University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
Sheppard Lee's search for a body.—An uncommon incident.

I was provoked, I say, to think there were so
many millions of dead bodies thrown away every
year, for which I, in the greatest of my difficulties,
should be none the better. Such was the extremity
to which I was reduced, that I should have
been content to change conditions with a beggar.

It was a night in February. The day had been
uncommonly fine, with a soft southern air puffing
through the streets; the frost was oozing from the
pavement, and the flags—I beg their pardon, the
bricks—were floating in the yellow mud, so that
one walked as if upon a foundation of puddings.
Such had been the state of things in the day; such
also as late as at nine o'clock P. M.

But it was now eleven; the wind had chopped
round to the northwest and northeast, and perhaps
some half a dozen other points beside, for it seemed
to blow in all directions, and the thermometer
was galloping downward towards zero. A savage
snow-storm had just set in, and with such sharp
and piercing gusts of wind, and such fierce rattling
of hail, that, had not my mind been in a ferment, I
should have hesitated to expose myself to its fury.
But I reflected that I was flying from wo and
terror; and the hope of diving into some body that
might introduce me to a life of sunshine, rendered
me insensible to the rigours of the tempest.

Having stumbled about in the snow for a while,
I began to inquire of myself whither I was going;
and the answer, or rather the want of an answer,
somewhat confounded me. Where was I to look for
a dead body, at such a time of night? It occurred
to me I had better refer to a newspaper, and see
what persons had lately died in town and were
yet unburied. I stepped accordingly into a barber's
shop, that happened to be open, and snatched
up an evening paper. The first paragraph I laid

my eyes on contained an account of the forgeries
of my son, Ralph Skinner. It was headed Unheard-of
Depravity, and it blazoned, in italics and
capitals, the crime, the unnatural crime of committing
frauds in the name of a father.

The shock with which I beheld the fatal publication
renewed my horror, and sharpened my desire
to end it. I threw down the paper, without
consulting the column of obituaries, and ran towards
the Hospital, where, it appeared to me, I
should certainly find one or more bodies which
the doctors had no longer occasion for. But my
visit was at a highly unseasonable hour, and the
porter, being knocked out of a comfortable nap, got
up in an ill humour. “Whose cow's dead now?”
I heard him grumble from his lodge—“I wonder
people can't break their necks by daylight!”

But my neck was not broken; and he listened to
my eager inquiry—“whether there were no dead
bodies in the house?”—with rage and indignation.

“I tell you what, mister,” said he, “we takes
no mad people in here, except they comes the
regular way,”

And with that he shut the door in my face, leaving
me to wonder at his want of civility.

But the air was growing more frigid every moment,
and the hour was waxing later and later. I
ran to the Alms-house, not doubting, as that was a
more democratic establishment, that I should be
there received with greater respect. But good-breeding
is not a whit more native to a leather shirt

than to a silk stocking. My Cerberus here was cut
from the same flint as the other; his civility had
been learned in the same school, and his English
studied from the same grammar.

“I tell you what, uncle Barebones,” said he,
without waiting to be questioned, “we takes no
paupers here, except they comes with an order.”

And so saying, he slapped to the door with an energy
that dislodged from the roof of his den a full
hundred weight or more of snow, which fell in my
face, and had wellnigh smothered me.

The case began to look desperate; but the difficulty
of finding what I wanted only rendered my
wits more active. I resolved to run to one of the
medical schools, make my way into its anatomical
repositories, and help myself to the best body I
could find; for, indeed, I was in such a rage of
desire to be released from my present tenement,
that I did not design to stand upon trifles.

I set out accordingly, with this object in view;
but fate willed I should seek my fortune in another
quarter.

The storm had by this time begun to rage with
uncommon violence; the winds were blowing like
so many buglers and trumpeters on a militia-day,
and the snow that had already fallen was whisked
up every moment from the ground, and driven back
again into the air, to mingle in contention with that
which was falling. The atmosphere was thickened,
or rather wholly displaced, by the whirling
particles, so that, in a short time, the wayfarer

could neither see nor breathe in the white
chaos around him. It was, in truth, a savage, inclement
night. The watchman betook him to his
box, to snooze away the hours in comfort; the
lamps went out, being of a spirit still more economical
than their founders, and thinking, with great
justice, that the streets which could do with them,
could do equally well without them; the dogs
were no longer heard yelping at the corners; and
the pigs—the only spectres of Philadelphia—that
run squeaking and gibbering up and down the
streets in the night, to vanish at early cock-crowing,
provided the hog-catchers are in commission,
were one by one retreating to their secret strongholds,
leaving the street to solitude, the snow-storm,
and me.

