but lie on a bed or sofa
all day long? Oh, really, brother Arthur Megrim, I am ashamed of you. A man
like you--a young man and a rich man, a man of family and genius, a gentleman
and a scholar, a man who might make himself governor of the state, or president
of the nation, or any thing--yet to be nothing at all except the laziest man in
Virginia, a man with no digestive apparatus, a poor nervous hyppo--oh, it is
too bad! Do get up and stir yourself. Mount your horse, or go out in the
carriage. Exercise, you know, is the only thing to restore strength to the
digestive apparatus.”
“Sister Ann,” said I, “the
more you speak of my digestive apparatus, the more--augh--the more I am
convinced you don’t know what you are talking about. I am resolved to get up
and eat my dinner--”
“Of bran bread and
hickory ashes,” said my sister.
“Of canvass-back ducks
and terapins,” said I. At which Miss Ann Megrim expressed terror and aversion,
and endeavoured to convince me that such indulgence would be punished by a
horrible indigestion, as had been the case a thousand times before.
But cogent as were her
arguments, I had, or felt, one still stronger on my side, being a savage
appetite, which was waking within that very digestive apparatus she held in
such disesteem, and which became the more eager the more she besought me to
resist it.
The discussion was so
far advantageous that it set me wide awake; and by-and-by, the zealous
Epaminondas having made his second appearance, I succeeded, with his
assistance, in getting on my clothes and descending to the dining-room, where,
to the great horror and grief of my affectionate relative, I demolished two
ducks and a half (being the true canvass-backs, or white-backs, as they call
them in that country), and a full grown tortoise, of the genus emys, and
species palustris. And in this operation, I may say, I found the first
excitement of pleasure which I had yet known in my new body, and displayed an
energy of application of which I did not before know that I was capable. Nor am
I certain that any ill consequences followed the meal. I felt, indeed, a strong
propensity to throw myself on a sofa and recruit after the labours of eating;
but this Miss Megrim resisted, insisting I should get into my carriage (for it
seems I had one, and a very handsome one too), and drive about to avoid a
surfeit.
In this I consented to
gratify her wishes, whereby I gratified one of my own; for I fell sound asleep
within five minutes after starting, and so remained until the excursion was
over.
Then, being as hungry
as ever, and not knowing what else to do, I picked my teeth over a newspaper,
and nodded at a novel until supper was got ready, which (disregarding Miss
Megrim’s exhortations, as before) I attacked with the good-will I had carried
to my dinner, eating on this occasion two terapins and a half and one whole
duck, of the genus anas, and species vallisneria.*
The only ill
consequences were, that I dreamed of the devil and his imps all night, and that
I awoke in a crusty humour next morning.
If there be among my
readers any person so discontented with his lot that he would be glad to
exchange conditions with another, I think, had he been acquainted with Mr.
Arthur Megrim, he would have desired an exchange with him above all other
persons in the world; for Mr. Megrim possessed all those requisites which are
thought to ensure happiness to a human being. He was young, rich, and
independent; of a good family (he boasted the chivalrous blood of the Megrims);
of a sound body, and serene temper; and with no appetite for those excesses
which ruin the reputation, while they debase the minds and destroy the peace of
youth. His years, as I have mentioned already, were twenty-five or six; his
revenues were far above his wants, and enabled him to support his town-house,
which was the most elegant one in the village, where he lived remote from the
care and trouble of his plantations; and as for independence, that was
manifestly complete, he being a bachelor, and the sole surviver of his family,
excepting only his sister, Miss Ann Megrim, who managed his household, and thus
took from his mind the only care that could otherwise have disturbed it.
What then in the whole
world had Mr. Megrim to trouble him? Nothing on earth--and for that reason, to
speak paradoxically, he was more troubled than any one else on earth. Labour,
pain, and care--the evils which men are so apt to censure Providence for
entailing upon the race--I have had experience enough to know, are essential to
the true enjoyment of life, serving, like salt, pepper, mustard, and other
condiments and spices, which are, by themselves, ungrateful to the palate, to
give a relish to the dish that is insipid and cloying without them. Who enjoys
health--who is so sensible of the rapture of being well, as he who has just
been relieved from sickness? Who can appreciate the delightful luxury of repose
so well as the labourer released from his daily toil? Who, in fine, tastes of
the bliss of happiness like him who is introduced to it after a probation of
suffering? The surest way to cure a boy of a love of cakes and comfils, is to
put him apprentice to a confectioner. The truth is, that the sweets of life,
enjoyed by themselves, are just as disgusting as the bitters, and can only be
properly relished when alternated or mingled with the latter.
But as this is
philosophy, and the reader will skip it, I will pursue the subject no further,
but jump at once from the principle to the practical illustration, as seen in
my history while a resident in the body of Mr. Arthur Megrim.
I was, on the sudden, a
rich young man, with nothing on earth to trouble me. I had lands and houses,
rich plantations, a nation or two of negroes, herds of sheep and cattle, with
mills, fisheries, and some half dozen or more gold-mines, which last-- and it
may be considered, out of Virginia, a wondrous evidence of my wealth--were
decidedly the least valuable of all my possessions. With all these things I was
made acquainted by my sister Ann, or otherwise, it is highly probable, I should
have known nothing about them; for during the whole period of my seventh
existence, I confined myself to my property in the village, not having the
least curiosity to visit my plantations, which, as everybody told me, were in
good hands.
In the village itself I
had every thing about me to secure happiness--a fine house, abundance of
servants, the whole under the management of the best of housekeepers, my sister
Ann, with horses and carriages--for which, however, I cared but little,
thinking it laborious to ride, and as tedious to be driven--and, above all,
friends without number, who treated me with a respect amounting to veneration
(for, it must be remembered, I was the richest man in the county), and with a
degree of affection little short of idolatry; but whom, however, I thought very
troublesome, tiresome people, seeing that they visited me too often, and
wearied me to death with long conversations about every thing.
Among them all, there
was but one for whom I felt any friendship; and he was a young doctor named
Tibbikens, for whom my sister Ann had a great respect, and who had been
retained by her to assist in taking care of my digestive apparatus-- that same
digestive apparatus of mine being a hobby on which my sister lavished more
thought and anxiety than I believe she did upon her own soul --not meaning to
reflect upon her religion, however, for she was a member of the Presbyterian
church, and quite devout about the time of communion. The cause of her
solicitude, as she gave me frequent opportunity to know by her allusion to the
fact, was her having been once afflicted in her own person with a disorder of
the digestive apparatus, which it had been the good fortune of Doctor Tibbikens
to cure by a regimen of bran bread and hickory ashes water; and hence her
affection for the doctor and the remedy. I liked the doctor myself because he
had the same solicitude about my health, without troubling me with advice
except when I asked it, or finding much fault when I did not follow it; because
his conversation was agreeable, except when he was in a scientific humour, and
did not require any efforts on my part to keep it up; because he liked terapins
and white-backs as well as myself, and was of opinion they were wholesome,
provided one ate them in moderation; and, in fine, because he took pains to
help me to amusement, and was of great assistance in dissipating somewhat of
that tedium which was the first evil with which I was afflicted in the body of
Mr. Arthur Megrim. I believe the doctor had a strong fancy for my sister; but
she used to declare she could never think of marrying, and thus being drawn from
what she felt to be the chief duty of her existence, namely--the care of my
digestive apparatus.
And now, having
mentioned tedium of existence as being an evil to which I soon felt myself
subject, I will say that it was one I found more oppressive than the reader can
readily imagine. I had nothing in the world to do, and, as it happened, my
disposition did not lead me to seek any thing. I was, in a word, the very man
my sister had so reproachfully called me in our first conversation-- that is,
the laziest man in all Virginia; and, upon reflection, I can think of no person
in the world who would bear a comparison with me in that particular, except
myself. “None but himself can be his parallel,” as somebody or other says, I
don’t know who, a sentiment that is supposed to be absurd, inasmuch as it
involves an impossibility, but which becomes good sense when applied to me. In
my original condition, in the body in which I was first introduced to life, I
certainly had a great aversion to all troublesome employments, whether of
business or amusement, being supposed by many persons to be then what as many
considered me now--to wit, the laziest man in my state. Whether I was lazier as
Sheppard Lee the Jerseyman or Arthur Megrim the Virginian, I am not able to
say. In both cases indolence was at the bottom of all my troubles. There was
this difference, however, between the two conditions, that whereas I had felt
in one the evils of laziness to a poor man, I was now to discover in the other
what were its evils to a man of fortune.
