The youth who had the discharge, after making a collection among the others, went into the prison, and gave the poor fellow what set him at liberty the next morning.
The scholars then drove on to Oxford Street, congratulating themselves on the success of their adventure, and all happy to a degree of rapture at being instrumental in obtaining the captive's liberty.
About a quarter of an hour after they quitted the coach, they observed the coachman arrive; who mounted the box, and drove home, muttering the bitterest execrations, and damning his father confessor for bilking him of half a guinea which he gave him that morning for an absolution, that was to have rubbed out the entire score of his transgressions.
THE
IDEOT'S FUNERAL.
The following extraordinary affair happened about ten years since, at a village in the north of England.
About midnight, the minister of the parish was not a little alarmed at hearing the church bell tolling. He immediately dispatched one of his servants for the beadle, to inquire into the cause of this wonderful event; who, when he came, appeared to be under more dreadful apprehensions than the clergyman himself. However, the result of their deliberations was, that, in order to be certainly informed of the truth and ground of the matter, they should go forward to the church: but, on their way, what served considerably to increase their fears, was their seeing a light within the church. The great bell gave over tolling, and was succeeded, in its turn, by the little, or handbell (commonly used in that country at funerals), which, in a short time, also became silent. On their near approach to the church, they discovered, by the help of the light within, the mort-cloth moving up and down the area thereof. Though this last part of the dreadful scene might have been sufficient to intimidate persons possessed of no ordinary degree of courage; yet such was the bravery and resolution of the Reverend Doctor, that he even ventured to accost the nocturnal disturber of their repose: when, on lifting up the mort-cloth, to his inexpressible surprise, he discovered the terrible apparition to be only an unhappy young man belonging to the parish, who had for some time past been disordered in his senses, and who had got into the church by some secret means or other, and, as the good Doctor readily conjectured, was amusing himself in this manner, by the representation of a funeral: a case not at all unlikely, as ideots in general are remarkably fond of any thing relative to a funeral procession.
THE
VENTRILOQUIST.
The following anecdote is related by Adrianus Turnibis, the greatest critic of the sixteenth century, and who was admired and respected by all the learned in Europe.