University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.
Containing a more wonderful discovery on the part of Sheppard Lee,
with perhaps the most surprising adventure that ever befell him.

Having thus completed his lecture, or oration,
of which I must confess I had begun to grow tired,
the German doctor suddenly stepped to a great
round box, like a watchman's box, that stood at the

further end of the room, and unlocking the folding
leaves of which it was composed, swung them
round with a jerk, exhibiting an inner case, evidently
of glass, but entirely covered over with a
thick curtain. This he proceeded to remove, by
tugging at a string which hoisted it to the ceiling;
and as it ascended there was disclosed to the eyes
of the wondering spectators a human figure within
the case, clad loosely in a sort of Roman garment,
and for all the world looking entirely like a living
being, except that the eyes were fixed in a set unnatural
stare, and the attitude was a little stiff and
awkward.

A murmur, with twenty or more faint shrieks
from the females present, attested the admiration
with which the spectators caught sight of this wonderful
triumph of skill and science; but I—heavens
and earth! what were my feelings, what was my
astonishment, when I beheld in that lifeless mummy
my own lost body! the mortal tenement in which
I had first drawn the breath, and experienced the
woes, of life! the body of Sheppard Lee the Jerseyman!
This, then, was its fate—not to be anatomized
and degraded into a skeleton, as the vile
Samuel the kidnapper had told me, but converted
into a mummy by a new process, for the especial
benefit of science and the world; and Dr. Feuerteufel,
the man for whom I had always cherished
an instinctive dislike and horror, was the worthy
personage who had stolen it, what time I had myself
interrupted his designs upon the body of the

farmer's boy, in the old graveyard near the Owl-roost!

I looked upon my face—that is, the face of the
mummy—and a thousand recollections of my original
home and condition burst upon my mind;
the tears started into my eyes with them. What
had I gained by forsaking the lot to which Providence
had assigned me? In a moment, the woes of
Higginson, of Dawkins, Skinner, Longstraw, Tom
the slave, and Megrim the dyspeptic, rushed over
my memory, contrasted with those lesser ones of
Sheppard Lee, which I had so falsely considered as
rendering me the most miserable man in the world.

What other notions may have crowded my brain,
what feeling may have entered my bosom, I am
now unable to describe. The sight of my body
thus restored to me, and in the midst of my sorrow
and affliction, inviting me, as it were, back to my
proper home, threw me into an indescribable ferment.
I stretched out my arms, I uttered a cry,
and then rushing forward, to the astonishment of all
present, I struck my foot against the glass case
with a fury that shivered it to atoms—or, at least,
the portion of it serving as a door, which, being
dislodged by the violence of the blow, fell upon
the floor and was dashed to pieces. The next instant,
disregarding the cries of surprise and fear
which the act occasioned, I seized upon the cold
and rigid hand of the mummy, murmuring, “Let
me live again in my own body, and never—no!
never more in another's!”

Happiness of happiness! although, while I uttered
the words, a boding fear was on my mind,
lest the long period the body had lain inanimate,
and more especially the mummifying process to
which it had been subjected, might have rendered
it unfit for further habitation, I had scarce breathed
the wish before I found myself in that very
body, descending from the box which had so long
been its prison, and stepping over the mortal frame
of Mr. Arthur Megrim, now lying dead on the
floor.

Indescribable was the terror produced among the
spectators by this double catastrophe—the death
of their townsman, and the revival of the mummy.
The women fell down in fits, and the men took to
their heels; and a little boy, who was frightened
into a paroxysm of devotion, dropped on his knees,
and began fervently to exclaim,

In short, the agitation was truly inexpressible,
and fear distracted all. But on no countenance was
this passion (mingled with a due degree of amazement)
more strikingly depicted than on that of the
German doctor, who, thus compelled to witness the
object of a thousand cares, the greatest and most
perfect result of his wonderful discovery, slipping
off its pedestal and out of his hands, as by a stroke
of enchantment, stared upon me with eyes, nose,
and mouth, speechless, rooted to the floor, and apparently

converted into a mummy himself. As I
stepped past him, however, hurrying to the door,
with a vague idea that the sooner I reached it the
better, his lips were unlocked, and his feelings found
vent in a horrible exclamation—“Der tyfel!” which
I believe means the devil—“Der tyfel! I have empalm
him too well!”

Then making a dart at me, he cried, in tones of
distraction, “Stop my mummy! mine gott! which
has cost me so much expense!—stop my mummy!”

I saw that he designed seizing me, and being
myself as much overcome with fear as the others,
I made a bolt for the door, knocking down my
friend Tibbikens and half a dozen other retreating
spectators as I left it, darted into the air, and in a
moment was flying out of the village on the wings
of the wind.

I had a double cause for terror; for, first, before
I had got twenty steps from the exhibition-room
(for my Roman garments were in the way of my
legs, and I did not run so fast as I managed to do
afterward), I heard certain furious voices cry from
the room—“It is all a cheat! the mummy was a
living man! let us Lynch him and the doctor!”
and, secondly, I could also hear, close at my heels,
the voice of the doctor himself, who had escaped
close behind me, eagerly vociferating, “Stop my
mummy, and I will pay twenty dollare! stop my
mummy!”—by both which noises it was made apparent
that I was in danger of being Lynched, or
subjected to a second process of mummification.

Nerved therefore by my fears, I gathered the
skirts of my toga about my arms, and fled with
all my might, blessing my stars that I had at last
recovered that mortal tenement, which, with all its
troubles, I was now convinced was the best for my
purposes in the whole world.