University of Virginia Library

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

(as I was, soon after leaving my sick-bed) to give
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

of assault with intent to kill, he had in reality
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.

John Smith having been found not guilty on the
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,

Quixotic conscientiousness, such as are common
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.