The pauper burial-ground toward which they now progress in a rather
high-stepping manner, or--to vary the phrase--toward which their steps
are now very much bent, is not a favorite resort of the more cheerful
village people after nightfall. Ask any resident of Bumsteadville if he
believed in ghosts, and, if the time were mid-day and the place a
crowded grocery store, he would fearlessly answer in the negative; (just
the same as a Positive philosopher in cast-iron health and with no
thunder shower approaching would undauntedly deny a Deity!) but if any
resident of Bumsteadville should happen to be caught near the country
editor's last home after dark, he would get over that part of his road
in a curiously agile and flighty manner;--(just the same as a Positive
philosopher with a sore throat, or at an uncommonly showy bit of
lightning, would repeat "Now I lay me down to sleep," with surprising
devotion.) So, although no one in all Bumsteadville was in the least
afraid of the pauper burial-ground at any hour, it was not invariably
selected by the great mass of the populace as a peerless place to go
home by at midnight; and the two intellectual explorers find no
sentimental young couples rambling arm in arm among the ghastly
head-boards, nor so much as one loiterer smoking his segar on a
suicide's tomb.
"JOHN McLAUGHLIN, you're getting nervous again," says Mr. BUMSTEAD,
catching him in the coat collar with the handle of his umbrella and
drawing the other toward him hand-over-hand. "It's about time that you
should revert again to the hoary JAMES AKER'S excellent preparation for
the human family.--I'll try it first, myself, to see if it tastes at all
of the cork.
"Ah-h," sighs OLD MORTARITY, after his turn has come and been enjoyed at
last, "that's the kind of Spirits I don't mind being a wrapper to. I
could wrap _them_ up all right."
Reflectively chewing a clove, the Ritualistic organist reclines on the
pauper grave of a former writer for the daily press, and cogitates upon
his companion's leaning to Spiritualism; while the other produces
matches and lights their lanterns.
"Mr. McLAUGHLIN," he solemnly remarks, waving his umbrella at the graves
around, "in this scene you behold the very last of man's individual
being. In this entombment he ends forever. Tremble, J. McLAUGHLIN!
--forever. Soul and Spirit are but unmeaning words, according
to the latest big things in science. The departed Dr. DAVIS SLAVONSKI,
of St. Petersburg, before setting out for the Asylum, proved, by his
Atomic Theory, that men are neatly manufactured of Atoms of matter,
which are continually combining together until they form Man; and then
going through the process of Life, which is but the mechanical effect of
their combination; and then wearing apart again by attrition into the
exhaustion of cohesion called Death; and then crumbling into separate
Atoms of native matter, or dust, again; and then gradually combining
again, as before, and evolving another Man; and Living, and Dying,
again; and so on forever. Thus, and thus only, is Man immortal. You are
made exclusively of Atoms of matter, yourself, JOHN McLAUGHLIN. So am I."
"I can understand a man's believing that _he, himself,_ is all Atoms of
matter, and nothing else," responds OLD MORTARITY, skeptically.
"As how, JOHN McLAUGHLIN,--as how?"
"When he knows that, at any rate, he hasn't got one atom of common
sense," is the answer.
Suddenly Mr. BUMSTEAD arises from the grave and frantically shakes hands
with him.
"You're right, sir!" he says, emotionally. "You're a gooroleman, sir.
The Atom of common sense was one of the Atoms that SLAVONSKI forgot all
about. Let's do some skeletons now."
At the further end of the pauper burial-ground, and in the rear of the
former Alms-House, once stood a building used successively as a
cider-mill, a barn, and a kind of chapel for paupers. Long ago, from
neglect and bad weather, the frail wooden superstructure had fallen into
pieces and been gradually carted off; but a sturdy stone foundation
remained underground; and, although the flooring over it had for many
years been covered with debris and rank growth, so as to be
undistinguishable to common eyes from the general earth around it, the
great cellar still extended beneath, and, according to weird rumor, had
some secret access for OLD MORTARITY, who used it as a charnel
store-house for such spoils of the grave as he found in his prowlings.
To the spot thus historied the two moralists of the moonlight come now,
and, with many tumbles, Mr. McLAUGHLIN removes certain artfully placed
stones and rubbish, and lifts a clumsy extemporized trap-door. Below
appears a ricketty old step-ladder leading into darkness.
"I heard such cries and groans down there, last Christmas Eve, as
sounded worse than the Latin singing in the Ritualistic church,"
observes McLAUGHLIN.
"Cries and groans!" echoes Mr. BUMSTEAD, turning quite pale, and
momentarily forgetting the snakes which he is just beginning to discover
among the stones. "You're getting nervous again, poor wreck, and need
some more West Indian cough-mixture.--Wait until I see for myself
whether it's got enough sugar in it."
In due time the great nervous antidote is passed and replaced, and then,
with the lighted lanterns worked around under their arms, they go down
the tottering ladder. Down they go into a great, damp, musty cavern, to
which their lights give a pallid illumination.
"See here," says OLD MORTARITY, raising a long, curved bone from the
floor. "Look at that: shoulder-blade of unmarried Episcopal lady, aged
thirty-nine."
"How do you know she was so old, and unmarried?" asks the organist.
"Because the shoulder-blade's so sharp."
Mr. Bumstead is surprised at this specimen of the art of an AGASSIZ and
WATERHOUSE HAWKINS in such a mortary old man, and his intellectual pride
causes him to resolve at once upon a rival display.
