There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which
are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. These the
mere romanticist must eschew, if he do not wish to offend or to disgust.
They are with propriety handled only when the severity and majesty of Truth
sanctify and sustain them. We thrill, for example, with the most intense of
"pleasurable pain" over the accounts of the Passage of the Beresina, of the
Earthquake at Lisbon, of the Plague at London, of the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew, or of the stifling of the hundred and twenty-three prisoners in
the Black Hole at Calcutta. But in these accounts it is the fact - -- it is
the reality - -- it is the history which excites. As inventions, we should
regard them with simple abhorrence.
I have mentioned some few of the more prominent and august calamities on
record; but in these it is the extent, not less than the character of the
calamity, which so vividly impresses the fancy. I need not remind the reader
that, from the long and weird catalogue of human miseries, I might have
selected many individual instances more replete with essential suffering
than any of these vast generalities of disaster. The true wretchedness,
indeed -- the ultimate woe - -- is particular, not diffuse. That the ghastly
extremes of agony are endured by man the unit, and never by man the mass -
-- for this let us thank a merciful God!
To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these
extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality. That it has
frequently, very frequently, so fallen will scarcely be denied by those who
think. The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and
vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? We know
that there are diseases in which occur total cessations of all the apparent
functions of vitality, and yet in which these cessations are merely
suspensions, properly so called. They are only temporary pauses in the
incomprehensible mechanism. A certain period elapses, and some unseen
mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard
wheels. The silver cord was not for ever loosed, nor the golden bowl
irreparably broken. But where, meantime, was the soul?
Apart, however, from the inevitable conclusion, a priori that such causes
must produce such effects - -- that the well-known occurrence of such cases
of suspended animation must naturally give rise, now and then, to premature
interments -- apart from this consideration, we have the direct testimony of
medical and ordinary experience to prove that a vast number of such
interments have actually taken place. I might refer at once, if necessary to
a hundred well authenticated instances. One of very remarkable character,
and of which the circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of my
readers, occurred, not very long ago, in the neighbouring city of Baltimore,
where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely-extended excitement. The
wife of one of the most respectable citizens-a lawyer of eminence and a
member of Congress -- was seized with a sudden and unaccountable illness,
which completely baffled the skill of her physicians. After much suffering
she died, or was supposed to die. No one suspected, indeed, or had reason to
suspect, that she was not actually dead. She presented all the ordinary
appearances of death. The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline.
The lips were of the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lustreless. There
was no warmth. Pulsation had ceased. For three days the body was preserved
unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity. The funeral, in
short, was hastened, on account of the rapid advance of what was supposed to
be decomposition.
The lady was deposited in her family vault, which, for three subsequent
years, was undisturbed. At the expiration of this term it was opened for the
reception of a sarcophagus; - -- but, alas! how fearful a shock awaited the
husband, who, personally, threw open the door! As its portals swung
outwardly back, some white-apparelled object fell rattling within his arms.
It was the skeleton of his wife in her yet unmoulded shroud.
A careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived within two
days after her entombment; that her struggles within the coffin had caused
it to fall from a ledge, or shelf to the floor, where it was so broken as to
permit her escape. A lamp which had been accidentally left, full of oil,
within the tomb, was found empty; it might have been exhausted, however, by
evaporation. On the uttermost of the steps which led down into the dread
chamber was a large fragment of the coffin, with which, it seemed, that she
had endeavored to arrest attention by striking the iron door. While thus
occupied, she probably swooned, or possibly died, through sheer terror; and,
in failing, her shroud became entangled in some iron -- work which projected
interiorly. Thus she remained, and thus she rotted, erect.
In the year 1810, a case of living inhumation happened in France, attended
with circumstances which go far to warrant the assertion that truth is,
indeed, stranger than fiction. The heroine of the story was a Mademoiselle
Victorine Lafourcade, a young girl of illustrious family, of wealth, and of
great personal beauty. Among her numerous suitors was Julien Bossuet, a poor
litterateur, or journalist of Paris. His talents and general amiability had
recommended him to the notice of the heiress, by whom he seems to have been
truly beloved; but her pride of birth decided her, finally, to reject him,
and to wed a Monsieur Renelle, a banker and a diplomatist of some eminence.