My chief employments in
the body of Mr. Arthur Megrim were eating and sleeping; and I certainly should
have done nothing else, had I been allowed to follow my own humours. Eating and
sleeping, therefore, consumed the greater portion of my time; but it could not
consume all; nor could the residue be filled up by the occasional excursions in
my curricle, and the still more unfrequent strolls through the village, into
which I was driven by my affectionate sister, or cajoled by her coadjutor, the
doctor, in their zealous care of my digestive apparatus. As for visits and
visitations, I abhorred them all, whether they related to the bustling young
gentlemen of the neighbourhood, or the loquacious ladies, old and young, who
cultivated the friendship of my sister.
Employ myself, however,
as I might, there always remained a portion of each day which I could not get
rid of, either in bed or at the table. On such occasions I was devoured by
ennui, and thought that even existence was an infliction--that it was hard work
to live. According to my sister’s account, I was a scholar and a genius; in
which case I ought to have found employment enough of an intellectual nature,
either in books or the reflections of my own mind. I certainly had a very large
and fine library in my house, and there was scarce a week passed by in which I
did not receive a huge bundle of the newest publications from a book-seller,
who had long had it in charge thus to supply me. Of these I usually read the
title-pages, and then turned them over to my sister, or, which was more common,
lent them to my neighbours, who, male and female together, came flocking to
borrow the day after, and sometimes the day before, the arrival of each
package, taking good care to rob me of those that were most interesting. The
truth is, if I ever had had the power of reading, I had now lost it. Books only
set me nodding.
As for exercising my
mind in reflections of its own, that was even more laborious than reading; and
I contracted a dislike to it, particularly as my mind wore itself out every
night in dreaming, that being a result of the goodly suppers I used to eat. It
is true, that I one day fell into a sudden ferment, and being inspired,
actually seized upon pen and paper, and wrote a poem in blank verse, forty
lines long, with which I was so pleased that I read it to Tibbikens and my
sister, both of whom were in raptures with it, the former carrying it off to
the editor of the village paper, who printed it with such a eulogium upon its
merits, as made me believe Byron was a fool to me, while all the young ladies
immediately paid my sister Ann a visit, that they might tell me how they
admired the beautiful piece, and lament that I wrote so seldom. I forget what
the poem was about; but I remember I was so delighted with the praise bestowed
on it, that I resolved to write another, which, however, I did not do, having
unfortunately begun it in rhyme, which was difficult, and my fit of inspiration
and energy having left me before I got through with my next dinner. It was my
writing verses, I suppose, that caused me to be called a genius; but it seems I
was too lazy to be inspired more than once or twice a year.
I relapsed into ennui,
and, truly, I became more tired of it before it was done with me, than was ever
a labourer of his hod or mattock.
But ennui was not the
worst of the evils that clouded my happy lot. Some touches of that diabolical
disorder, the curse of the rich man, which, as my sister so often gave me to
know, had threatened the peace of Mr. Arthur Megrim several times before, now
began to assail my own serenity, and threw gall and ratsbane over my dinners. I
had slighted her warnings, and despised her advice, and now I was to pay the
price of indiscretion. In a word, that very digestive apparatus, on which she
read me a lecture at least thrice a day, began to grumble, refuse to do duty,
and strike; though, unlike the industrious artisans, who were in all quarters
setting it the example, it struck, not for high wages, of which it had had a
surfeit, but for low ones, in which, however, its master was scarce able to
oblige it, having an uncommonly good appetite most of the time; and even when
he had not, not well knowing how to dispose of his time unless at the table.
My faithful sister, who
had been so constant to predict, was the first to detect the coming evil, and,
step by step, she pointed it out to my unwilling observation.
“Arthur,” said she, one
morning as we sat at breakfast, “your eyelid is winking.”
“Augh--” said I, “yes;
it is winking.”
“It is a sign,” said
she, “your digestive apparatus is getting out of order!”
“Augh!” said I, “hang
the digestive apparatus!” for I was tired of hearing it mentioned.
“Arthur,” said she, the
next day, “you are beginning to look yellow and bilious!”
“Yes,” said I; on which
she declared that “the alkalis of my biliary fluids”--she had studied the whole
theory and nomenclature of dyspepsy out of a book the doctor lent her--“were
beginning to fail to coalesce, in the natural chymical way, with the acids of
the chymous mass; and that no better argument could be desired to prove that my
digestive apparatus was getting out of order.” And she concluded by
recommending me to regulate my diet, and fall back upon bran bread and hickory
ashes.
In short, my dear
sister assailed me with a pertinacity equal to the disease itself, so that I
came, in a short time, to consider her as one of its worst symptoms.
To add to my woes, Dr.
Tibbikens began to go over to her opinion, to talk of my digestive apparatus,
and to drop hints in relation to bran bread and hickory ashes, which would
decidedly have robbed him of my friendship, had I not at last found myself
unable to do without him.
To make a long story
short, I will omit a detailed history of my tribulations during the winter, and
skip at once to the following spring; at the opening of which I found myself,
young, rich, and independent as I was, the bond-slave and victim of a malady to
which the woes of age and penury are as the sting of moschetoes to the teeth of
raging tigers.
Reader, I have, in the
course of this history, related to thee many miseries which it was my lot, on
different occasions, to encounter, and some of them of a truly cruel and
insupportable character. Could I, however, give thee a just conception of the
ills I was now doomed to suffer, which, of a certainty, I cannot do, unless
thou art at this moment the victim of a similar infliction, I am convinced thou
wouldst agree with me, that I had now stumbled upon a grief that concentrated
in itself all others of which human nature is capable.
Dost thou know what it
is to have thy stomach stuffed, like an ostrich’s, with old iron hoops and
brickbats--or feeling as if it were? to have it now drowned in vinegar, now
scorched as with hot potatoes? thy head filled with achings, dizziness, and
streaks of lightning? thy heart transformed into the heels of a
hornpipe-dancer, and plying thy ribs, lungs, and diaphragm with the energy of
an artiste in the last agony?
If thou dost, then thou
wilt know that bodily distress, of which the above miseries form but a small
portion, is the least of the evils of dyspepsy--that its most horrible symptoms
develop themselves in the mind. What care those devils, falsely called blue
(for they are as black as midnight, or the bile which engenders them), for the
youth, the wealth, the independence, the gentility of a man whose digestive
apparatus is out of order? The less cause he may have in reality to be
dissatisfied with his lot, the more cause they will find him; the greater and
more legitimate his claims to be a happy man, the more fierce and determined
their efforts to make him a miserable one.
The serenity of my mind
gave way before the attacks of these monsters; sleeping and waking, by day and
by night, they assailed me with equal pertinacity and fury. If I slept, it was
only to be tormented by demon and caco-demon--to be ridden double by incubus
and succuba, under whose bestriding limbs I felt like a Shetland pony carrying
two elephants. My dreams, indeed, so varied and terrific were the images with
which they afflicted me, I can compare to nothing but the horrors or last
delirium of a toper. Hanging, drowning, and tumbling down church-steeples were
the common and least frightful of the fancies that crowded my sleeping brain:
now I was blown up in a steamboat, or run over by a railroad car; now I was
sticking fast in a burning chimney, scorching and smothering, and now, head
downwards, in a hollow tree, with a bear below snapping at my nose; now I was
plastered up in a thick wall, with masons hard at work running the
superstructure up higher, and now I was enclosed in a huge apple-dumpling,
boiling in a pot over a hot fire. One while I was crushed by a boa constrictor;
another, perishing by inches in the mouth of a Bengal tiger; and, again, I was
in the hands of Dr. Tibbikens and his scientific coadjutors of the village, who
were dissecting me alive. In short, there was no end to the torments I endured
in slumber, and nothing could equal them except those that beset me while
awake.
