University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
THE VISION OF THE COFFIN-MAKER'S 'PRENTICE.

“What was more natural than that the thoughts of Sam
Totton, the coffin-maker's 'prentice, should be running on
death's heads and grinning skulls, and damp, dark vaults,
deep down in the earth; with now and then a cheerful feeling
of the pleasantness of country church-yards, with tomb-stones
interspersed among sweet-scented apple-trees, and

rich green palls of bright meadow-grass spreading over the
grave. Now and then, too, he might think of ghosts releasing
themselves from the grave, and taking a night's ramble, and
whistling down tall chimnies in cities, or glaring in, with
great cold eyes, at farm-house windows, and frightening the
quiet circle at the fireside with a dread token of death near
at hand, or some heavy evil about to burst on the unlucky
house. By the hour would the young 'prentice sit in tke
undertaker's shop, meditating on the sorry chances of life;
the wonderful demand for coffins in the summer months,
and the strange world into which many merry stout gentlemen,
and joyous ladies, would ere long be transported,
screwed close down in the cruel coffins that stood in a grim
row before him.

“Some he knew would stretch themselves quietly at length,
and fall asleep; others would fight and wrestle, like very
demons, ere they could be brought to bear to be shut down
and cabined in forever; and others again, in whom life was
furious, and not to be readily extinguished, would smite and
dash their deadly hands against the coffin-lid, and would cry
out, in voices stifled in the damp thick clay, to be freed.

“With this turn of mind, the 'prentice was sitting one night
in the shop, on an undertaker's stool, and watching the various
shadows that came through the door, as the August
sun settled in the sky. Now the shadow would flit in at
one coffin, filling it only breast-high; then shifting itself, it
would take entire possession of a child's, that stood next;
and so flitting past, from one to the other, it brought into
Sam's mind the thought how these coffins would one day
be tenanted, and what manner of people it might be that
should be laid in the coffins that stood about him—large
and small—and how soon they would all be filled and borne
silently away.

“The thought had scarcely formed itself in Sam's mind,
when the shop-bell was rung very gently—a glass door that
was between him and the street was opened, and a figure,
more wo-begone, wretched and disconsolate than he had
ever before beheld, presented himself, and paused for a moment,
just long enough for the 'prentice to take note of his
appearance. His eyes were wild, and sunken far behind
pale, ghastly, hollow cheeks, in which there was no drop of
blood; his head was without covering of any sort, except a
shock of uncombed, matted hair, and he limped sadly forward

on disproportioned, infirm legs, in scanty apparel, and
with an apologetic appeal in his looks to the young 'prentice,
shambled away into a remote corner of the shop, and
planted himself as nearly upright and with as great show
of decorum as he could, in a cheap pine coffin that stood by
itself.

“Sam felt strongly inclined to enter into conversation
with the Poor Figure, and to learn by what chances it had
been brought into that lean and melancholy beggary. Ere
he could do this, the door was pushed forcibly open, and a
portly personage entered, and stalking across the shop with
great dignity and majesty of bearing, proceeded to an inspection
of the coffins; going close up to them, examining
nicely the grain of the wood—yea, even smelling of it, and
turning away with an air of vast disdain whenever it proved
to be cedar or baywood—the quality of the muslin and the
action of the hinges. After turning up a majestic nose, discolored
slightly by the use of wine or table-beer, at two-thirds
of the undertaker's assortment, the portly gentleman
at length pitched upon a magnificent tabernacle of mahogany,
with fine rolling hinges, that could'nt jar on his delicate
ear when he should come to be fastened in, and an enormous
silver-plate, with a chased border of cheerful flowers,
that took away the very appearance of death. Having concluded
to occupy this tenement, the portly gentleman proceeded
to take possession, and with great difficulty crowded
himself into the coffin; forgetting, however, to put off his
hat, which remained fixed on his head in a very sturdy and
consequential position; and there he stood, bolt-upright,
staring at the young 'prentice, as if it was his determination
to chill him into an icicle. Sam was, however, not so easily
over-awed, but on the contrary felt greatly inclined to
burst into a good hearty laugh at the comic figure the nice
portly gentleman made in his dainty brass-hinged mahogany
coffin.

“As he turned away his eyes, they encountered a spectacle
which came nigh changing their merry humor to tears—
for a sweet lady, all in white, floated gently past him; of a
fair, meek demeanor, and bearing in either hand two little
children, a boy and girl, whose faces ever turned toward
the lady's with an expression of intense and tender
regard. Clinging to her with a firm grasp, they glided by,
and tried at first to find rest in one coffin together, which

proving ineffectual, they chose coffins neighboring to each
other, and quietly assuming their places, they stood calm
and patient, as if death had fallen kindly upon them; the
two children turning reverently toward their dear mother,
and hanging on her pale sweet look with passionate constancy.

