 | CHAPTER XVII.
Containing other secrets, but not so important. Sheppard Lee |  |
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.
| CHAPTER XVII.
Containing other secrets, but not so important. Sheppard Lee | |