“Pray use with me not the 'levator labii superioris alaque nasi?
To tell the truth, I was becoming clean daft upon the subject, and consumptive people and orphan children began to look on me with suspicion, but Lucy attributed my conduct-to the eccentricities of genius and love.
Connected with the hospital the class attended was a dead-house, as is usual in such establishments, where such patients whose constitutions are not strong enough to stand the treatment, are deposited after death for forty-eight hours, in order that their friends may reclaim their bodies. The morgue, in this institution, was directly under the lecture room, but, as the door was kept locked, it was regarded as sufficiently private.
On the day when my intended father-in-law was made acquainted with the clandestine meetings of his daughter and myself, I had, as usual, accompanied the class to the hospital, and, during the delivering of the lecture, becoming suddenly very faint, I was forced to leave the crowded room and seek the fresh air.
As I passed the door of the dead-house on my return, I noticed that it was ajar, and curiosity prompting me to see what was within, I pushed it open and entered, closing it behind me. There were several bodies, male and female, cleanly arrayed upon the table; but the object that attracted my attention the most was an infant a few weeks old lying by the side of its dead mother; they were both so black in the face that I would have suspected foul play, had it not been accounted for by the fact that they were negroes. I strove to depart, but something formed a bond of association between that dead nigger baby and myself, which held me to my place, my gaze riveted upon it.
I wanted just such a subject—one I could carry up in my private room and dissect whilst I was waiting for my meals—something to wile away my tedious hours with—but how to get it was the thing; the rules of the college and hospital were imperative, and I did not wish to be expelled. I could not beg, borrow, or buy—there was but one way left, and that was stealing.
The plan was simple and easily arranged. It was very cold weather, and under the ample folds of my cloak the baby would be concealed effectually.
Separating it from its dead mother's embrace, I rolled it, tenderly as if alive, into as small a space as possible, and tying it up in my handkerchief, I placed it under my cloak, and left the dead-house.
Had I left immediately for home, on the baby's absence being discovered I would have been suspected immediately; so, great as was the danger, I had no other resource than to return to the lecture-room, and await our regular dismissal, running the chances of detection. No one, on looking at me then, would have accused me of feigning sickness; for, manfully as I strove to be composed, the danger of discovery unnerved me completely, and gave me such a tremor as would have passed for a creditable ague.
I have been often enough in imminent danger of my life, to know what cold sweat and minutes appearing hours are; but the longest life, in the shortest space of time I ever led, was when, in the midst of four hundred students, I sat on those hard old benches, with the dead nigger baby under my cloak, waiting for the lecture to conclude.