marsh--herein, however, having no reference to a similar proceeding of
Demosthenes, but from a design peculiarly and conscientiously my own.
Thus armed at all points, I determined to make my wife believe that I
was suddenly smitten with a passion for the stage. In this I succeeded
to a miracle; and to every question or suggestion found myself at
liberty to reply in my most frog-like and sepulchral tones with some
passage from the tragedies, any portion of which, as I soon took great
pleasure in observing, would apply equally well to any particular
subject. It is not to be supposed, however, that in the delivery of
such passages I was found at all deficient in the looking asquint--the
showing my teeth--the working my knees--the shuffling my feet--or in
any of those unmentionable graces which are now justly considered the
characteristics of a popular performer. To be sure they spoke of
confining me in a straight jacket--but good God! they never suspected
me of having lost my breath.
Having at length put my affairs in order, I took my seat very early
one morning in the mail stage for ----, giving it to be understood
among my acquaintances that business of the last importance required
my immediate personal attendance.
The coach was crammed to repletion--but in the uncertain twilight the
features of my companions could not be distinguished. Without making
any effectual resistance I suffered myself to be placed between two
gentlemen of colossal dimensions; while a third, of a size larger,
requesting pardon for the liberty he was about to take, threw himself
upon my body at full length, and falling asleep in an instant, drowned
all my guttural ejaculations for relief, in a snore which would have
put to the blush the roarings of a Phalarian bull. Happily the state
of my respiratory faculties rendered suffocation an accident entirely
out of the question.
As however, the day broke more distinctly in our approach to the
outskirts of the city, my tormentor arising and adjusting his
shirt-collar, thanked me in a very friendly manner for my civility.
Seeing that I remained motionless, (all my limbs were dislocated, and
my head twisted on one side,) his apprehensions began to be excited;
and arousing the rest of the passengers, he communicated, in a very
decided manner, his opinion that a dead man had been palmed upon them
during the night for a living _boná fide_ and responsible
fellow-traveller--here giving me a thump on the right eye, by way of
evidencing the truth of his suggestion.
Thereupon all, one after another, (there were nine in company)
believed it their duty to pull me by the ear. A young practising
physician, too, having applied a pocket-mirror to my mouth, and found
me without breath, the assertion of my persecutor was pronounced a
true bill; and the whole party expressed their determination to endure
tamely no such impositions for the future, and to proceed no farther
with any such carcasses for the present.
I was here accordingly thrown out at the sign of the "Crow," (by which
tavern the coach happened to be passing) without meeting with any
farther accident than the breaking of both my arms under the left hind
wheel of the vehicle. I must besides do the driver the justice to
state that he did not forget to throw after me the largest of my
trunks, which, unfortunately falling on my head, fractured my skull in
a manner at once interesting and extraordinary.
The landlord of the "Crow," who is a hospitable man, finding that my
trunk contained sufficient to indemnify him for any little trouble he
might take in my behalf, sent forthwith for a surgeon of his
acquaintance, and delivered me to his care with a bill and receipt for
five and twenty dollars.
The purchaser took me to his apartments and commenced operations
immediately. Having, however, cut off my ears, he discovered signs of
animation. He now rang the bell, and sent for a neighboring apothecary
with whom to consult in the emergency. In case, however, of his
suspicions with regard to my existence proving ultimately correct, he,
in the meantime, made an incision in my stomach, and removed several
of my viscera for private dissection.
The apothecary had an idea that I was actually dead. This idea I
endeavored to confute, kicking and plunging with all my might, and
making the most furious contortions--for the operations of the surgeon
had, in a measure, restored me to the possession of my faculties. All,
however, was attributed to the effects of a new Galvanic Battery,
wherewith the apothecary, who is really a man of information,
performed several curious experiments, in which, from my personal
share in their fulfilment I could not help feeling deeply interested.
It was a source of mortification to me nevertheless, that although I
made several attempts at conversation, my powers of speech were so
entirely _in abeyance_, that I could not even open my mouth; much less
then make reply to some ingenious but fanciful theories of which,
under other circumstances, my minute acquaintance with the
Hippocratian Pathology would have afforded me a ready confutation.