After marriage, however, this gentleman neglected, and, perhaps, even more
positively ill-treated her. Having passed with him some wretched years, she
died, - -- at least her condition so closely resembled death as to deceive
every one who saw her. She was buried - -- not in a vault, but in an
ordinary grave in the village of her nativity. Filled with despair, and
still inflamed by the memory of a profound attachment, the lover journeys
from the capital to the remote province in which the village lies, with the
romantic purpose of disinterring the corpse, and possessing himself of its
luxuriant tresses. He reaches the grave. At midnight he unearths the coffin,
opens it, and is in the act of detaching the hair, when he is arrested by
the unclosing of the beloved eyes. In fact, the lady had been buried alive.
Vitality had not altogether departed, and she was aroused by the caresses of
her lover from the lethargy which had been mistaken for death. He bore her
frantically to his lodgings in the village. He employed certain powerful
restoratives suggested by no little medical learning. In fine, she revived.
She recognized her preserver. She remained with him until, by slow degrees,
she fully recovered her original health. Her woman's heart was not adamant,
and this last lesson of love sufficed to soften it. She bestowed it upon
Bossuet. She returned no more to her husband, but, concealing from him her
resurrection, fled with her lover to America. Twenty years afterward, the
two returned to France, in the persuasion that time had so greatly altered
the lady's appearance that her friends would be unable to recognize her.
They were mistaken, however, for, at the first meeting, Monsieur Renelle did
actually recognize and make claim to his wife. This claim she resisted, and
a judicial tribunal sustained her in her resistance, deciding that the
peculiar circumstances, with the long lapse of years, had extinguished, not
only equitably, but legally, the authority of the husband.
The "Chirurgical Journal" of Leipsic -- a periodical of high authority and
merit, which some American bookseller would do well to translate and
republish, records in a late number a very distressing event of the
character in question.
An officer of artillery, a man of gigantic stature and of robust health,
being thrown from an unmanageable horse, received a very severe contusion
upon the head, which rendered him insensible at once; the skull was slightly
fractured, but no immediate danger was apprehended. Trepanning was
accomplished successfully. He was bled, and many other of the ordinary means
of relief were adopted. Gradually, however, he fell into a more and more
hopeless state of stupor, and, finally, it was thought that he died.
The weather was warm, and he was buried with indecent haste in one of the
public cemeteries. His funeral took place on Thursday. On the Sunday
following, the grounds of the cemetery were, as usual, much thronged with
visiters, and about noon an intense excitement was created by the
declaration of a peasant that, while sitting upon the grave of the officer,
he had distinctly felt a commotion of the earth, as if occasioned by some
one struggling beneath. At first little attention was paid to the man's
asseveration; but his evident terror, and the dogged obstinacy with which he
persisted in his story, had at length their natural effect upon the crowd.
Spades were hurriedly procured, and the grave, which was shamefully shallow,
was in a few minutes so far thrown open that the head of its occupant
appeared. He was then seemingly dead; but he sat nearly erect within his
coffin, the lid of which, in his furious struggles, he had partially
uplifted.
He was forthwith conveyed to the nearest hospital, and there pronounced to
be still living, although in an asphytic condition. After some hours he
revived, recognized individuals of his acquaintance, and, in broken
sentences spoke of his agonies in the grave.
From what he related, it was clear that he must have been conscious of life
for more than an hour, while inhumed, before lapsing into insensibility. The
grave was carelessly and loosely filled with an exceedingly porous soil; and
thus some air was necessarily admitted. He heard the footsteps of the crowd
overhead, and endeavored to make himself heard in turn. It was the tumult
within the grounds of the cemetery, he said, which appeared to awaken him
from a deep sleep, but no sooner was he awake than he became fully aware of
the awful horrors of his position.
This patient, it is recorded, was doing well and seemed to be in a fair way
of ultimate recovery, but fell a victim to the quackeries of medical
experiment. The galvanic battery was applied, and he suddenly expired in one
of those ecstatic paroxysms which, occasionally, it superinduces.
The mention of the galvanic battery, nevertheless, recalls to my memory a
well known and very extraordinary case in point, where its action proved the
means of restoring to animation a young attorney of London, who had been
interred for two days. This occurred in 1831, and created, at the time, a
very profound sensation wherever it was made the subject of converse.