I plodded on as well as I could, and with such
effect, that, after a quarter hour's trudging, I knew
not well whither, I stopped at last, I knew as little
where. Instead of being in the heart of the city,
as I supposed, I found myself somewhere in the
suburbs, wedged fast in a snow-drift. One single
lamp, and one single wick of that single lamp, had
escaped the puffs of the tempest; it shone from
aloft, through the rack of snow, like a fire-fly in a
fog, dividing its faint beam betwixt my frozen visage
and a low open shed hard by, the only objects,
beside itself, that were visible.

I perceived that I was lost; and being more than
half dead with cold, I dragged myself into the shed,

to shelter me from the fury of the storm, and lament
the ill fate that attended my efforts.

As I stepped into the wretched hole, I stumbled
over a man lying coiled up on the ground, and so
exposed to the air that his legs were already heaped
over with snow. There was just light enough
to discern a black jug lying broken at his side, from
which arose the odour of corn-juice, but by no means
of the true Monongahela savour.

I was struck by the fellow's appearance; he had
evidently been lying there all the evening; the
stumble I had made over him did not disturb him
in the least, and my hand chancing to touch his face,
I found it could as marble. I perceived he was dead;
a discovery that filled me with uncommon joy; for
my eagerness to change my condition was such, that
I only saw in him a body to be taken possession of,
without reading in the broken jug, and the miserable
corner in which its victim had breathed his last,
the newer wretchedness and degradation upon
which I was rushing. Such is the short-sightedness
of discontent; such the folly of the man who
deems himself the unluckiest of his species.

With a trembling hand I thrust into the pockets
of the corse the money and the silver spoons I had
brought with me, being so far prudent that I was
resolved not to trust the transfer of such valuables
to my new body to accident. This being accomplished,
I uttered the wish that had thrice served my
turn before.

I wished, however, in vain; I muttered the

charm a dozen times over, but with no more effect
than if I had pronounced it to the lamp-post. The
body lay unmoved, and I remained unchanged.

I became horribly disconcerted; a fear seized
me that my good angel, if I had ever had one, had
deserted me; or that the devil, if it was from him
I derived my power of passing from body to body,
had suddenly left me in the lurch;—in a word, that
I had consumed all my privileges of transformation,
and was chained to the body of Abram Skinner
for life.

I beat my breast in despair, and then, changing
from that to wrath, I began to belabour the ribs of
the dead man with all the strength of my foot, as
if he were answerable for my disappointment.
Perhaps, indeed, the reader will think that he was;
for at the third kick the corpse became animated,
and to my astonishment rose upon its feet, saying,
in accents tolerably articulate, though somewhat
thick and tumultuous, “I say, Charlie, odd rabbit
it, none on your jokes now, and none on your takin
of folks up; 'cause how, folks is not half so drunk
as you suppose. And so good night, and let's have
no more words about it, and I'll consider you werry
much of a gentleman.”

With these words the corpse picked up that fragment
of the jug that had the handle to it, leaving
the others, as well as his hat, behind him; and
staggering out of the shed, he began to walk away.
I was petrified; he was stalking off with my money,
and a dozen of Mrs. Smith's silver spoons!

“You villain!” said I, running after him, “give
me back my property.”

“I'm a free man,” said the sot; “I'm no man's
property. And so, Charlie, don't go for to disturb
me, for I knows my way home as well as anybody.”

“But the four hundred dollars and the silver
spoons,” said I, seizing him by the shoulders, and
endeavouring to empty the pockets I had but a
moment before filled. “If you resist, you rogue,
I'll put you in jail.”

“I won't go to jail for no Charlie in the liberty,”
said the man of the jug, who to the last moment
seemed to have no other idea than that he had fallen
into the hands of a guardian of the night, and was
in danger of being introduced to warmer quarters
than those he was leaving. He spoke with the
indignation of a freeborn republican, who felt his
rights invaded, and was resolute to defend them;
and, lifting up the fragment of his jug, he suddenly
bestowed it upon my head with such good-will that
I was felled to the earth. He took advantage of
my downfall to decamp, carrying with him the
treasure with which I had so bountifully freighted
him. I pursued him as well as I could, calling
upon the watch for assistance, and shouting murder
and robbery at the top of my voice. But all was
in vain; the watch were asleep, or I had wandered
beyond their jurisdiction; and after a ten minutes'
chase I found myself more bewildered than before,
and the robber vanished with his plunder.