LETTER XV.
Dear Charles,—I knew you would be interested in my
friend, and that you would like to hear more about him.
Well, here are two incidents more in his life, which are given
that you clergymen may learn that other folks meet with
early trials in getting into professions and trades. Scarce
any man, please your reverence, but has passed through
some curious affairs in youth; only the parsons, gowned and
ungowned, have the ear of the world, and they contrive, in
one way or other, direct and indirect, to let that world know
their histories, while we laymen are regarded as commoners, in
incidents and circumstances. If we kept diaries and journals,
and had a score of religious newspapers to record and
herald all our private feelings, and doings and intentions, as
well as our public ones, the world would oh! and ah! over
us too; but that belongs to the privileged class. However,
I do not mean any offence, Charles, but yet I think no
more of a
private journal
intended to be published, than of a
private prayer
intended to be overheard; for a domine's heart
is about as tricky and treacherous as other men's, and he
may pray and preach and sigh for
Buncum, rather than for
the church.
But let me not digress. My friend, as you know, was
not born to affluence. Hence, while engaged in his elementary
medical studies, he labored under many disadvantages
from want of books and bones: for in his master's office
was “no skeleton.” His progress was therefore, of
course, slow, since no deep impression was left on the mind
from mere text-books; and our hero became haunted, not
with a ghost, but with a desire after a veritable raw head
and bloody bones. Not knowing, however, where that rarity
was to be obtained, he became disheartened; when a friend
came to his relief.
A gentleman one day, on entering the office, found Mr.
Winterton in a melancholy mood, and on learning the cause
he replied: “Then, Winterton, you need be plagued no
longer, for about three miles from this, in the woods, I passed
a human skeleton to-day. A few months ago, a poor unknown
man was found dead in the woods; but as the body
was almost a mere mass of putrescence, the neighbors could
not bury it, and therefore they only heaped over it a mound
of earth. The dogs, however, have dragged the body out,
and I saw the bones to-day: there is a skeleton for you, if
you dare go after it, Winterton.”
Well, our friend did dare to go after it, and he determined
to obtain the precious articles within the ensuing twenty-four
hours. Then, as now, great repugnance existed in the
community towards every thing in the way of bone-stealing,
and so the skeleton was to be brought away at night. Furnished
with a suitable bag, Winterton sallied forth that night
alone, and after groping his way through a gloomy and tangled
forest, rendered more solemn by the dubious light of a
beclouded moon, he came to the desecrated spot. And there,
sure enough, lay torn from the rude sepulchre by greedy
dogs, the sad relics of the unknown wanderer!
Charles, what a scene! what strange thoughts must have
passed through Winterton's mind as he stooped to gather
those bones! How like an unholy wizard about to engage
in mystic rites, for which were essential the bones of a murdered
man gathered at midnight! How strangely dismal
and frightful the distant howl of a dog—a signal to the fierce
demons that preside over murder and hate to hasten to the
scene of incantation! How would the Roman Satirist have
wrought up such an act to immortalize a neighbor that
had incurred his ill-will, or that seemed worthy of censure!
Bag the bones, however, did our hero, a youth then just
seventeen years old; and returning without interruption
from the manes, he long preserved the skeleton to aid his
studies. Is it very wonderful that Winterton should have
made an eminent physician and surgeon? He would have
stood the shot from Hunting-shirt Andy.
Many years after this event, when my friend had become
widely and favorably known as a physician, he was placed
in a situation in which were oddly and frightfully combined
the ludicrous and the solemn: and where nothing but great
self-possession could have saved him from violence.
Several miles from Kaleidaville, among wild hills and
rude inhabitants, an aged man had died in a manner so singular,
that our doctor was desirous of ascertaining the cause.
He accordingly obtained permission for the post mortem, explaining,
as he supposed, what would be done, and what was
the intention; and late at night, attended by several medical
students and a neighboring physician, he appeared at the
house of the deceased, and with the implements of the profession.
The house had but two rooms. In one lay the body of
the grandfather in a coffin; in the other, asleep in their
beds! were the bereaved grandsons,—two stout young semi-barbarians,
with all the prejudices of illiterate men against
dissections and skeleton-mongers. Whether they had fully
understood the benevolent design of the doctor is questionable:
at all events the affair as yet did not seem to disturb
their equanimity, for both were snoring away, leaving the
grandfather to his fate.
The body was quickly removed from the coffin, and, divested
of the shroud, was laid upon the table. The coffin
itself was placed upon the floor immediately along side the
table, and the lid of the coffin was put against the wall.
And now the company stood around, to witness the dissection.
Detail is unnecessary; but, as is frequent with tyros
in this sort of cutting and slashing, one of the party near the
end of the coffin suddenly sickened, and, before it had even
been noticed, fell in a deep fainting fit, exactly into the open
coffin below—a substitute for the dead man!
At the instant, aroused by the noise, the two grandsons
sprang, in terror, from their beds, burst through the partition
into the room—in sleeping costume, both brief and unornamented,—and
changed at the sight of the bloody corpse into
furies, with doubled fists and loud outcries, they charged on
my friend, now suddenly deserted by the others! for, at the
first alarm all had hurried away, leaving the doctor alone to
confront the savages!
Imagine all this, Charles—the coffin with its new tenant;
the naked body gashed with a frightful wound and stained
with blood; the doctor in dissecting order, knife in hand,
and blood upon his arms; before him two half naked furies,
yelling and swearing, ready to tear him to pieces, and he the
while self-possessed!
It undoubtedly requires courage to stand in the array of
battle, confronting danger in the field; but surely he, also,
that could be self-possessed and calm in a scene like that in
which my friend stood, and threatened with such a danger,
is courageous.
The doctor succeeded, at length, in pacifying the young
men; and with their aid he restored the fallen, if not from
the tomb, yet from the coffin; and then, all matters being
adjusted, our party returned home. But it was several days
before the terrified student recovered from this post mortem.
Many other passages could I give you from the “Diary
of a Physician,” to show that many laymen have had early
struggles and curious adventures; although many excellent
people seem to imagine that such matters are specially confined
to clergymen. As for myself, I have been too intimate
with several medical gentlemen, not to know that their labors,
trials, anxieties, and disappointments equal, if not greatly
exceed, those of most clergymen. But you know, Charles,
that my love for your order, and my opinion of their very
great excellence, has been expressed,
ex animo, in a public
work.