The patient, Mr. Edward Stapleton, had died, apparently of typhus fever,
accompanied with some anomalous symptoms which had excited the curiosity of
his medical attendants. Upon his seeming decease, his friends were requested
to sanction a post-mortem examination, but declined to permit it. As often
happens, when such refusals are made, the practitioners resolved to disinter
the body and dissect it at leisure, in private. Arrangements were easily
effected with some of the numerous corps of body-snatchers, with which
London abounds; and, upon the third night after the funeral, the supposed
corpse was unearthed from a grave eight feet deep, and deposited in the
opening chamber of one of the private hospitals.
An incision of some extent had been actually made in the abdomen, when the
fresh and undecayed appearance of the subject suggested an application of
the battery. One experiment succeeded another, and the customary effects
supervened, with nothing to characterize them in any respect, except, upon
one or two occasions, a more than ordinary degree of life-likeness in the
convulsive action.
It grew late. The day was about to dawn; and it was thought expedient, at
length, to proceed at once to the dissection. A student, however, was
especially desirous of testing a theory of his own, and insisted upon
applying the battery to one of the pectoral muscles. A rough gash was made,
and a wire hastily brought in contact, when the patient, with a hurried but
quite unconvulsive movement, arose from the table, stepped into the middle
of the floor, gazed about him uneasily for a few seconds, and then -- spoke.
What he said was unintelligible, but words were uttered; the syllabification
was distinct. Having spoken, he fell heavily to the floor.
For some moments all were paralyzed with awe -- but the urgency of the case
soon restored them their presence of mind. It was seen that Mr. Stapleton
was alive, although in a swoon. Upon exhibition of ether he revived and was
rapidly restored to health, and to the society of his friends -- from whom,
however, all knowledge of his resuscitation was withheld, until a relapse
was no longer to be apprehended. Their wonder -- their rapturous
astonishment -- may be conceived.
The most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is involved
in what Mr. S. himself asserts. He declares that at no period was he
altogether insensible -- that, dully and confusedly, he was aware of
everything which happened to him, from the moment in which he was pronounced
dead by his physicians, to that in which he fell swooning to the floor of
the hospital. "I am alive," were the uncomprehended words which, upon
recognizing the locality of the dissecting-room, he had endeavored, in his
extremity, to utter.
It were an easy matter to multiply such histories as these -- but I forbear
-- for, indeed, we have no need of such to establish the fact that premature
interments occur. When we reflect how very rarely, from the nature of the
case, we have it in our power to detect them, we must admit that they may
frequently occur without our cognizance. Scarcely, in truth, is a graveyard
ever encroached upon, for any purpose, to any great extent, that skeletons
are not found in postures which suggest the most fearful of suspicions.
Fearful indeed the suspicion -- but more fearful the doom! It may be
asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to
inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial
before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs -- the stifling fumes
from the damp earth -- the clinging to the death garments -- the rigid
embrace of the narrow house -- the blackness of the absolute Night -- the
silence like a sea that overwhelms -- the unseen but palpable presence of
the Conqueror Worm -- these things, with the thoughts of the air and grass
above, with memory of dear friends who would fly to save us if but informed
of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate they can never be
informed -- that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead -- these
considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a
degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring
imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth -- we
can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell.
And thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest profound; an
interest, nevertheless, which, through the sacred awe of the topic itself,
very properly and very peculiarly depends upon our conviction of the truth
of the matter narrated. What I have now to tell is of my own actual
knowledge -- of my own positive and personal experience.