"Look at this skull, JOHN McLAUGHLIN," he says, referring to an object
that he has found behind the ladder. "See thish fine, retreating brow,
bulging chin, projecting occipital bone, and these orifices of ears that
musht've been stupen'sly long. It's the skull, JOHN McLAUGHLIN, of a
twin-brother of the man who really wished--really wished, JOHN
McLAUGHLIN--that he could be sat'shfied, sir, in his own mind, that
CHARLES DICKENS was a Christian writer."
"Why, thash's skull of a hog," explains Mr. McLAUGHLIN, with some
contempt.
"Twin-brother--all th'shame," says Mr. BUMSTEAD, as though that made no
earthly difference.
Once more, what a strange expedition is this! How strangely the eyes of
the two men look, after two or three more applications to the antique
flask; and how curiously Mr. Bumstead walks on tip-toe at times and
takes short leaps now and then.
"Lesh go now," says BUMSTEAD, after both have been asleep upon their feet
several times; "I think th's snakes down here, JOHN McBUMSTEAD."
"Wh'st! monkies, you mean,--dozens of black monkies, Mr. BUMPLIN,"
whispers OLD MORTARITY, clutching his arm as he sinks against him.
"Noshir! Serp'nts!" insists Mr. BUMSTEAD, making futile attempts to open
his umbrella with one hand. "Warzesmarrer with th' light?--ansh'r me t'
once, Mac JOHNBUNKLIN!"
In their swayings under the confusions and delusions of the vault, their
lanterns have worked around to the neighborhoods of their spines, so
that, whichever way they turn, the light is all behind them. Greatly
agitated, as men are apt to be when surrounded by supernatural
influences, they do not perceive the cause of this apparently unnatural
illumination; and, upon turning round and round in irregular circles,
and still finding the light in the wrong place, they exhibit signs of
great trepidation.
"Warzemarrer wirra _light?_" repeats Mr. BUMSTEAD, spinning wildly until
he brings up against the wall.
"Ishgotb'witched, I b'lieve," pants Mr. McLAUGHLIN, whirling as
frenziedly with his own lantern dangling behind him, and coming to an
abrupt pause against the opposite wall.
Thus, each supported against the stones by a shoulder, they breathe hard
for a moment, and then sink into a slumber in which they both slide down
to the ground. Aroused by the shock, they sit up quite dazed, brush away
the swarming snakes and monkies, are freshly alarmed by discovering that
they are now actually sitting upon that perverse light behind them, and,
by a simultaneous impulse, begin crawling about in search of the ladder.
Unable to see anything with all the light behind him, but fancying
that he discerns a gleam beyond a dark object near at hand, Mr. BUMSTEAD
rises to a standing attitude by a series of complex manoeuvres, and
plants a foot on something.
"I'morth'larrer!" he cries, spiritedly.
"Th'larrer's on me!" answers Mr. MCLAUGHLIN, in evidently great
bewilderment.
Then ensue a momentary wild struggle and muffled crash; for each
gentleman, coming blindly upon the other, has taken the light glimmering
at the other's back for the light at the top of the ladder, and, further
mistaking the other in the dark for the ladder itself, has attempted to
climb him. Mr. BUMSTEAD, however, has got the first step; whereupon, Mr.
MCLAUGHLIN, in resenting what he takes for the ladder's inexcusable
familiarity, has twisted both himself and his equally deluded companion
into a pretty hard fall.
Another interval of hard breathing, and then the organist of Saint Cow's
asks: "Di'you hear anything drop?"
"Yshir, th'larrer got throwed, f'rimpudence to a gen'l'm'n," is the
peevish return of OLD MORTARITY, who immediately falls asleep as he
lies, with his lantern under his spine.
In his sleep, he dreams that BUMSTEAD examines him closely, with a view
to gaining some clue to the mystery of the light behind both their
backs; and, on finding the lantern under him, and, studying it
profoundly for some time, is suddenly moved to feel along his own back.
He dreams that BUMSTEAD thereupon finds his own lantern, and exclaims,
after half an hour's analytical reflection, "It musht'ave slid round
while JOHN MCLAUGHLIN was intosh'cated." Then, or soon after, the
dreamer awakes, and can discern two Mr. BUMSTEADS seated upon the
step-ladders, with a lantern, baby-like, on each knee.
"You two men are awake at last, eh?" say the organists, with peculiar
smiles.
"Yes, gentlemen," return the MCLAUGHLINS, with yawns.
They ascend silently from the cellar, each believing that he is
accompanied by two companions, and rendered moodily distrustful thereby.
"Aina maina mona--Mike.
Bassalone, bona--Strike!"
sings a small, familiar voice, when they stand again above ground, and a
stone whizzes between their heads.
In another moment BUMSTEAD has the fell SMALLEY by the collar, and is
shaking him like a yard of carpet.
"You wretched little tarrier!" he cries in a fury, "you've been spying
around to-night, to find out something about my Spiritualism that may be
distorted to injure my Ritualistic standing."
"I ain't done nothing; and you jest drop me, or I'll knock spots out of
yer!" carols the stony young child. "I jest come to have my aim at that
old Beat there."
"Attend to his case, then--his and his friend's, for he seems to have
some one with him--and never let me see you two boys again."
Thus Mr. BUMSTEAD, as he releases the excited lad, and turns from the
pauper burial-ground for a curious kind of pitching and running walk
homeward. The strange expedition is at an end:-but _which_ end he is
unable just then to decide.
(_To be Continued._)
* * * * *
[Illustration: CLERKS ALL AWAY ON A SATURDAY FROLIC, WHICH ACCOUNTS FOR
THE UNFORTUNATE POSITION OF THIS STOUT GENTLEMAN, WHO WAS LEFT ALONE TO
LOCK UP HIS STORE.]
* * * * *
[Illustration: PUNCHINELLO CORRESPONDENCE.]