A person at Taunton often kept at home for several weeks, under an idea
of danger in going abroad. Sometimes he imagined that he was a cat, and
seated himself on his hind quarters; at other times he would fancy
himself a tea-pot, and stand with one arm a-kimbo like the handle, and
the other stretched out like the spout. At last he conceived himself to
have died, and would not move or be moved till the coffin came. His
wife, in serious alarm, sent for a surgeon, who addressed him with the
usual salutation, “How do you do this morning?”
“Do!” replied he in a low voice, “a pretty question to a dead man!”
“Dead, sir! what do you mean?”
“Yes, I died last Wednesday; the coffin will be here presently, and I
shall be buried to-morrow.”
The surgeon, a man of sense and skill, immediately felt the patient’s
pulse, and shaking his head, said, “I find it is indeed too true; you
are certainly defunct; the blood is in a state of stagnation,
putrefaction is about to take place, and the sooner you are buried the
better.”
The coffin arrived, he was carefully placed in it, and carried towards
the church. The surgeon had previously given instructions to several
neighbours how to proceed. The procession had scarcely moved a dozen
yards, when a person stopped to inquire who they were carrying to the
grave? “Mr. ----, our late worthy overseer.”
“What! is the old rogue gone at last? a good release, for a greater
villain never lived.”
The imaginary deceased no sooner heard this attack on his character,
than he jumped up, and in a threatening posture said, “You lying
scoundrel, if I was not dead I’d make you suffer for what you say; but
as it is, I am forced to submit.” He then quietly laid down again; but
ere they had proceeded half way to church, another party stopped the
procession with the same inquiry, and added invective and abuse. This
was more than the supposed corpse could bear; and jumping from the
coffin, was in the act of following his defamers, when the whole party
burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, the public exposure awakened
him to a sense of his folly, and he fought against the weakness, and, in
the end, conquered it.
* * * * *
~Prisons,~