For several years I had been subject to attacks of the singular disorder
which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy, in default of a more
definitive title. Although both the immediate and the predisposing causes,
and even the actual diagnosis, of this disease are still mysterious, its
obvious and apparent character is sufficiently well understood. Its
variations seem to be chiefly of degree. Sometimes the patient lies, for a
day only, or even for a shorter period, in a species of exaggerated
lethargy. He is senseless and externally motionless; but the pulsation of
the heart is still faintly perceptible; some traces of warmth remain; a
slight color lingers within the centre of the cheek; and, upon application
of a mirror to the lips, we can detect a torpid, unequal, and vacillating
action of the lungs. Then again the duration of the trance is for weeks --
even for months; while the closest scrutiny, and the most rigorous medical
tests, fail to establish any material distinction between the state of the
sufferer and what we conceive of absolute death. Very usually he is saved
from premature interment solely by the knowledge of his friends that he has
been previously subject to catalepsy, by the consequent suspicion excited,
and, above all, by the non-appearance of decay. The advances of the malady
are, luckily, gradual. The first manifestations, although marked, are
unequivocal. The fits grow successively more and more distinctive, and
endure each for a longer term than the preceding. In this lies the principal
security from inhumation. The unfortunate whose first attack should be of
the extreme character which is occasionally seen, would almost inevitably be
consigned alive to the tomb.
My own case differed in no important particular from those mentioned in
medical books. Sometimes, without any apparent cause, I sank, little by
little, into a condition of hemi-syncope, or half swoon; and, in this
condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to
think, but with a dull lethargic consciousness of life and of the presence
of those who surrounded my bed, I remained, until the crisis of the disease
restored me, suddenly, to perfect sensation. At other times I was quickly
and impetuously smitten. I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and
so fell prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all was void, and black, and
silent, and Nothing became the universe. Total annihilation could be no
more. From these latter attacks I awoke, however, with a gradation slow in
proportion to the suddenness of the seizure. Just as the day dawns to the
friendless and houseless beggar who roams the streets throughout the long
desolate winter night -- just so tardily -- just so wearily -- just so
cheerily came back the light of the Soul to me.
Apart from the tendency to trance, however, my general health appeared to be
good; nor could I perceive that it was at all affected by the one prevalent
malady -- unless, indeed, an idiosyncrasy in my ordinary sleep may be looked
upon as superinduced. Upon awaking from slumber, I could never gain, at
once, thorough possession of my senses, and always remained, for many
minutes, in much bewilderment and perplexity; -- the mental faculties in
general, but the memory in especial, being in a condition of absolute
abeyance.
In all that I endured there was no physical suffering but of moral distress
an infinitude. My fancy grew charnel, I talked "of worms, of tombs, and
epitaphs." I was lost in reveries of death, and the idea of premature burial
held continual possession of my brain. The ghastly Danger to which I was
subjected haunted me day and night. In the former, the torture of meditation
was excessive -- in the latter, supreme. When the grim Darkness overspread
the Earth, then, with every horror of thought, I shook -- shook as the
quivering plumes upon the hearse. When Nature could endure wakefulness no
longer, it was with a struggle that I consented to sleep -- for I shuddered
to reflect that, upon awaking, I might find myself the tenant of a grave.
And when, finally, I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at once into a
world of phantasms, above which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wing,
hovered, predominant, the one sepulchral Idea.
From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in dreams, I
select for record but a solitary vision. Methought I was immersed in a
cataleptic trance of more than usual duration and profundity. Suddenly there
came an icy hand upon my forehead, and an impatient, gibbering voice
whispered the word "Arise!" within my ear.
I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of him who
had aroused me. I could call to mind neither the period at which I had
fallen into the trance, nor the locality in which I then lay. While I
remained motionless, and busied in endeavors to collect my thought, the cold
hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly, while the
gibbering voice said again:
"Arise! did I not bid thee arise?"
"And who," I demanded, "art thou?"
"I have no name in the regions which I inhabit," replied the voice,
mournfully; "I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless, but am pitiful.
Thou dost feel that I shudder. -- My teeth chatter as I speak, yet it is not
with the chilliness of the night -- of the night without end. But this
hideousness is insufferable. How canst thou tranquilly sleep? I cannot rest
for the cry of these great agonies. These sights are more than I can bear.
Get thee up! Come with me into the outer Night, and let me unfold to thee
the graves. Is not this a spectacle of woe? -- Behold!"