Not being able to arrive at a conclusion, the practitioners remanded
me for further examination. I was taken up into a garret; and the
surgeon's lady having accommodated me with drawers and stockings, the
surgeon himself fastened my hands, and tied up my jaws with a pocket
handkerchief--then bolted the door on the outside as he hurried to his
dinner, leaving me alone to silence and to meditation.
I now discovered to my extreme delight that I could have spoken had
not my mouth been tied up by the pocket-handkerchief. Consoling myself
with this reflection, I was mentally repeating some passages of the
----, as is my custom before resigning myself to sleep, when two cats,
of a greedy and vituperative turn, entering at a hole in the wall,
leaped up with a flourish _à la Catalani_, and alighting opposite one
another on my visage, betook themselves to unseemly and indecorous
contention for the paltry consideration of my nose.
But, as the loss of his ears proved the means of elevating to the
throne of Cyrus, the Magian or Mige-Gush of Persia, and as the cutting
off his nose gave Zopyrus possession of Babylon, so the loss of a few
ounces of my countenance proved the salvation of my body. Aroused by
the pain, and burning with indignation, I burst, at a single effort,
the fastenings and the bandage. Stalking across the room I cast a
glance of contempt at the belligerents, and throwing open the sash to
their extreme horror and disappointment, precipitated myself--very
dexterously--from the window.
The mail-robber W----, to whom I bore a singular resemblance, was at
this moment passing from the city jail to the scaffold erected for his
execution in the suburbs. His extreme infirmity and long-continued ill
health, had obtained him the privilege of remaining unmanacled; and
habited in his gallows costume--a dress very similar to my own--he lay
at full length in the bottom of the hangman's cart (which happened to
be under the windows of the surgeon at the moment of my precipitation)
without any other guard than the driver who was asleep, and two
recruits of the sixth infantry, who were drunk.
As ill-luck would have it, I alit upon my feet within the vehicle.
W----, who was an acute fellow, perceived his opportunity. Leaping up
immediately he bolted out behind, and turning down an alley, was out
of sight in the twinkling of an eye. The recruits aroused by the
bustle, could not exactly comprehend the merits of the transaction.
Seeing, however, a man, the precise counterpart of the felon, standing
upright in the cart before their eyes, they were of opinion that "the
rascal, (meaning W----) was after making his escape," (so they
expressed themselves) and, having communicated this opinion to one
another, they took each a dram, and then knocked me down with the
but-ends of their muskets.
It was not long ere we arrived at the place of destination. Of course
nothing could be said in my defence. Hanging was my inevitable fate. I
resigned myself thereto, with a feeling half stupid, half acrimonious.
Being little of a cynic, I had all the sentiments of a dog. The
hangman, however, adjusted the noose about my neck. The drop fell. My
convulsions were said to be extraordinary. Several gentlemen swooned,
and some ladies were carried home in hysterics. Pinxit, too, availed
himself of the opportunity to retouch, from a sketch taken upon the
spot, his admirable painting of the "Marsyas flayed alive."
I will endeavor to depict my sensations upon the gallows. To write
upon such a theme it is necessary to have been hanged. Every author
should confine himself to matters of experience. Thus Mark Antony
wrote a treatise upon drunkenness.
Die I certainly did not. The sudden jerk given to my neck upon the
falling of the drop, merely proved a corrective to the unfortunate
twist afforded me by the gentleman in the coach. Although my body
certainly _was_, I had, alas! no breath _to be_ suspended; and but for
the shaking of the rope, the pressure of the knot under my ear, and
the rapid determination of blood to the brain, should, I dare say,
have experienced very little inconvenience.
The latter feeling, however, grew momentarily more painful. I heard my
heart beating with violence--the veins in my hands and wrists swelled
nearly to bursting--my temples throbbed tempestuously--and I felt that
my eyes were starting from their sockets. Yet when I say that in spite
of all this my sensations were not absolutely intolerable, I will not
be believed.
There were noises in my ears--first like the tolling of huge
bells--then like the beating of a thousand drums--then, lastly, like
the low, sullen murmurs of the sea. But these noises were very far
from disagreeable.
