Robert Bird - Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. II (of 2)

With these words the wretch slipped out of the hovel, and a moment after I heard the smothered roll of the vehicle as it swept from the door.

I supposed that Mr. John Smith had taken himself away with as much speed as was consistent with the strength of his horse and the safety of his bones, and I recovered from the fears I had entertained on my own account. I crept up to the philanthropist to give him assistance, if such could be now rendered. But it was too late; he was already dead: Mr. John Smith had not taken his degrees without proper study in his profession; and I must say that his practice on the present occasion did not go far to confirm me in the love of benevolence.

Nevertheless, the appearance of the defunct threw my mind into a ferment. I had been hunting a body, and now I had one before me; I had come to believe that, if I wished for happiness, I must get possession of one whose occupant had previously been happy; and I had seen enough of the deceased to know that he had been an uncommonly comfortable and contented personage.

The end of all this was a resolution, which I instantly made, to take advantage of the poor man's misfortune, and convert his body to my own purposes. I had seen him for the first time that night; I did not remember ever to have heard his name mentioned before; and I consequently knew nothing of him beyond what I had just learned. Where he lived, who were his connexions, what his property, &c. &c., were all questions to which I was to find answers thereafter. It appeared to me that a philanthropist of his spirit and age (the latter of which I judged to be about fifty) could not but be very well known, and that all I should have to do, after reanimating his body, would be to seek the assistance of the first person I should find, and so be conducted at once to the gentleman's house; after which all would go well enough. But, in truth, I took but little time for reflection; or perhaps I should not have been in such a hurry to attempt a transformation. A little prudence might have led me to inquire into the consequences of the change, inferred from the condition of the body. Suppose his scull should prove to be broken; who was to stand the woes of trepanning? I do say, it would have been wiser had I thought of that – but unluckily I did not: I was in too great a hurry to think of any thing save the transformation itself; and the result was, that I had a lesson on the demerits of leaping before looking, which I think will be of service to me for the remainder of my life, as it might be to the reader, could the reader be brought to believe that that experience is good for any thing, which costs nothing.

My resolution was quickened by a step which I heard approaching along the street. "It is a watchman," thought I to myself: "I will jump into the body and run out for assistance."

I turned to the defunct.

"Friend Longstraw," said I, "or whatever your name is, if you are really dead, I wish to occupy your body."

That moment I lost all consciousness. The reader may infer the transfer of spirit was accomplished.

And so it was. I came to my senses a few moments after, just in time to find myself tumbling into a hole in the earth beneath the floor of the hovel, with Mr. John Smith hard by, dragging to the same depository the mortal frame I had just deserted. I perceived at once the horrible dilemma in which I was placed; I was on the point of being buried, and, what was worse, of being buried alive!

"I conjure and beseech thee, friend John Smith," I cried – but cried no more. The villain had just reached the pit, dragging the body of the late Abram Skinner. He was startled at my voice; but it only quickened him in his labours. He snatched up the corse and cast it down upon me as one would a millstone; and the weight, though that was not very considerable, and the shock together, jarred the life more than half out of me.

"What! old Slabsides," said he, "ar'n't you past grumbling?"

With that, the bloody-minded miscreant seized upon a fragment of plank, and began to belabour me with all his strength.

I had entered the philanthropist's body only to be murdered. I uttered a direful scream; but that was only a waste of the breath which Mr. John Smith was determined to waste for me. He redoubled his blows with a vigour that showed he was in earnest; nor did he cease until his work was completed. In a word, he murdered me, and so effectually, that it is a wonder I am alive to tell it. He assassinated me, and even began to bury me, by tumbling earth down from the floor; when, as my good fate would have it, the scene was brought to a climax by the sudden entrance of a watchman, who, running up to the villain, served him the same turn he had served me, by laying a leaded mace over his head, and so knocking him out of his senses.

It seems (for I scorn to keep the reader in suspense, by indulging in mystery) that this faithful fellow, having made a shorter nap than was warranted by the state of the night, had taken a stroll into the air, to look about him; that he had passed the hovel, and, seeing the chair standing at the door, had looked through a crack, and perceived Mr. Longstraw, with whose person and benevolent character he was acquainted, and myself – that is, my late self – warming ourselves by the convict's fire; and that, after pursuing his beat for a while, he was about to return by another way, when, to his surprise, he lighted upon the vehicle at more than a square's distance from the house; and the horse being tied to a post, it was evident he had not strayed thither. This awaking a suspicion that all was not right, he determined to pay a second visit to the hovel; and was on the way thither when I set up the scream mentioned before. Then quickening his pace, he arrived in time to witness the awful spectacle of Mr. John Smith thrusting the two bodies into the pit; which operation the courageous watchman brought to a close by knocking the operator on the head, as I have related.

What had brought Mr. John Smith back again, and why he should have troubled himself to conceal the victim of his murderous cupidity, must be conjectured, as well as the amazement with which, doubtless, he found he had two bodies to bury instead of one. He perhaps reflected, that the visit of his patron was known to other persons; who, upon finding his body, would readily conjecture who was the murderer; and therefore judged it proper to conceal the evidence of assassination, and leave the fate of his benefactor in entire mystery.

As it happened, his return had wellnigh proved fatal to me, and it was any thing but happy for himself. It caused him to take up his lodgings for a fourth time in the penitentiary; and there he is sawing stone, I believe, to this day, unless pardoned out by the Governor of Pennsylvania, according to the practice among governors in general. The visitation was, however, thus far advantageous to me, that it caused me to be conducted to the dwelling of Mr. Longstraw with all due expedition and care; whereas, had it not happened, I might have remained lying on the floor of my miserable tenement until frozen to death; for the night was uncommonly bitter.

As for my late body, it found its way to Abram Skinner's mansion; whence, having been handsomely coffined, it was carried to the grave, which, but for me, it would have filled three months before.

If my first introduction to the life of the philanthropic Zachariah Longstraw (for that was his name) was attended with circumstances of fear and danger, I did not thereby escape those other evils, which, as I hinted before, might have been anticipated, had I reflected a moment on the situation of his body. It was covered with bruises from head to foot, and there was scarce a sound bone left in it; so that, as I may say, I had, in reanimating it, only exchanged anguish of spirit for anguish of body; and which of these is the more intolerable, I never could satisfactorily determine. Philosophers, indeed, contend for the superior poignancy of the former; but I must confess a leaning to the other side of the question. What is the pain of a broken heart to that of the toothache? The poets speak of vipers in the bosom; what are they compared to a bug in the ear? Be this, however, as it may, it is certain I had a most dreadful time of it in Mr. Longstraw's body; and it would have been much worse, had not the blows I had received on the head kept me for a long time in a delirium, and therefore in a measure unconscious of my sufferings. The truth is, the body which I so rashly entered was in such a dilapidated condition, so bruised and mangled, that it was next to an impossibility to restore its vital powers; and it was more than two weeks, after lying all that time in a state of insensibility, more dead than alive, before I came to my senses, and remembered what had befallen me; and it was not until four more had elapsed that I was finally able to leave my chamber, and snuff the early breezes of spring.