I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist, had
caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind, and from each issued the
faint phosphoric radiance of decay, so that I could see into the innermost
recesses, and there view the shrouded bodies in their sad and solemn
slumbers with the worm. But alas! the real sleepers were fewer, by many
millions, than those who slumbered not at all; and there was a feeble
struggling; and there was a general sad unrest; and from out the depths of
the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling from the garments of the
buried. And of those who seemed tranquilly to repose, I saw that a vast
number had changed, in a greater or less degree, the rigid and uneasy
position in which they had originally been entombed. And the voice again
said to me as I gazed:
"Is it not -- oh! is it not a pitiful sight?" -- but, before I could find
words to reply, the figure had ceased to grasp my wrist, the phosphoric
lights expired, and the graves were closed with a sudden violence, while
from out them arose a tumult of despairing cries, saying again: "Is it not
-- O, God, is it not a very pitiful sight?"
Phantasies such as these, presenting themselves at night, extended their
terrific influence far into my waking hours. My nerves became thoroughly
unstrung, and I fell a prey to perpetual horror. I hesitated to ride, or to
walk, or to indulge in any exercise that would carry me from home. In fact,
I no longer dared trust myself out of the immediate presence of those who
were aware of my proneness to catalepsy, lest, falling into one of my usual
fits, I should be buried before my real condition could be ascertained. I
doubted the care, the fidelity of my dearest friends. I dreaded that, in
some trance of more than customary duration, they might be prevailed upon to
regard me as irrecoverable. I even went so far as to fear that, as I
occasioned much trouble, they might be glad to consider any very protracted
attack as sufficient excuse for getting rid of me altogether. It was in vain
they endeavored to reassure me by the most solemn promises. I exacted the
most sacred oaths, that under no circumstances they would bury me until
decomposition had so materially advanced as to render farther preservation
impossible. And, even then, my mortal terrors would listen to no reason --
would accept no consolation. I entered into a series of elaborate
precautions. Among other things, I had the family vault so remodelled as to
admit of being readily opened from within. The slightest pressure upon a
long lever that extended far into the tomb would cause the iron portal to
fly back. There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and
light, and convenient receptacles for food and water, within immediate reach
of the coffin intended for my reception. This coffin was warmly and softly
padded, and was provided with a lid, fashioned upon the principle of the
vault-door, with the addition of springs so contrived that the feeblest
movement of the body would be sufficient to set it at liberty. Besides all
this, there was suspended from the roof of the tomb, a large bell, the rope
of which, it was designed, should extend through a hole in the coffin, and
so be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse. But, alas? what avails the
vigilance against the Destiny of man? Not even these well-contrived
securities sufficed to save from the uttermost agonies of living inhumation,
a wretch to these agonies foredoomed!
There arrived an epoch -- as often before there had arrived -- in which I
found myself emerging from total unconsciousness into the first feeble and
indefinite sense of existence. Slowly -- with a tortoise gradation --
approached the faint gray dawn of the psychal day. A torpid uneasiness. An
apathetic endurance of dull pain. No care -- no hope -- no effort. Then,
after a long interval, a ringing in the ears; then, after a lapse still
longer, a prickling or tingling sensation in the extremities; then a
seemingly eternal period of pleasurable quiescence, during which the
awakening feelings are struggling into thought; then a brief re-sinking into
non-entity; then a sudden recovery. At length the slight quivering of an
eyelid, and immediately thereupon, an electric shock of a terror, deadly and
indefinite, which sends the blood in torrents from the temples to the heart.
And now the first positive effort to think. And now the first endeavor to
remember. And now a partial and evanescent success. And now the memory has
so far regained its dominion, that, in some measure, I am cognizant of my
state. I feel that I am not awaking from ordinary sleep. I recollect that I
have been subject to catalepsy. And now, at last, as if by the rush of an
ocean, my shuddering spirit is overwhelmed by the one grim Danger -- by the
one spectral and ever-prevalent idea.
For some minutes after this fancy possessed me, I remained without motion.
And why? I could not summon courage to move. I dared not make the effort
which was to satisfy me of my fate -- and yet there was something at my
heart which whispered me it was sure. Despair -- such as no other species of
wretchedness ever calls into being -- despair alone urged me, after long
irresolution, to uplift the heavy lids of my eyes. I uplifted them. It was
dark -- all dark. I knew that the fit was over. I knew that the crisis of my
disorder had long passed. I knew that I had now fully recovered the use of
my visual faculties -- and yet it was dark -- all dark -- the intense and
utter raylessness of the Night that endureth for evermore.