A miserable melancholy
seized upon my spirits, in which those very qualifications which everybody
envied me the possession of were regarded with disgust, as serving only the
purpose of adding to my tortures. What cared I for youth, when it opened only a
longer vista of living wretchedness? What to me was the wealth which I could
not enjoy? which had been given me only to tantalize? And as for independence,
the idea was a mockery; the servitude of a galley-slave was freedom, unlimited
license, compared with my subjection to dyspepsy, and--for the truth must be
confessed--the doctor; to whom I was at last obliged to submit, nolens volens.
Whether Dr. Tibbikens
treated me secundum artem or not, I cannot say; but true it is, that instead of
getting better, I grew gradually worse, until my melancholy became a confirmed
hypochondriasis, and fancies gloomy and dire, wild and strange, seized upon my
brain, and conjured up new afflictions.
Getting up early one
morning, I found, to my horror, that I had been, in my sleep, converted into a
coffee-pot; a transformation which I thought so much more extraordinary than
any other I had ever undergone, that I sent for my sister Ann, and imparted to
her the singular secret.
“Oh!” said she,
bursting into tears, “it is all on account of your unfortunate digestive
apparatus. But, oh! brother Arthur, don’t let such notions get into your head.
A coffee-pot, indeed! that’s too ridiculous!”
I was quite incensed at
her skepticism, but still more so at the conduct of Dr. Tibbikens, who, being
sent for, hearing of my misfortune, and seeing me stand in the middle of the
floor, with my left arm akimbo, like a crooked handle, and the right stretched
out in the manner of a spout, seized me by the shoulders and marched me towards
a great hickory fire that was blazing on the hearth.
“What do you mean,
Tibbikens?” said I.
“To warm you,” said he:
“I like my coffee hot; and so I intend to boil you over again on that very
fire!”
At these words I
started, trembled, and awoke as from a dream, assuring him I had made a great
mistake, and was no more of a coffee-pot than he was; an assurance that
doubtless prevented my undergoing an ordeal which I was neither saint nor
fire-king enough to endure with impunity. Indeed, I was quite ashamed of having
permitted such a delusion to enter my brain.
The next day, however,
a still more afflicting change came over me; for having tried to read a book,
in which I was interrupted by a great dog barking in the street, I was seized
with a rage of a most unaccountable nature, and falling on my hands and feet, I
responded to the animal’s cries, and barked in like manner, being quite certain
that I was as much of a dog as he. Nay, my servant Epaminondas coming in, I
seized him by the leg and would have worried him, had he not run roaring out of
the chamber; and my sister Ann coming to the door, I flew at her with such
ferocity that she was fain to escape down stairs. The doctor was again sent
for, and popping suddenly into the chamber, he rushed upon me with a great
horsewhip he had snatched up along the way, and fell to belabouring me without
mercy, crying out all the while, “Get out, you rascal, get out!”
“Villain!” said I, jumping
on my hind legs, and dancing about to avoid his lashes, “what do you mean?”
“To whip you down
stairs, you cur!” said he, flourishing his weapon again.
On which I assured him
as earnestly as I could that “I was no cur whatever;” and indeed I was quite
cured of the fancy.
My next conceit was
(the morning being cold, and my fire having gone out), that I was an icicle;
which fancy was dispelled by the doctor saluting me with a bucket of water, on
pretence of melting me; and I was doubtless melted all the sooner for being
drenched in water exactly at the freezing-point.
After this I
experienced divers other transformations, being now a chicken, now a loaded
cannon, now a clock, now a hamper of crockery-ware, and a thousand things
besides; all which conceits the doctor cured without much difficulty, and with
as little consideration for the roughness of his remedies. Being a chicken, he
attempted to wring my neck, calling me a dunghill rooster, fit only for the
pot; he discharged the cannon from my fancies by clapping a red-hot poker to my
nose; and the crate of crockery he broke to pieces by casting it on the floor,
to the infinite injury of my bones. The clock at first gave him some trouble,
until, pronouncing it to have a screw out of order, he seized upon one of my
front teeth with a pair of pincers, and by a single wrench dissipated the
delusion for ever.
In short (for I do not
design particularizing my transformations further), there was no conceit
entered my brain which Dr. Tibbikens did not cure by a conceit; until, one
morning, by some mysterious revelation, the nature and means of which can only
be guessed at, I found that I had been elected the Emperor of France, and
announced my intention to set sail for my government immediately, in the first
ship of the line which the American executive could put at my disposal.
This fancy quite
disconcerted Dr. Tibbikens, and I heard him say to my sister, “He is a gone
case now,--quite mad, I assure you;” which expression so much offended me, that
I ordered him from my presence, and told him that, were it not for my respect
for the American government, whose subject he was, I would have his head for
his impertinence.
But wo betide the day!
the doctor returned to me in less than an hour, bringing with him every
physician in the village, who, having looked at me a moment, went into another
apartment, where they argued hotly together for another hour. At the expiration
of this they returned, led by Tibbikens, who, to my great satisfaction, now
fell on his knees, and “begged my imperial majesty’s pardon for presuming to
request that I would allow myself to be dressed in my imperial majesty’s robe
of state;” which robe of state, although I was surprised at its plainness (for
it was of a coarse linen texture, without gold lace or jewels, and of a very
strange shape--closed in front and open in the rear), I immediately consented
to put on, so pleased was I with the homage of the doctor.
If I was surprised at
the appearance of the imperial garment, much more was I astonished when, having
slipped my arms into its sleeves, I found them,--that is, my arms,--suddenly
pinioned, buried, sewed up, as it were, among the folds of the robe, so that,
when it was tied behind me, as it immediately was, I was as well secured as
when I was tied up for execution on a former occasion. Alas! the disappointment
to my pride! I understood the whole matter in a moment: my imperial robe of
state was nothing less nor more than a strait waistcoat, constructed upon the
spur of the moment, but still on scientific principles.
And now, being entirely
at the mercy of the deceitful Tibbikens, I was seized upon with a strong hand,
my head shaved and thrust into a sack of pounded ice, from which it was not
taken until after a six days’ congelation, and then only to be transferred to a
nightcap of Spanish flies, exceedingly comfortable on the first application,
but which, within a few hours, I had every reason to pronounce the most
execrable covering in existence. And what made it still more intolerable, I
never complained of it that Tibbikens did not assure me “it was the imperial
coronet of France,” and then exclaim, in the words of some old play, “Uneasy
lies the head that wears a crown.”
And then I was
physicked and starved, phlebotomized, soused in cold water and scalded in hot,
rubbed down with rough blanket cloths and hair-brushes as stiff as wool-cards,
scorched with mustard plasters, bombarded by an electrical machine, and in
general attacked by every weapon of art which the zeal of my tormentors could
bring into play against me.
In this way, if I was
not cured of my disease, I was, at least, brought into subjection. I ceased
complaining, which I did at first, and with becoming indignation, of the
traitorous and sacrilegious violence done to my anointed body, for such I at
first considered it. The arguments of my persecutors, however, to prove the
contrary, were irresistible, being chiefly syllogisms, of which the major
proposition was calomel and jalap, the minor mustard plasters and blisters, and
the conclusion cold water, phlebotomy, and flax-seed tea. The same arguments,
varied categorically according to circumstances, convinced me that if my
imperial elevation, or the notion thereof, was not sheer insanity on my own
part, my doctors thought so-- which was the same thing in effect; and I
therefore took good care, when bewailing my hard fate, not to charge it, as I
at first did, to the democratic wrath and jealousy of my tormentors.
This conversion of mine
to their own opinion-- or, if the reader will so have it, my return to
rationality--had a favourable effect on my doctors. They removed (very
circumspectly indeed) the strait jacket from my arms; and then, seeing I made
no attempt to tear them to pieces, but was, on the contrary, very quiet and
submissive, and that, instead of claiming to be Charlemagne the Second of
France, I was content to be Mr. Arthur Megrim, of Virginia, they were so well
satisfied of the cure they had effected, that they agreed to free me of their
company, and so left me in the sole charge of Tibbikens and my affectionate
sister.