Although, too, the powers of my mind were confused and distorted, yet
I was--strange to say!--well aware of such confusion and distortion. I
could, with unerring promptitude determine at will in what particulars
my sensations were correct--and in what particulars I wandered from
the path. I could even feel with accuracy _how far_--to _what very
point_, such wanderings had misguided me, but still without the power
of correcting my deviations. I took besides, at the same time, a wild
delight in analyzing my conceptions.[1]
[Footnote 1: The general reader will I dare say recognize, in these
_sensations_ of Mr. Lacko'breath, much of the absurd
_metaphysicianism_ of the redoubted Schelling.]
Memory, which, of all other faculties, should have first taken its
departure, seemed on the contrary to have been endowed with quadrupled
power. Each incident of my past life flitted before me like a shadow.
There was not a brick in the building where I was born--not a dog-leaf
in the primer I had thumbed over when a child--not a tree in the
forest where I hunted when a boy--not a street in the cities I had
traversed when a man--that I did not at that time most palpably
behold. I could repeat to myself entire lines, passages, names, acts,
chapters, books, from the studies of my earlier days; and while, I
dare say, the crowd around me were blind with horror, or aghast with
awe, I was alternately with Æschylus, a demi-god, or with
Aristophanes, a frog.
* * * * *
A dreamy delight now took hold upon my spirit, and I imagined that I
had been eating opium, or feasting upon the Hashish of the old
Assassins. But glimpses of pure, unadulterated reason--during which I
was still buoyed up by the hope of finally escaping that death which
hovered, like a vulture above me--were still caught occasionally by my
soul.
By some unusual pressure of the rope against my face, a portion of the
cap was chafed away, and I found to my astonishment that my powers of
vision were not altogether destroyed. A sea of waving heads rolled
around me. In the intensity of my delight I eyed them with feelings of
the deepest commiseration, and blessed, as I looked upon the haggard
assembly, the superior benignity of _my_ proper stars.
I now reasoned, rapidly I believe--profoundly I am sure--upon
principles of common law--propriety of that law especially, for which
I hung--absurdities in political economy which till then I had never
been able to acknowledge--dogmas in the old Aristotelians now
generally denied, but not the less intrinsically true--detestable
school formulæ in Bourdon, in Garnier, in Lacroix--synonymes in
Crabbe--lunar-lunatic theories in St. Pierre--falsities in the Pelham
novels--beauties in Vivian Grey--more than beauties in Vivian
Grey--profundity in Vivian Grey--genius in Vivian Grey--every thing in
Vivian Grey.
Then came, like a flood, Coleridge, Kant, Fitche, and Pantheism--then
like a deluge, the Academie, Pergola, La Scala, San Carlo, Paul,
Albert, Noblet, Ronzi Vestris, Fanny Bias, and Taglioni.
* * * * *
A rapid change was now taking place in my sensations. The last shadows
of connection flitted away from my meditations. A storm--a tempest of
ideas, vast, novel, and soul-stirring, bore my spirit like a feather
afar off. Confusion crowded upon confusion like a wave upon a wave. In
a very short time Schelling himself would have been satisfied with my
entire loss of self-identity. The crowd became a mass of mere
abstraction.
About this period I became aware of a heavy fall and shock--but,
although the concussion jarred throughout my frame, I had not the
slightest idea of its having been sustained in my own proper person;
and thought of it as of an incident peculiar to some other
existence--an idiosyncrasy belonging to some other Ens.
It was at this moment--as I afterwards discovered--that having been
suspended for the full term of execution, it was thought proper to
remove my body from the gallows--this, the more especially as the real
culprit had now been retaken and recognized.
Much sympathy was now exercised in my behalf--and as no one in the
city appeared to identify my body, it was ordered that I should be
interred in the public sepulchre early in the following morning. I
lay, in the meantime, without signs of life--although from the moment,
I suppose, when the rope was loosened from my neck, a dim
consciousness of my situation oppressed me like the night-mare.
I was laid out in a chamber sufficiently small, and very much
encumbered with furniture--yet to me it appeared of a size to contain
the universe. I have never before or since, in body or in mind,
suffered half so much agony as from that single idea. Strange! that
the simple conception of abstract magnitude--of infinity--should have
been accompanied with pain. Yet so it was. "With how vast a
difference," said I, "in life and in death--in time and in
eternity--here and hereafter, shall our merest sensations be
imbodied!"