I endeavored to shriek-, and my lips and my parched tongue moved
convulsively together in the attempt -- but no voice issued from the
cavernous lungs, which oppressed as if by the weight of some incumbent
mountain, gasped and palpitated, with the heart, at every elaborate and
struggling inspiration.
The movement of the jaws, in this effort to cry aloud, showed me that they
were bound up, as is usual with the dead. I felt, too, that I lay upon some
hard substance, and by something similar my sides were, also, closely
compressed. So far, I had not ventured to stir any of my limbs -- but now I
violently threw up my arms, which had been lying at length, with the wrists
crossed. They struck a solid wooden substance, which extended above my
person at an elevation of not more than six inches from my face. I could no
longer doubt that I reposed within a coffin at last.
And now, amid all my infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub Hope -- for
I thought of my precautions. I writhed, and made spasmodic exertions to
force open the lid: it would not move. I felt my wrists for the bell-rope:
it was not to be found. And now the Comforter fled for ever, and a still
sterner Despair reigned triumphant; for I could not help perceiving the
absence of the paddings which I had so carefully prepared -- and then, too,
there came suddenly to my nostrils the strong peculiar odor of moist earth.
The conclusion was irresistible. I was not within the vault. I had fallen
into a trance while absent from home-while among strangers -- when, or how,
I could not remember -- and it was they who had buried me as a dog -- nailed
up in some common coffin -- and thrust deep, deep, and for ever, into some
ordinary and nameless grave.
As this awful conviction forced itself, thus, into the innermost chambers of
my soul, I once again struggled to cry aloud. And in this second endeavor I
succeeded. A long, wild, and continuous shriek, or yell of agony, resounded
through the realms of the subterranean Night.
"Hillo! hillo, there!" said a gruff voice, in reply.
"What the devil's the matter now!" said a second.
"Get out o' that!" said a third.
"What do you mean by yowling in that ere kind of style, like a cattymount?"
said a fourth; and hereupon I was seized and shaken without ceremony, for
several minutes, by a junto of very rough-looking individuals. They did not
arouse me from my slumber -- for I was wide awake when I screamed -- but
they restored me to the full possession of my memory.
This adventure occurred near Richmond, in Virginia. Accompanied by a friend,
I had proceeded, upon a gunning expedition, some miles down the banks of the
James River. Night approached, and we were overtaken by a storm. The cabin
of a small sloop lying at anchor in the stream, and laden with garden mould,
afforded us the only available shelter. We made the best of it, and passed
the night on board. I slept in one of the only two berths in the vessel --
and the berths of a sloop of sixty or twenty tons need scarcely be
described. That which I occupied had no bedding of any kind. Its extreme
width was eighteen inches. The distance of its bottom from the deck overhead
was precisely the same. I found it a matter of exceeding difficulty to
squeeze myself in. Nevertheless, I slept soundly, and the whole of my vision
-- for it was no dream, and no nightmare -- arose naturally from the
circumstances of my position -- from my ordinary bias of thought -- and from
the difficulty, to which I have alluded, of collecting my senses, and
especially of regaining my memory, for a long time after awaking from
slumber. The men who shook me were the crew of the sloop, and some laborers
engaged to unload it. From the load itself came the earthly smell. The
bandage about the jaws was a silk handkerchief in which I had bound up my
head, in default of my customary nightcap.
The tortures endured, however, were indubitably quite equal for the time, to
those of actual sepulture. They were fearfully -- they were inconceivably
hideous; but out of Evil proceeded Good; for their very excess wrought in my
spirit an inevitable revulsion. My soul acquired tone -- acquired temper. I
went abroad. I took vigorous exercise. I breathed the free air of Heaven. I
thought upon other subjects than Death. I discarded my medical books.
"Buchan" I burned. I read no "Night Thoughts" -- no fustian about
churchyards -- no bugaboo tales -- such as this. In short, I became a new
man, and lived a man's life. From that memorable night, I dismissed forever
my charnel apprehensions, and with them vanished the cataleptic disorder, of
which, perhaps, they had been less the consequence than the cause.
There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our
sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell -- but the imagination of
man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! the
grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful
-- but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the
Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us -- they must be suffered to
slumber, or we perish.
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