In this manner I was
cured of hypochondriasis; for although I felt, ever and anon, a strong
propensity to confess myself a joint-stool, a Greek demigod, or some such other
fanciful creature, I retained so lively a recollection of the penalties I had
already paid for indulging in such vagaries, that I put a curb on my
imagination, and resolved for the future to be nothing but plain Mr. Megrim, a
gentleman with a disordered digestive apparatus.
I was cured of my
hypochondriasis--I may say, also, of my dyspepsy--being kept by Tibbikens and
my sister in such a starved condition, that it was impossible I should ever
more complain of indigestion. But I was not yet cured of my melancholy; nothing
but canvass-backs and terapins could cure that--and these, alas! were never
more to bless my lips. Tibbikens had pronounced their fate, and with them,
mine: thenceforth and for ever my diet was to be looked for in those--next to
my digestive apparatus--chief favourites of my sister, bran bread and hickory
ashes; my stomach, he solemnly assured me, would never be able to sustain any
thing else.
I say, therefore, I was
melancholy; and great reason had I to be so, condemned to live a life of
ascetic denial, with the means in my hand to purchase all the luxuries in the
world, and, which was worse, an eternal desire to enjoy them.
To banish this
melancholy--alas! never to be banished--and perhaps to give me a little
appetite for my bran bread and ashes, for which I never could contract a
relish, the friendly Tibbikens again seduced me into the open air and my
carriage, and carried me about to different places in which he thought I might
find amusement. In this way he had conducted my prototype, the true Arthur
Megrim, before me, whenever indolence and the luxuries of the table brought him
too near to dyspepsy; and it was this uncommon kindness of the physician, in
dragging the unfortunate gentleman to witness the galvanic experiments on the
bodies of the executed felons, which had helped him so suddenly out of his own.
Dr. Tibbikens was not, indeed, very choice whither he carried me, lugging me
along with equal alacrity to a horse-race, a barbacue, or to the bed-sides of
his patients.
All his efforts,
however, were vain. The memory of what I had suffered, with the anticipation of
what I was yet to endure, with, doubtless, the addition of the ills for the
time being, preyed upon my spirit. I followed him mechanically, and in a sort
of torpor, incapable of enjoying myself, incapable almost of noting what passed
before me. I was tired of the life of the young and affluent Mr. Megrim, and I
should have been glad to exchange his body for some one’s else: but, unluckily,
my mind was so weighed down with indolence, melancholy, and stupefaction, that
I really did not think of so natural a means of ending my troubles.
In this condition,
greatly to the concern of my friendly physician, I remained until towards the
end of March, when an incident happened which gave an impulse to my spirit
greater than it had ever before experienced.
The doctor being
accustomed to lead or drive me whithersoever he would, and I, half the time,
following without question, I found myself led one day to a house in the town,
where was a remarkable exhibition, or show, as our people called it, which had
for two days kept the whole village in an uproar. So great, however, was the
abstraction and indifference of my mind to all objects, ordinary and
extraordinary alike, that I had paid not the least attention to the accounts of
the matter which my sister and other persons, and especially the faithful
Epaminondas, had, during these two days, poured into my ears. Hence, when I
entered the exhibition-room I was ignorant of its nature, and, indeed,
indifferent as to making myself better acquainted with it.
Tibbikens, however,
appeared to be unusually delighted, and saying, “Now, Megrim, my lad, you shall
see a wonderful proof of the strides that science is making,” led me through a
crowd of the villagers, old and young, and male and female, who were present,
up to a large table, where, truly enough, in glass cases placed upon the same,
was a spectacle quite remarkable; though I must confess it did not make so
strong an impression upon me as Tibbikens expected.
It consisted of an
infinite variety of fragments from the bodies of animals and human beings,
imitations, as I supposed at first, in wax, or some other suitable substance,
and done to the life; but Tibbikens assured me they were real specimens, taken
from animal bodies, and converted by scientific processes, known only to the
exhibiter, into the substances we now saw; some being stony and harder than
flint, some again only a little indurated, while others retained their natural
softness, elasticity, and other peculiarities of texture. There were a dozen or
more human feet, as many hands, three heads (one of which was a woman’s with
long hair, and another a child’s), a calf’s head, a dog’s leg, the ear of a
pig, the nose of a horse, an ox’s liver and heart, a rat, a snake, and a
catfish, and dozens of other things that I cannot now remember, all of which
were surprisingly natural to behold, especially the head of the woman with the
long hair, which looked as if it had just been cut off--or rather not cut off
at all, for there was no appearance of death about it whatever, the lips and
cheeks being quite ruddy, and the eyes open and bright, though fixed.
“So much for science!”
said Tibbikens. “Look at that boy’s head! it don’t look so well as the others;
but who would believe it was solid stone? Sir, it is stone, and silicious stone
too; for last night I did myself knock fire out of its nose with the back of my
knife; and that’s the cause of the nick there on the nostril. Well now, there’s
the man’s head; its texture is ligneous, or, to speak more strictly,
imperfectly carbonaceous, though the doctor calls it calcareous. But the wonder
of all is the woman’s head; look at that! That, sir, is neither silicious nor
carbonaceous, but fleshy--I say, sir, fleshy. It remains in its natural
condition; the skin is soft and resilient; you see the naturalness of the
colour, of the lips, and, above all, of the eyes. And yet, sir, that head, that
flesh is indestructible, unless, indeed, by fire, and strong acids or alkalis.
It is embalmed, sir! embalmed according to the new process of this doctor with
the unpronounceable Dutch name; and I can tell you, sir, that the man is a
chymist such as was never heard of before. Davy, Lavoisier, Berzelius--sir, I
presume to say they are fools to him, and will be as soon forgotten as their
stupid, uncivilized system. How little they knew of the true science of
chymistry! They stopped short at the elements-- our doctor here converts one
element into another!”
Tibbikens spoke with an
air of consequence and some little oratorical emphasis, for he was surrounded
by spectators, who listened to what he said with reverence. As for me, the
little interest excited in my bosom by the novelty of the exhibition had begun
to wear away, and I was sinking again into apathy--the faster, perhaps, for the
doctor’s conversation, of which I had a sufficiency every day--and I suppose I
should, in a few moments, have lost all consciousness of what was going on
around me, when suddenly a buzz began, and a murmuring of voices, saying, “Here
comes the doctor! now we shall have the grand show!” At the same moment a
grinding organ began its lugubrious grunting and squeaking, and the master of
the exhibition, stalking up to the table, and making his patrons a sweeping
semicircular bow, cried, in a rumbling bass voice, and in accents strongly
foreigh,--
“Zhentlemens and
leddees--I peg you will excuse me for keep you waiting. Vat you see here,
zhentlemens and leddees, is very strange--pieces of de poddies human and
animal, shanged py a process of philosophie very astonish, misty, and unknown
to de multitude; some hard shtone, some shtone not so hard, and some not shtone
at all. But I shall show you de representation vich is de triumph of art, de
vonder of science, de excellence of philosophie! For, zhentlemens and leddees,
I am no mountepank and showmans, put a man of de science, a friend of de
species human, and a zhentleman of de medical profession; and vat I make dese
tings for is not for show, nor for pastime, nor for de money, but for de
utilitie of de vorld.”
“Surely,” thought I to
myself, “I have heard that voice before!”
I looked into the man’s
face as soon as the spectators had cleared away a little--for I was too
indifferent to put myself to any trouble--and I said to myself--nay, I said
aloud to Tibbikens, “Surely I have seen that man before!”
“Where?” said
Tibbikens.
“In Jersey,” I replied,
hastily; for I could not forget the tall frame, the hollow jaws, the solemn
eyes, and the ever-grinning mouth of Feuerteufel, the German doctor, who had
made himself so famous in my native village, and who was one of the last
persons I remembered to have seen upon that day when I bade farewell to my
original body.
“Come,” said Tibbikens,
looking alarmed at my last words, “you don’t pretend to say you were ever out
of Virginia in your whole life!”