The day died away, and I was aware that it was growing dark--yet the
same terrible conceit still overwhelmed me. Nor was it confined to the
boundaries of the apartment--it extended, although in a more definite
manner, to all objects, and, perhaps I will not be understood in
saying that it extended also to all _sentiments_. My fingers as they
lay cold, clammy, stiff, and pressing helplessly one against another,
were, in my imagination, swelled to a size according with the
proportions of the Antoeus. Every portion of my frame betook of their
enormity. The pieces of money--I well remember--which being placed
upon my eyelids, failed to keep them effectually closed, seemed huge,
interminable chariot-wheels of the Olympia, or of the Sun.
Yet it is very singular that I experienced no sense of weight--of
gravity. On the contrary I was put to much inconvenience by that
buoyancy--that tantalizing _difficulty of keeping down_, which is felt
by the swimmer in deep water. Amid the tumult of my terrors I laughed
with a hearty internal laugh to think what incongruity there would
be--could I arise and walk--between the elasticity of my motion, and
the mountain of my form.
* * * * *
The night came--and with it a new crowd of horrors. The consciousness
of my approaching interment, began to assume new distinctness, and
consistency--yet never for one moment did I imagine _that I was not
actually dead_.
"This then"--I mentally ejaculated--"this darkness which is palpable,
and oppresses with a sense of suffocation--this--this--is indeed
_death_. This is death--this is death the terrible--death the holy.
This is the death undergone by Regulus--and equally by Seneca.
Thus--thus, too, shall I always remain--always--always remain. Reason
is folly, and Philosophy a lie. No one will know my sensations, my
horror--my despair. Yet will men still persist in reasoning, and
philosophizing, and making themselves fools. There is, I find, no
hereafter but this. This--this--this--is the only Eternity!--and what,
O Baalzebub!--_what_ an Eternity!--to lie in this vast--this awful
void--a hideous, vague, and unmeaning anomaly--motionless, yet wishing
for motion--powerless, yet longing for power--forever, forever, and
forever!"
But the morning broke at length--and with its misty and gloomy dawn
arrived in triple horror the paraphernalia of the grave. Then--and not
till then--was I fully sensible of the fearful fate hanging over me.
The phantasms of the night had faded away with its shadows, and the
actual terrors of the yawning tomb left me no heart for the bug-bear
speculations of Transcendentalism.
I have before mentioned that my eyes were but imperfectly closed--yet
as I could not move them in any degree, those objects alone which
crossed the direct line of vision were within the sphere of my
comprehension. But across that line of vision spectral and stealthy
figures were continually flitting, like the ghosts of Banquo. They
were making hurried preparations for my interment. First came the
coffin which they placed quietly by my side. Then the undertaker with
attendants and a screw-driver. Then a stout man whom I could
distinctly see and who took hold of my feet--while one whom I could
only feel lifted me by the head and shoulders. Together they placed me
in the coffin, and drawing the shroud up over my face proceeded to
fasten down the lid. One of the screws, missing its proper direction,
was screwed by the carelessness of the undertaker deep--deep--down
into my shoulder. A convulsive shudder ran throughout my frame. With
what horror, with what sickening of heart did I reflect that one
minute sooner a similar manifestation of life, would, in all
probability, have prevented my inhumation. But alas! it was now too
late, and hope died away within my bosom as I felt myself lifted upon
the shoulders of men--carried down the stairway--and thrust within the
hearse.
During the brief passage to the cemetery my sensations, which for some
time had been lethargic and dull, assumed, all at once, a degree of
intense and unnatural vivacity for which I can in no manner account. I
could distinctly hear the rustling of the plumes--the whispers of the
attendants--the solemn breathings of the horses of death. Confined as
I was in that narrow and strict embrace, I could feel the quicker or
slower movement of the procession--the restlessness of the driver--the
windings of the road as it led us to the right or to the left. I could
distinguish the peculiar odor of the coffin--the sharp acid smell of
the steel screws. I could see the texture of the shroud as it lay
close against my face; and was even conscious of the rapid variations
in light and shade which the flapping to and fro of the sable hangings
occasioned within the body of the vehicle.
In a short time however, we arrived at the place of sculpture, and I
felt myself deposited within the tomb. The entrance was secured--they
departed--and I was left alone. A line of Marston's "Malcontent,"
"Death's a good fellow and keeps open house,"
struck me at that moment as a palpable lie. Sullenly I lay at length,
the quick among the dead--and _Anacharsis inter Scythas_.
