Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. II (of 2). Bird Robert Montgomery

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      CHAPTER VIII.

      SHEPPARD LEE'S SEARCH FOR A BODY. – AN UNCOMMON INCIDENT

      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 СКАЧАТЬ