“Augh--oh!” said I,
recollecting myself; “I wonder what I was talking about? What--augh --what is
the man’s name?”
“Feuerteufel,” said
Tibbikens.
I was not then
mistaken! It was Feuerteufel himself, only he had learned a little more
English. This was the first and only one of my original acquaintances whom I
had laid eyes on since my departure from New-Jersey, nearly two years before. I
felt some interest, therefore, in the man, but it was accompanied with a
feeling of dislike, and even apprehension. The truth is, I never liked the
German doctor, though why I never could tell. But what was he doing--what could
be his object going about the country with petrified legs, arms, and heads? I
had scarce asked myself the question before it was answered by the gentleman
himself, who had been speaking, though I know not what, all the time I was
talking with Tibbikens, and while I was cogitating afterward.
He had worked himself
into a fit of eloquence, warming with enthusiasm as he dwelt upon the grandeur
and usefulness of his discovery. He made antic gestures with hands, head, and
shoulders; he rolled and snapped his eyes in the most extraordinary manner in
the world; and as for his mouth, there is no describing the grimaces and
contortions which it made over every particularly bright idea or felicitous
word.
“Zhentlemens!” said he,
“I have discover de great art to preserve de human poddie; I can make him
shtone, I can make him plaster-Paree, I can make him shuse as he is, dat is
flesh--put flesh vat is never corrupt. Very well! vat shall I do mit de great
discoaver? Mit de first I shall preserve de poddies of de great men--de kings,
and de shenerals, and de poets, and de oder great men; and you shall see how
mosh petter it is tan de statues marple. How mosh petter to have de great man
as de great man look in de flesh, mit his eyes shining, his skin and his colour
all de pure natural! How mosh petter dat dan de imitation! Suppose you have de
painter who take de looking-glass; and when you look in him, glue down de
reflection dare for ever!--de natural colour, de natural drawing, de light and
de shade? How mosh petter dat dan de picture in dirty oil and ochre! (I tell
you, py-the-py, zhentlemens, I do study dat art, and I hopes some day to make
de grand discoaver--to put you reflection on de proper substance, like de
looking-glass, dat shall hold on to de colours, and hold’em on for ever!) Vell,
zhentlemens, I do de same ting mit de statue; I take de nature as I find
him--de shape, de colour, de lips, de eyes, de hair, de all--and I do, py my
process, make him indestructeeble, and not to alter for ever. Here is de little
poy’s head dat I have done in dat style. Dat is de art! dat is de art of making
de shtone mummee! It shall pe de most costly, de most expense, and derefore
only for de great, great men--de shenerals of war, de preshidents, and de mens
in Congress vat makes de pig speech. Vell! den I shall make de oder style--de
process to turn de poddie into plaster-Paree--vat I call de plaster mummee. Dat
is not so dear; dat is de art for de great men vat is not so great as de oders
--for de leetle great men--de goavernors, de editors of de paper, and de mens
vat you give de grand dinners to. Vell! den I shall make de oder style --de
style for de zhentlemens and leddees in zheneral, vat vill not go to rot in de
ground like de horse and de dog--de style of de flesh unshange--vat I call de
flesh and plood mummee, shuse like dis woman head mit de long hair. Dis is de
sheep plan; it vill cost no more dan de price of de funeral. It vill be done in
tree days. De poddie is made incorruptible, proof against de water, vat you
call water-proof. It is de process for de peoples in zheneral; and I do hopes
to see de day ven it shall pe in universal adopt by all, and no more poddies
put into de earth to rot, and to make de pad health for de peoples dat live. It
is de shtyle for de unwholesome countrees. Zhentlemens, you have know dat de
Egyptians did make all dare friends mummee. Why for dey do dat? Very good
reason. De land upon de Nile vas unwholesome, and de purrying of de poddies
made it vorse. There vas no wood dere to purn de poddies. Vell den, dey did
soak dem in de petrolium, de naptha, and oder substance antiseptique, and hide
dem in de catacomb and de pyramid. Dere vas no decay, no corruption to poison
de air; it vas vise plan!
“Now, zhentlemens, I
have devise my plan for de benefit of America, vich is de most unwholesome land
in de earth, full of de exhalation and de miasm, de effluvium from de decay
animal and vegetable. You shall adopt my plan for embalm your friends, and you
no have no more pad air for de fevers, de bilious, de agues, and de plack
vomit. Zhentlemens, I have shuse complete my great secret; it vas de study of
my whole life; I have shuse succeed. I have de full and complete specimens of
de process for make de sheep mummee, de mummee of flesh and plood, de plan for
de men in zheneral, vich do always love to pe sheep. I have start carry dem to
de great city New-Orleans; and if de peoples do adopt him dere, dey shall have
no more complain of de great sickness vat kills de peoples; for dere shall be
no more rot of man’s flesh in de swampy ground. Here you see de oxheart, de
catfish, de bullfrog, de six hands and feet, all done into flesh and plood
mummee. Here is de woman’s head. It has been done dis tree year. But you shall
see de grand specimen, de complete figure, de grown man turn into de mummee,
and look more natural dan de life. Dat is de triumph of mine art! It was my
first grand specimen, done dere is now two year almost, and it did cost me mosh
expense and money, and some leetle danger. Now you shall say de specimen is
perfect, or you shall have my head; it is vat I value apove my life --de
complete! de grand! de peautiful!--But you shall see!”
Having thus completed
his lecture, or oration, of which I must confess I had begun to grow tired, the
German doctor suddenly stepped to a great round box, like a watchman’s box,
that stood at the further end of the room, and unlocking the folding leaves of
which it was composed, swung them round with a jerk, exhibiting an inner case,
evidently of glass, but entirely covered over with a thick curtain. This he
proceeded to remove, by tugging at a string which hoisted it to the ceiling;
and as it ascended there was disclosed to the eyes of the wondering spectators
a human figure within the case, clad loosely in a sort of Roman garment, and
for all the world looking entirely like a living being, except that the eyes were
fixed in a set unnatural stare, and the attitude was a little stiff and
awkward.
A murmur, with twenty
or more faint shrieks from the females present, attested the admiration with
which the spectators caught sight of this wonderful triumph of skill and
science; but I--heavens and earth! what were my feelings, what was my
astonishment, when I beheld in that lifeless mummy my own lost body! the mortal
tenement in which I had first drawn the breath, and experienced the woes, of
life! the body of Sheppard Lee the Jerseyman! This, then, was its fate--not to
be anatomized and degraded into a skeleton, as the vile Samuel the kidnapper
had told me, but converted into a mummy by a new process, for the especial
benefit of science and the world; and Dr. Feuerteufel, the man for whom I had
always cherished an instinctive dislike and horror, was the worthy personage
who had stolen it, what time I had myself interrupted his designs upon the body
of the farmer’s boy, in the old graveyard near the Owlroost!
I looked upon my
face--that is, the face of the mummy--and a thousand recollections of my
original home and condition burst upon my mind; the tears started into my eyes
with them. What had I gained by forsaking the lot to which Providence had
assigned me? In a moment, the woes of Higginson, of Dawkins, Skinner,
Longstraw, Tom the slave, and Megrim the dyspeptic, rushed over my memory,
contrasted with those lesser ones of Sheppard Lee, which I had so falsely
considered as rendering me the most miserable man in the world.
What other notions may
have crowded my brain, what feeling may have entered my bosom, I am now unable
to describe. The sight of my body thus restored to me, and in the midst of my
sorrow and affliction, inviting me, as it were, back to my proper home, threw
me into an indescribable ferment. I stretched out my arms, I uttered a cry, and
then rushing forward, to the astonishment of all present, I struck my foot
against the glass case with a fury that shivered it to atoms--or, at least, the
portion of it serving as a door, which, being dislodged by the violence of the
blow, fell upon the floor and was dashed to pieces. The next instant,
disregarding the cries of surprise and fear which the act occasioned, I seized
upon the cold and rigid hand of the mummy, murmuring, “Let me live again in my
own body, and never--no! never more in another’s!”
