 | Sheppard Lee |  |
BOOK V.
CONTAINING THE ADVENTURES OF A GOOD
SAMARITAN.
1. CHAPTER I.
The philanthropist's family.
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;
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
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 vest-pocket,
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
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.
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
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;
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
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
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
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.
2. CHAPTER II.
Some account of the worthy Abel Snipe.
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
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
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.
3. CHAPTER III.
In which the young man Jonathan argues several cases of conscience,
which are recommended to be brought before Yearly Meeting.
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 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
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
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
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.
4. CHAPTER IV.
Containing little or nothing save apostrophes, exhortations, and
quarrels.
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
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
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
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
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.
5. CHAPTER V.
Which is short and moral, and can therefore be skipped.
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
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
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.
6. CHAPTER VI.
An inconvenience of being in another man's body, when called upon
to give evidence as to one's own exit.
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
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
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.
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,
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.
7. CHAPTER VII.
The sorrows of a philanthropist.
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
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
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,
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
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
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 mud-balls
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
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
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.
8. CHAPTER VIII.
The same subject continued.
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
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
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
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
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 broken-down
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
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
9925 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.100
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.
9. CHAPTER IX.
Containing a difficulty.
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
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
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
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
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,
favour, and it was resolved accordingly that Abel
should be made the money-maker.
10. CHAPTER X.
In what manner Mr. Zachariah Longstraw determined to improve his
fortune.
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
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
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
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
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
The experiment was continued in a prosperous
manner until the month of September, when there
happened a catastrophe not less unexpected than
calamitous.
11. CHAPTER XI.
In which a catastrophe begins.
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
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
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
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.
12. CHAPTER XII.
In which the catastrophe is continued.
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
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
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
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.
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.
13. CHAPTER XIII.
The dénouement of the drama.
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
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
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
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
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
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
be a man of fortune and blood, to peruse, without
excusing himself on the score of its dulness.
14. CHAPTER XIV.
A remark, in which the Author appears as a politician, and abuses
both parties.
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
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
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.
15. CHAPTER XV.
An uncommon adventure that befell the Author.
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
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
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 patty-pans,
that there was little hope of making myself
heard, had I possessed the voice even of an oyster-man.
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
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;—
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,—' ”
or a governor's message—that it was actually
sung to a psalm-tune, or something like it—
and that, during the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth,
and half of the fourteenth stanza, the little wagon
rolled leisurely over a long and hollow-sounding
bridge, which I had no doubt was one of the
wooden Rialtos of the Schuylkill—having passed
which, the driver whipped up, and away we went
at a speed of at least six miles an hour.
16. CHAPTER XVI.
In which Sheppard Lee takes a journey, and discovers the secret
object of his captors.
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
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
knew, by its undoubted Congo tang, could be none
but a negro's, sang, in concert with the fiddles,—
Kick'm up, Juba, a leetle high—ah,—”
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
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.
17. CHAPTER XVII.
Containing other secrets, but not so important.
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
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
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
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?
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
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 raw-head-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.
18. CHAPTER XVIII.
In which the Author approaches a climax in his adventures.
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
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
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 hard-trotting
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,
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
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
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.”
19. CHAPTER XIX.
Containing a specimen of eloquence, with some account of the dangers
of Lynchdom.
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
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 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
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 blood-guiltiness.
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.
20. CHAPTER XX.
In which Sheppard Lee reaches the darkest period of his existence.
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
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
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
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.
| Sheppard Lee | |