Jerry Horne was an accomplished photographer, and used to do many strange and interesting things with his camera. He would get a collection of skeletons from the museum, and arrange them in novel and curious attitudes. One scene was a ball-room, all the dancers being skeletons; another was an inquest, with coroner, witnesses, and jurymen, all skeletons; another an operating theatre, with a skeleton surgeon and assistants, a skeleton patient and spectators. But the favourite subject with the students was the skeleton lecturer, with a skeleton audience larking and otherwise neglecting the business for which they had assembled. The boys bought all these drolleries, and horrified and even appalled their mammas and sisters when they went home, by exhibiting them in a gay and easy manner, thus manifesting their indifference to and contempt of death and the ultimate destiny of man.
Elsworth often thought of the lines Louis XIV. was fond of quoting from Racine:—
“Mon Dieu, quelle guerre cruelle!
Je trouve deux hommes en moi.”
One of these two men within him was doomed to perish, which should it be? The wild follies of his companions had a strange fascination for him, and daily he seemed getting spiritually harder and more engrossed with unworthy pursuits. He was full of fun, and there seemed such drollery to be got out of upsetting policemen, leaping closed toll-gates without paying, and such-like pranks, that the lofty purposes with which he entered seemed like the blossoms in spring, which yield to the first frosty night after their appearance. Of course he could have held on his way had he been firmer, but the majority of the better-hearted men were so given to these sprees that he seemed to be merely finding his natural level in joining with them.
Dr. Day often invited Elsworth to spend an evening with him at his lodgings. The great anatomist was not a man of one book, but of world-wide reading and information. Nothing was too small for him to notice, no subject too deep for him to study: he lived to know. There was a charm about the old man, and the calm philosophic way he bore his reverses commanded the respect of all who knew his story. There was one subject on which he was impervious to argument: he would never admit that it concerned him in the least how the subjects for dissection had come into his hands. “If people like to use dynamite and the knife to advance their political projects, what has that to do with the leaders of the party who profit by their actions? Is it not an infamous calumny to accuse them of being the associates of murderers? My work was to teach anatomy. I did not kill people, I did not employ those who did. If the greed of money prompted men to do improper things, how could I be held responsible for them simply because I paid liberally and asked no questions?”
He cared nothing for the healing art; his speciality was the dead subject. The only true use in living, he seemed to think, was to provide the anatomist with good subjects for his table. The man had not lived in vain who had served Robert Day with his frame. He was an atheist, a dogmatic atheist, interested not merely in denying the God of the Bible, but in proving the impossibility of the existence of any Supreme Being at all. Hence the melancholy of the man. His daughter shared his views, for she worshipped her father, and he had taken care she should learn nothing of religion from her infancy. They took pains to imbue Elsworth with their opinions; not that they vulgarly scoffed at his faith, but as propagandists of “the religion of Man” they declared it their duty to wage war against that of God. The learning of the old man and his daughter tempted our student to many a discussion with them; he thought if his faith would not stand a little argument it was not worth much. An orange tree grows and bears fruit in the open air in the South, but soon sickens and dies in an English garden. It was rash of Elsworth to subject his faith to such a test. He was doing what has proved fatal to many a youthful mind.
CHAPTER VI.
JACK MURPHY’S PARTY.
Wine and youth are fire upon fire.—Fielding.