Happiness of happiness!
although, while I uttered the words, a boding fear was on my mind, lest the
long period the body had lain inanimate, and more especially the mummifying
process to which it had been subjected, might have rendered it unfit for further
habitation, I had scarce breathed the wish before I found myself in that very
body, descending from the box which had so long been its prison, and stepping
over the mortal frame of Mr. Arthur Megrim, now lying dead on the floor.
Indescribable was the
terror produced among the spectators by this double catastrophe--the death of
their townsman, and the revival of the mummy. The women fell down in fits, and
the men took to their heels; and a little boy, who was frightened into a
paroxysm of devotion, dropped on his knees, and began fervently to exclaim,
“Now I lay me down to
sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” In
short, the agitation was truly inexpressible, and fear distracted all. But on
no countenance was this passion (mingled with a due degree of amazement) more
strikingly depicted than on that of the German doctor, who, thus compelled to
witness the object of a thousand cares, the greatest and most perfect result of
his wonderful discovery, slipping off its pedestal and out of his hands, as by
a stroke of enchantment, stared upon me with eyes, nose, and mouth, speechless,
rooted to the floor, and apparently converted into a mummy himself. As I
stepped past him, however, hurrying to the door, with a vague idea that the
sooner I reached it the better, his lips were unlocked, and his feelings found
vent in a horrible exclamation--“Der tyfel!” which I believe means the devil--“Der
tyfel! I have empalm him too well!”
Then making a dart at
me, he cried, in tones of distraction, “Stop my mummy! mine gott! which has
cost me so much expense!--stop my mummy!”
I saw that he designed
seizing me, and being myself as much overcome with fear as the others, I made a
bolt for the door, knocking down my friend Tibbikens and half a dozen other
retreating spectators as I left it, darted into the air, and in a moment was
flying out of the village on the wings of the wind.
I had a double cause
for terror; for, first, before I had got twenty steps from the exhibition-room
(for my Roman garments were in the way of my legs, and I did not run so fast as
I managed to do afterward), I heard certain furious voices cry from the room--“It
is all a cheat! the mummy was a living man! let us Lynch him and the doctor!”
and, secondly, I could also hear, close at my heels, the voice of the doctor
himself, who had escaped close behind me, eagerly vociferating, “Stop my mummy,
and I will pay twenty dollare! stop my mummy!”--by both which noises it was
made apparent that I was in danger of being Lynched, or subjected to a second
process of mummification.
Nerved therefore by my
fears, I gathered the skirts of my toga about my arms, and fled with all my
might, blessing my stars that I had at last recovered that mortal tenement,
which, with all its troubles, I was now convinced was the best for my purposes
in the whole world.
The faster I fled, the
faster it seemed to me I was followed by the German doctor, who, I have always
believed, was driven crazy by the sudden loss of his beloved mummy, and who, I
had therefore the greatest reason to fear, would, if he succeeded in retaking
me, be content with nothing short of clapping me again into his glass case,
were it even a needful preliminary, as, in truth, it must have been, to kill
and embalm me over again. And indeed I think the reader will allow, that the
fact of his following me three days and three nights, still calling me a mummy,
charging everybody he met to stop me, and persisting to claim me as his
property, even after I had got among my own friends, was a proof not only of
insanity, but of a desperate determination to rob me of life and liberty.
Of this determination
on his part I was myself so strongly persuaded, and, in consequence, so
overcome by terror, that I am inclined to think I was for a time nearly as mad
as himself; and I fled from before him with a speed which the reader can only
conceive when I tell him, that I ran from the scene of my transformation on the
banks of the Potomac to my native village in New-Jersey, a distance which I
estimate at full one hundred and eighty miles, in the short space of three days
and three nights, during which period I rested but once, and that on the second
night, when, being very faint and weary, I lay down on the earth and slept two
hours.
This may be justly
esteemed a truly wonderful exploit, and it exceeds that of the great Daniel
Boone of Kentucky, of whom it is related that he ran before a band of wild
Indians the same distance, or thereabouts, in four days’ time; but it must be
remembered that I was fleeing from a raging madman, whose speed was so nearly
equal to my own, that if I chanced but to flag a little in my exertions at any
time, I was sure to see him make his appearance on the rear, or to hear his
voice screaming on the winds to “stop his mummy.” Indeed, I ran with such
haste, that I took no note of the road upon which I travelled, and to this day
I am ignorant how I succeeded in passing the three great rivers, the Potomac,
the Chesapeake, and the Delaware, which lay in my route, and which I must have
crossed in some way or other. And, for the same reason, I am ignorant in what
manner I sustained existence during those three days, having not the slightest
recollection of eating a single meal on the whole journey.
All that I can remember
of the journey is, that I ran I knew not whither, but with an instinctive
turning of my face towards the north; that I was closely followed by the German
doctor; and that, about sundown on the third day, I found myself, to my
unspeakable joy, rushing through the Owl-roost swamp, across the meadow, and by
that identical beech-tree where I had first lost my body, in full view of my
own house. The sight of that once happy home of my childhood filled me with
rapture. I rushed towards it, hailed by a shout from old Jim Jumble, my
negro-man, backed by another from his wife Dinah, that might have waked the
dead, they were so loud and uproarious, and found myself in the arms of my
dear, but long-neglected sister Prudence, who, with her husband Alderwood, and
her three young children, was standing on the porch.
Then, being wholly
overcome by exhaustion of body and mind, and having endured such fatigues and
sufferings from hunger and thirst, without speaking of terror, as have seldom
oppressed a poor feeble human being, I fell into a swoon, from which I awoke
only to be assailed by a violent fever and delirium, the direct consequences of
my superhuman exertions, that kept me a-bed, in a condition between life and
death, for more than two weeks.
During all this period
I recollect being tormented by the hateful visage of the German doctor, who,
having followed me like a bloodhound, daily forced himself into my chamber,
claimed me as his property, and would doubtless have carried me off, had it not
been for my sister, my brother-in-law, and the faithful Jim Jumble, the first
of whom watched at my bed-side like an angel, while the two others opposed
themselves to the enemy, and drove him from the room. His persecutions, indeed,
affected me to a degree I cannot express, and were the cause that, at the end
of the two weeks as above mentioned, I suddenly fell into a lethargy or trance,
the crisis of my disease, in which I lay two days, and then awoke in my full
senses, free from fever, and convalescent.
How great was my
satisfaction then to behold myself surrounded by my friends, and in my own
house; how much greater to know I was no longer to be persecuted by the odious
German doctor, who, my brother-in-law gave me to understand, in reply to my
anxious questions, had not only given over all designs on my person, but had
actually departed from the neighbourhood, and from the State of New-Jersey,
satisfied, doubtless, that I was a living man, and no longer a mummy.
This intelligence was
balm to my spirit and medicine to my body; and the consequence was, that I
recovered so rapidly as to be able to leave my bed in less than a week, and
receive the visits and congratulations of many old friends, who seemed really
glad of my return and recovery, though I have no doubt they were moved as much
by curiosity to learn where I had been, and what adventures had befallen me
during the long period of my exile; in which, however, I did not think it
advisable to gratify them.
And now it was that I
discovered that many changes, personally interesting to myself, had happened
during my absence. When I first got upon my porch and looked about me, I almost
doubted whether I was really on the forty-acre. My house had been carefully
reparied, both within and without; a new and substantial stable, with other
outbuildings, had been erected; new fences had been put up around my fields and
orchards; cattle were lowing on my meadows, and horses whinnying in the stable,
to be let loose with them upon the early grass. In a word, the forty-acre now
looked more prosperous and flourishing than it had ever before looked mean and empoverished:
it looked almost as well as it had done in the days of my father.
“How was all this
change brought about?” I demanded of my brother-in-law, who, with my sister,
had accompanied, or, indeed, rather led me to the porch.
“By the magic of money,
industry, and a little common sense,” said Alderwood, who, although a plain and
bluff man, was a sensible one, and a most excellent farmer. “You must know, my
dear Sheppard,” said he, “that, when we found you were so far gone--”
“How,” said I, in
surprise, “how did you know I had gone far? I thought the general opinion was
that I was murdered.”
“Oh, yes,” said my
sister, nodding at her husband; “it was just as you say.”
