by Edgar Allan Poe
(1850)
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 neighboring 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.