“Directly in the steps of these visiters, there entered a
personage, who, judging from the dotted apparel in which
he presented himself, might have been the ghost of some
black-spotted card or other, come to take a hand with Sam's
master, who was greatly addicted to the sport and entertainment
of whist-playing. However this might be, the
new-comer entered with a couple of somersets, turned
about when he had reached the centre of the shop, took
off his piebald cap, and made a leg to Sam, and then scrambled
into a coffin directly opposite that of the portly gentleman.

“For a long time these two personages stood regarding
each other; the one grinning and hitching up his leg, as if
he felt the irksomeness of confinement; and the other,
with a solemn look of consequence and self-importance,
determined the very grave itself should not get the better
of him.

“ `This is pleasant!' said the portly gentleman, at length,
with a slight tone of irony and condescension, to his neighbor,
the clown.

“ `Very, but not so airy as the ring!' answered the merry-andrew.

“ `Nor as snug as a corporation pantry, with a cut of cold
tongue between two debates,' returned the portly gentleman.
`But then it has its advantages. No taxes, mind that, (those
tax-gatherers used to be the torment of my life), no ground-rents,
poor-rates; no beggar's ding-ding at the front-door
bell.'

“ `But consider,' responded the clown, `tho' we lodge in
a cellar, as it were, a good under-ground, six steps down,
where are the oysters and brandy? Did that occur to you?'

“ `I confess it did not,' said the portly gentleman, slightly
staggered, `but I was thinking now what a choice storage
this would be for half a gross of tiptop champagne, with
the delicate sweat standing on the outside of the bottles.'

“ `There's no room for a somerset here, either,' said the
clown.

“ `Nor to deliver a speech in,' answered the portly gentleman.
“See, I could'nt stretch out my right arm half its
length, to make even my first gesture; rather a cramped,
close place, after all.'

“ `Vanities! vanities!' cried the Poor Figure, from his
distant coffin, unable to suppress his feelings any longer.
`Cramped and close is it! It's paradise compared to the
dark, damp dungeons on the earth, where the living body is
pent up in dreary walls, and the cheerful light of day comes
in by stealth through grim bars. When the world moves
past the poor prisoner's window without a look of recognition;
when no man's hand takes his in a congenial grasp
—is that life, d'ye say? He is dead—I tell you, dead!'
cried the Poor Figure, in a voice of piercing agony, `as if
the marble slab was laid upon his breast, and the grave-diggers
piled mountains upon his corse!'

“ `Many's the jolly time,' resumed the portly gentleman,
without much heed to the Poor Figure's declamation,
`we've had at city suppers. How tenderly the turkey's
breast—bought by the commonalty, purchased by the sweat
of the hard-worked million—yielded to the shining knife. How
sweetly the popular port-wine, and the public porter, glided
down the throat. Choice times were those, my good sir,
when the city paid the hackman's fare for dainty rides to
the suburbs, and when we made the poor devil paupers
stand about us licking their thin chaps, while we rolled the
rich morsels under our tongues. But now,' he added in a
rather melancholy tone, `I am little better than one of the
heathen. I smell nothing but the musty earth; my gay apparel
is falling piecemeal into doleful tatters, and I can get
nothing to chew upon but an occasional mouthful of black
mould, that sadly impedes digestion, if one had any digestion,
in such a place as this worth speaking of.

“ `Think but of one thing, sir,' said the clown, with an
uneasy movement in his coffin, `and you cannot fail to be
content. Where are the duns in this new empire of ours?
We are as inaccessible to the vile creatures as the crown
of an ice-berg. Why, sir, there was a poor wretch of a
collector that haunted me for a vile debt of twenty-two and
sixpence, until I was sorely tempted to take his very life;
and put myself upon contrivances how I could take it with
most pain and torture to his body and soul. I thought of all
sorts of man-traps, and pit-falls in blind-alleys, and leaden-headed

bludgeons; and at length—heaven save the mark!
—I pitched upon the scheme of carrying him off in a balloon,
and about two miles up, letting him slip with a cord
about his neck, and hang dangling by the neck until dead,
ten thousand feet high. He was got safely into the balloon
by a dexterous accomplice; was carried up—and, now that
my mind was at ease as to the result, I went home to take
a quiet cup of tea, and to settle up my books, meaning to run
my pen through the twenty-two and six as a settled account,
when—the Lord save us—who should knock gently at my
door, and march in with his old impudent smile, than my
old enemy the collector, with his customary phrases—hoping
he did'nt intrude—and, if it was'nt too much trouble, he
would like to have the small amount of his bill, which, as I
knew, had been standing some time. The rope had broken,
sir, just as they passed over my house, the vile little
rascal had pitched upon the roof, and making the best of
circumstances, had walked down my scuttle, and availing
himself of the opportunity, had looked in with his cursed
little bill. We're free from the scamp now.—I'm not sure,
isn't that he in the pine coffin?'

“Sure enough, there stood the Poor Figure, leaning toward
them, and listening in an attitude of intense regard, to
every word that had fallen from the lips of the clown.