With that Alderwood
smiled, and nodded back again, saying,
“Prue is right. When we
discovered your condition--that is, when we found you had been murdered, as you
say, and that there was no one to look to the poor forty-acre except the
sheriff and the mortgagee, it was agreed between your sister and myself that I
should take the matter in hand; for we were loath the property should go into
the possession of strangers. Besides, Prudence insisted upon being near you--”
“That is,” said
Prudence, “near to where we supposed the murderers must have concealed your
body.”
“Exactly so,” said
Alderwood. “For this reason I left my own farm in the hands of my young brother
Robert, came down hither, bag and baggage, applied a little of my loose cash
(for I believe I have been somewhat more prosperous than you) to stopping the
mouth of your mortgagee, building fences, banking meadows, spreading marl, and
so on; and the consequence is, that we are getting the forty-acre into good
condition again, so that, in a few years, it will pay the debts, and perhaps
begin to make the fortune of its owner.”
I grasped my
brother-in-law’s hand. I was moved by his kindness; and remembering how, after
quarrelling with him, as related in the first book of this history, I had
refused a reconciliation, and rejected his offers of assistance, his friendship
and generosity appeared still more worthy of my gratitude.
“Poh!” said he,
interrupting my thanks and professions of regard, but looking well pleased that
I should be disposed to make them, “I was persuaded you would come to some
day--that is, I mean, come back.”
“That is,” said
Prudence, “we always had a notion you were not really dead, and that we should
see you again, some time, alive and happy.”
“I trust,” said I, “you
will long see me so; for I am now a changed, I hope, a wiser man--disposed to
make the best of the lot to which Heaven has assigned me, and to sigh no longer
with envy at the supposed superior advantages of others. I think, brother
Alderwood, I shall now be contented with my condition, humble and even toilsome
as it may be. I have seen enough of the miseries of my fellows--those even whom
I most envied--during the two years of my absence, to teach me that every man
has his share of them; that there is nothing peculiarly wretched in my own lot,
and that I can be happy or not, just as I may choose to make myself. For this
reason, I shall now bid adieu to indolence and discontent, the vile mother and
viler daughter together, and do as my father did before me, that is, cultivate
these few acres which my folly has left me, with my own hands; nor will I rest
from my labours until I have discharged every claim against it, your own, my
dear Alderwood, first of all; though I am sensible I can never repay the debt
of kindness I owe you.”
“And this is really
your intention?” demanded Alderwood, looking prodigiously gratified. “Your
possessions are now limited, indeed; yet you have enough, with a little
industry and care, to render you independent for life. And if you will really
apply yourself to the farm--”
“I will,” said I. “If
labour and perseverance can do it, I will attain the independence you speak of;
I will remove every encumbrance on the forty-acre, and then trust to pass such
a life as modest wishes and a contented temper can secure me.”
“You may begin to pass
it immediately, then,” said Alderwood, “for the forty-acre is already clear of
every encumbrance. Yes,” he continued, seeing me look surprised, “I tell you
nothing but the truth. Aikin Jones, your old friend and overseer--”
“He is a villain!” said
I, “and he defrauded me.”
“So it is pretty
commonly supposed; but, as we have no legal proof of his dishonesty, the less
we say of it the better. He has gone to settle his accounts at a tribunal where
craft and policy can avail him nothing. He died eight months ago, and they say
who know best, in great agony and fear of spirit. Now, whether he was moved by
old feelings of friendship, or was struck with remorse at seeing the condition
to which he had reduced you--”
“What condition?” said
I.
“Oh,” said my sister, “the
ruin of your affairs; nothing more.” And Alderwood nodded his head by way of
assent to the explanation.
“In short,” said he, “Mr.
Aikin Jones, whatever may have been his motive, thought fit to bequeath you a
legacy--”
“What!” said I; “how
could he leave a legacy to a man universally considered dead?”
“Oh,” said my sister, “he
never would believe that. There were a good many people had their doubts on
that subject.”
“Yes,” said Alderwood; “and
Mr. Aikin Jones was one of them. And so, finding himself dying, and being seized
perhaps with compunction for the wrongs he had done you, he left you a
legacy,--no great matter, indeed, considering how much of your estate he died
possessed of. It sufficed, however, to pay off your mortgage, principal and
interest, and to improve and stock the forty-acre just as you now see it. So
you see, my dear Sheppard, you are not so badly off as you supposed. Your farm
is small, yet your father drew from it a fortune; and I believe a good farmer
might do the same thing a second time. But you are not very learned in
agricultural matters. I will remain with you a while --at least until your
health is re-established--and be your teacher. When you find yourself competent
to the management of the farm I will bid you farewell, assured that you will lead
a happier life than you ever knew before.”
This intelligence with
regard to my little homestead was highly agreeable to me; nor was I less
pleased with my brother-in-law’s resolution to remain with me for a time, while
I acquired a knowledge of agriculture, and confirmed myself in new habits of
industrious and active application.
And now, having arrived
at the close of my adventurous career, I have but a few additions to make to my
story before concluding it entirely.
I took an early
opportunity to impart to my brother-in-law a faithful account of my adventures,
as well as a resolution which I had already formed to commit them to writing,
and publish them for the benefit of the world; for I was persuaded they
contained a moral which might prove of service to many persons, who, like
myself, had fallen into the error of supposing they were assigned to a harsher
lot than their fellows.
This resolution Alderwood
opposed with all his might, being concerned lest such an enterprise as writing
a book should divert my mind from the labours of the farm, and, indeed, seduce
me again into habits of idleness. Besides, he was afraid the strangeness of my
adventures would cause them to be received with incredulity, whereby I might
suffer in reputation, and be looked upon only as a dreamer and teller of
falsehoods. His chief reasons, however, I doubt not, were the two first
mentioned; for he was anxious I should now think of nothing but my farm. His
dislike to my design was, in truth, so great, that, having exhausted all the
arguments he could muster in the vain design to overcome it, he had resort to a
new mode of opposition, an expedient highly ingenious, but not a little
ridiculous. He endeavoured to shake my own faith in my story!--to convince me
that I had imagined all I have related, and that, in a word, I had never
encountered any adventures at all. I protest I am diverted to this day when I
think of the mingled anxiety and address which he displayed on the occasion. He
assured me, and that quite plumply, that during the whole two years (to speak
strictly, it was only twenty months) of my wanderings, I had never once been
off the forty-acre farm; that I had never been in any body besides my own; and
that the whole source of the notion on my part lay in a hallucination of mind
which had suddenly attacked me, filling me with ridiculous conceits of various
transformations, such as never had happened, and never could happen, to any
human being. And this absurd account he persisted in as long as he could with
any decency, giving me repeated hints that my mother had died insane, and that
it was not therefore strange I should have been a little odd once in my life. I
showed him the place where I had been digging under the beech-tree (where,
by-the-way, I was weak enough afterward to make Jim Jumble sink a pit twelve
feet deep, to satisfy myself that Captain Kid’s money really did not lie
there); which place, however, he averred was as great a proof of the truth of
his story as of mine: “For,” said he, “none but a madman would dig for Captain
Kid’s money.” I led him to the willow-bushes, and the old worm fence in the
marsh, where I had found Squire Higginson’s body; which he allowed I might have
done, but protested that other persons had found it also; and that instead of
going home alive in Squire Higginson’s barouche, it had been carried to
Philadelphia in a coffin; and as for Higginson’s being clapped into prison for
my murder, it was I, he said who had been confined on suspicion of having been
concerned in his, until, as he said, it was found that I was out of my wits,
and that Higginson had died of an apoplexy.