From what I overheard early in the morning, I was led to believe that
the occasions when the vault was made use of were of very rare
occurrence. It was probable that many months might elapse before the
doors of the tomb would be again unbarred--and even should I survive
until that period, what means could I have more than at present, of
making known my situation or of escaping from the coffin? I resigned
myself, therefore, with much tranquillity to my fate, and fell, after
many hours, into a deep and deathlike sleep.
How long I remained thus is to me a mystery. When I awoke my limbs
were no longer cramped with the cramp of death--I was no longer
without the power of motion. A very slight exertion was sufficient to
force off the lid of my prison--for the dampness of the atmosphere had
already occasioned decay in the woodwork around the screws.
My steps as I groped around the sides of my habitation were, however,
feeble and uncertain, and I felt all the gnawings of hunger with the
pains of intolerable thirst. Yet, as time passed away, it is strange
that I experienced little uneasiness from these scourges of the earth,
in comparisons with the more terrible visitations of the fiend
_Ennui_. Stranger still were the resources by which I endeavored to
banish him from my presence.
The sepulchre was large and subdivided into many compartments, and I
busied myself in examining the peculiarities of their construction. I
determined the length and breadth of my abode. I counted and recounted
the stones of the masonry. But there were other methods by which I
endeavored to lighten the tedium of my hours. Feeling my way among the
numerous coffins ranged in order around, I lifted them down, one by
one, and breaking open their lids, busied myself in speculations about
the mortality within.
"This," I reflected, tumbling over a carcass, puffy, bloated, and
rotund--"this has been, no doubt, in every sense of the word, an
unhappy--an unfortunate man. It has been his terrible lot not to walk,
but to waddle--to pass through life not like a human being, but like
an elephant--not like a man, but like a rhinoceros.
"His attempts at getting on have been mere abortions--and his
circumgyratory proceedings a palpable failure. Taking a step forward,
it has been his misfortune to take two towards the right, and three
towards the left. His studies have been confined to the Philosophy of
Crabbe.
"He can have had no idea of the wonders of a _Pirouette_. To him a
_Pas de Papillon_ has been an abstract conception.
"He has never ascended the summit of a hill. He has never viewed from
any steeple the glories of a metropolis.
"Heat has been his mortal enemy. In the dog-days his days have been
the days of a dog. Therein, he has dreamed of flames and
suffocation--of mountains upon mountains--of Pelion upon Ossa.
"He was short of breath--to say all in a word--he was short of breath.
"He thought it extravagant to play upon wind instruments. He was the
inventor of self-moving fans--wind-sails--and ventilators. He
patronized Du Pont the bellows-maker--and died miserably in attempting
to smoke a cigar.
"His was a case in which I feel deep interest--a lot in which I
sincerely sympathize."
"But here," said I--"here"--and I dragged spitefully from its
receptacle a gaunt, tall, and peculiar-looking form, whose remarkable
appearance struck me with a sense of unwelcome familiarity--"here,"
said I--"here is a wretch entitled to no earthly commiseration." Thus
saying, in order to obtain a more distinct view of my subject, I
applied my thumb and forefinger to his nose, and, causing him to
assume a sitting position upon the ground, held him, thus, at the
length of my arm, while I continued my soliloquy.
--"entitled," I repeated, "to no earthly commiseration. Who indeed
would think of compassionating a shadow? Besides--has he not had his
full share of the blessings of mortality? He was the originator of
tall monuments--shot-towers--lightning-rods--lombardy-poplars. His
treatise upon 'Shades and Shadows' has immortalized him.
"He went early to college and studied Pneumatics. He then came
home--talked eternally--and played upon the French horn.
"He patronized the bag-pipes. Captain Barclay, who walked against
Time, would not walk against _him_. Windham and Allbreath were his
favorite writers. He died gloriously while inhaling gas--_levique
flatu corrumpitur_, like the _fama pudicitiæ_ in Hieronymus.[2] He was
indubitably a"----
[Footnote 2: _Tenera res in feminis fama pudicitiæ et quasi flos
pulcherrimus, cito ad levem marcessit auram, levique flatu
corrumpitur--maxime_, &c.--Hieronymus ad Salvinam.]