“ `I am the man!' he cried with great emphasis, when the
clown had ended. `None other but I. On the little paltry
debt of twenty-two and sixpence, hung my old father's life,
who lay rotting in the cold jail: waiting for deliverance,
which I had promised him many times—with as false a
tongue as man could. I said I would come to-morrow at
such an hour, and the next to-morrow at such an hour—
naming, in my desire to bring him definite hope, the very
minute and second: and I did not come. Was not that a
lie? And did you not stand behind me, another liar? How
many lying, false tongues wagged with yours and mine, in
that little business of the twenty-two shillings and sixpence,
God only knows! I forgive you the debt: the old man's
bones are at the bottom of the prison well where he perished.
They should plead for truth from its gloomy womb, and
have a voice to shake prison walls and fetters from manly
limbs. God grant they may.'

“The Poor Figure had scarcely ended when the door was
slowly opened, and disclosed a meek little man clad in a neat

suit of plain black, with two snow-white bands falling under
his chin. His gait and aspect denoted many solemn thoughts,
and with a slow pace, and a seeming consciousness of the
gloomy realm in which he was treading, he advanced to an
obscure corner of the place, and folding his arms calmly
upon his breast, stood silently in his coffin—his head only inclined
a little to one side, as if he expected momently to
catch the sound of the last great trump, and to welcome the
summons.

“Sam heard a noise in the hall, as of some person shuffling
about in heavy boots in search of the door, and after
the lapse of a few minutes a large man in a white coat with
a dirty cape, a ponderous leather hat, and a club in his hand,
swaggered boldly in, and after looking about him for a while
as if on the watch for a ghost or apparition, walked quietly
off, and taking his station in a comfortable cedar coffin in
the middle of the apartment—obviously mistaking it for a
watch-box—fell gently asleep. From all that he saw, Sam
imagined that this was a city watchman; and the presumption
is, that he was not far wrong.

“After a salubrious slumber of some ten minutes or more,
this gentleman waked up, and thrusting his head out of his
coffin, stretched his neck, and gazed up and down the apartment,
and then toward the ceiling.

“ `How the devil's this?' he at length exclaimed, `the
lamps are out early to-night: and the alderman must have
put the moon in his pocket, I guess. That's the way they
serve us poor charleys. We wouldn't catch a rogue more
than once an age if we didn't take them into porter-houses
and get 'em drunk, and study their physiognomies, and so
set them a stealing half fuddled!'

“ `What's that you say, my man?' cried the voice of the
portly gentleman. `What fault have you to find with the
corporation, I'd like to know? Do you pretend to impeach
their astronomy, Sir; and to say, Sir, that the moon doesn't
rise when she is set down for in the almanac? I'd have you
know, Sir, the moon's bespoke three months ahead; and
that the oil-dealers know when they put a short allowance
in the lamps! I'll have you broke, if you haven't a care how
you speak of an alderman. A word to the wise in your
ear, Sir.'

“The watchman was making up his mouth for a reply,

and it is impossible to say what choice specimens of rhetoric
might not have been furnished between them, but at
this moment the shop-bell was rung with great fury: Sam
started up with wonderful alacrity—distinguishing the ring
at once from all other possible rings—and receiving, as he advanced
to the front of the warehouse a thumping blow on the
side of the head, was asked what he meant by leaving the
shop open at that time of night, and coffins out at the door
to be rotted by the night dew and chalked up by young
vagabonds in the street?

“This was of course Sam's master: Sam's visiters mistook
it. however, for a summons of a very different kind; the
watchman, supposing it to be an alarm of fire, rattled his club
against the coffin-side and sprang for the door: the portly
gentleman thought it a melodious supper-bell, and, disengaging
himself, exhibited equal activity: the Poor Figure followed,
hobbling along like a waiter in a hurry: the clown,
for the call-boy's notice, and somerseted through the door:
the sweet lady in white, for the last peal of the Sunday summons,
and glided away with her children at her side: and
the little parson, smoothing down his bands and calming his
thoughts to the purpose of the hour, taking it for the Wednesday-evening
lecture call:—and so the company dispersed.

“Sam busying himself in obeying the undertaker's orders,
soon closed the warehouse; and as he moved past the empty
coffins, to his bed at the end of the shop, and thought how
they had been lately filled, it occurred to him how inopportunely
men might be laid in their graves: debtors lying
nearest neighbors to catchpoles and deputies, whose approach
was the curse of their life: the clown and the alderman,
parsons and profligates, in a tender vicinage: tapsters
and favorers of the pure stream, perchance murderers and
their victims, and breakers of troth and violators of faith
pledged to woman, in a proximity so close, that the skeleton
arm outstretched might reach into the grave where the broken
heart lay, and take its cold and ineffectual hand back
into that which had done it such deadly wrong. On Judgment
Day, when the trump sounds among burials like these,
if aught of fiery or human passion remain, what awful scenes
will bear witness to the fancy of the young 'prentice-boy:
when forms shall start up and have life again but to glare
on other wakened forms—to loathe, curse, scorn and abhor

that on which they gaze. Grave-yards would then know
a strife and passionate conflict, that battle fields could not
match, with all their sanguinary stains, and cries of horror,
vengeance or despair.”