I then referred to a
circumstance that had happened during my late sickness, as affording the
fullest confirmation of my story. The circumstance was this. While still lying
tormented with fever, but at a moment when my mind was sound and lucid, Jim
Jumble put a newspaper into my hand, in which, by a singular coincidence,
appeared an account of my late transformation in Virginia, with an allusion to
the fate of Zachariah Longstraw, by which I learned, for the first time, what
had become of his body after I left it. From the article, which, strangely, and
yet naturally enough, was headed “Outrageous Humbug, and Fatal Consequence
thereof,” it seemed to be universally believed that Dr. Feuerteufel’s mummy was
no mummy at all, but a living man, as I myself had heard it called in the
village, with whom he had leagued in a conspiracy to hoax and swindle the good
people of the south out of their money; and that the imposture had been
detected by Mr. Arthur Megrim, who, proceeding to force the glass box, was
knocked down by the pretended dead man, and so unfortunately killed, the mummy
and his accomplice, the doctor, making their escape in the confusion. The
editor of the paper, after noticing a second account, by which it was asserted
that the unfortunate Megrim, though overturned by the pretended mummy in his
flight, had received no injury from him, but, on the contrary, had died of
sheer fright and horror, being of a nervous, hypochondriacal turn, and
acknowledging that this account was more probable, inveighed warmly against the
villany and audacity of the swindlers; who, he said, were more legitimate
objects on whom to wreak the vengeance of Lynchdom than the people of that
district had found in Zachariah Longstraw, the philanthropist. And here the
editor reminded his readers of the fate of that excellent and distinguished individual,
who had died in the Lynchers’ hands the preceding autumn, against the
ringleaders of whom his nephew, Mr. Jonathan Truelove, had so vainly attempted
to establish legal proceedings.
To this account, I say,
I referred as containing an argument of my truth not to be resisted; but,
unfortunately, the paper had by some means or other vanished, and Alderwood
said my story went for nothing without it. That paper, I have always thought,
he had himself got possession of and secreted. But had I even retained and
shown it to him, I doubt whether it would have affected him in the least; for
he was one of those skeptical men who believed a thing none the sooner for
finding it in a newspaper.
In a word, there is no
expressing the obstinacy of my brother in rejecting my story, nor the
adroitness with which he met such proofs as I could give him of the truth of
it. The last instance of it which I shall relate was his taking the part of the
German doctor, Feuerteufel, who, he declared, had not only never made a mummy
of me, but had not laid claim to me as his property, though he himself (that
is, my brother-in-law) had been present at least a dozen times when the German
doctor did so in my sick-chamber, from which Alderwood was so instrumental in
expelling him. He even insisted that this man, having made a second and last
visit to our village to hunt plants and reptiles, had been employed (and at his
own instance too) to cure me of that very malady he so ridiculously would have
me believe I had been afflicted with, and that it was to him, under Heaven, I
owed my restoration to health. Nay, he even went the length of showing me what
he called the doctor’s bill; and, true enough, it was a bill, with a receipt in
full upon it; but the amount being prodigiously great, I saw at once into the
whole affair, which was nothing less than a masked contract betwixt my
brother-in-law and the doctor, whereby the latter secretly covenanted, in
consideration of the large sum received from the former, to persecute me no
longer with his claims, and perhaps to leave the country altogether.
Besides all this, my
brother attacked me by demanding by what means it was that I had transferred my
spirit so often, and so easily, from one body to another. And this being a
question on which the reader may require satisfaction as well as my brother, I
must allow that it presents a difficulty, and a very great one. All that I can
say to this is, first, that I did transfer my spirit from body to body, and no
less than seven different times; secondly, that these seven translations of
spirit indicated in me the possession of a peculiar power to make them; and
thirdly, that the existence of such a peculiar power, however wonderful it may
appear, is not beyond the bounds of philosophic probability.
No man can be so
ignorant or skeptical as to deny, that there are several different faculties of
a most marvellous nature, with which a few individuals in the world are
mysteriously endowed, while the great mass of men are entirely without them;
and to the number of these supernatural endowments there is scarce a year
passes by without adding a new one. What can be, or ought to be, considered a
more surprising faculty than that of ventriloquism,--the art of throwing the
voice into places and things afar from the operator, of taking, as it were, the
lungs, glottis, &c. from his body, and clapping them into a chest, log,
stone wall, or other inanimate substance, or into the body of another? and how
few are there in the world who possess the power of doing so! One man thumps
his chin with his fingers, and draws from it pure and agreeable musical tones,
and another whistles a melody in parts; while men in general might thump and
whistle till their teeth fell out without producing any music worth listening
to. What can be more wonderful than the faculty recently developed by the
advocates and practitioners of a new system of medicine, who, by shaking a
bottle in a peculiar way, give to its contents a medical virtue which did not
exist before, and which another man,--the patient, for example,--might shake
till doomsday without imparting?*
The Natural Bonesetter
is one instance of the possession of a faculty both rare and astonishing, and
so is any old woman who can pow-wow the fire out of a burn. Not to multiply
inferior instances, however, I will ask the reader if any faculty can be deemed
more incredible than that of the magnetizer, who, by flourishing his digits
about your body, now cures your rheumatism, and now sets you sound
asleep--unless it be that of the magnetized slumberer, who reads a sealed
letter laid on his epigastrium, sees through millstones and men’s bodies, and
renders oraculous responses to any question that may be proposed him, even
though it be upon subjects of which, while awake, he is entirely ignorant.
In fine, granting all
these things to be true (and who shall dare to doubt them), why should it not
be granted that an individual should possess the power of transferring his
spirit from body to body at will--a power but little more extraordinary (if
indeed it be more extraordinary) than the other faculties which are admitted to
have actual existence? To me it seems that the thing is natural enough, though
still, I grant, extremely wonderful. Many persons are thought to possess the
ventriloquial, and even the magnetic power, without being conscious of the
endowment, accident having been in all cases the cause of their being made
acquainted with its existence. In the same way, it is not improbable that other
persons besides myself may possess the faculty of reanimating dead bodies,
without suspecting it; for I can scarce believe the faculty should be confined
entirely to myself.
I never could succeed
in convincing my brother-in-law of the truth of my relation--or rather-- for I
have always thought his incredulity was assumed for the purpose mentioned--I
never could overcome his opposition to the design I formed of writing and
committing it to the press. For this reason I ceased talking of it more, and
even affected to believe the foolish story he had told me of my having
conceived my adventures in a mere fit of delirium. This I did not so much out
of compliment to him, as from a desire to have him believe I would let nothing
divert me from the business of my farm, which, indeed, I immediately addressed
myself to in such good earnest as secured his hearty approval and zealous
congratulations.
In secret, however, and
in the intervals of toil, I employed myself recording my adventures, while
their impression was still strong on my memory; and now, having happily brought
them to a conclusion, I commit them to the world, confident that, if they
surprise nobody else, they will cause some astonishment to my brother
Alderwood.
It is now some time
since I have been deprived of his and my sister’s company at Watermelon Hill,
they having retired to their own farm as soon as my brother was well convinced
I was capable of managing my own affairs. My only society now consists of
honest Jim Jumble, his wife Dinah, and my sister’s oldest son, Sheppard Lee
Alderwood (for he was named after me), a lad of fourteen years, but uncommonly
shrewd and sensible, for whom I have contracted a strong affection, and to
whom, if I should die unmarried, as is quite probable, I design bequeathing my
little patrimony.
Jim Jumble is as
independent and saucy as ever, but I can bear with his humours, he is so
faithful, industrious, and, as I may add, so happy to see his master once more
prospering in the world. He and Dinah are singing all day long.
My estate is small, and
it may be that it will never increase. I am, however, content with it; and
content is the secret of all enjoyment. I am not ashamed to labour in my
fields. On the contrary, I have learned to be grateful to Providence that it
ordained me to a lot of toil, wherein I find the truest source of health,
self-approbation, and happiness. My only trouble is an occasional stiffness and
sluggishness of joints and muscles, which Jim Jumble tells me is “all owing to
my being naturally a lazy man,” but which I myself suppose was caused by my
remaining so long a mummy.
To counterbalance this
evil, however, I find in myself an astonishing hardiness of constitution,
particularly in resisting quinsies, catarrhs, and defluxions on the breast, to
which I was formerly very liable; and this immunity I know not how to account
for, unless by supposing that my body was hardened by the process of
mummifying, and that it still continues to be water-proof.
At all events--be my
body what it may, hardy or frail, stiff or supple, I am satisfied with it, and
shall never again seek to exchange it for another.
THE END.