Cautiously and slowly, step by step, they pursue their way, alternately catching and losing a dancing light in the distance, which they imagine to proceed from some mansion, apparently a large one, which they at length reach, only to find it dark, still, and closed. Searching on the outside, however, they come to a large open gate, which they enter, and after feeling their way for a short distance, arrive at a door that evidently belongs to an out-house or detached building. It is shut, but the key has been inadvertently left in the lock. Fatigued, shelterless, and bruised, they have little hesitation in profiting by the accident. A noisome effluvia assails them on entering, which at first almost drives them back; but growing less the longer they continue, they accept the shelter, and grope their way behind some barrels and lumber, where they find straw, upon which they rest their drenched and weary limbs. They are scarcely nestled together, before they again hear the yelping of a cur, and the same dismal howls and shrill whistling signals, by which their imaginations had previously been wrought up; together with the voices of men, in coarse, rude and savage words, denoting anger and anxiety for the perpetration of some dark purpose, in keeping with the fierce and threatening sounds: 'They approached. One of them had a lantern. He came up to the door; and finding it open, boisterously shut it; with a broad and bitter curse against the carelessness of some man, whose name he pronounced, for leaving it open; and eternally damning others for being so long in doing their business. We were now locked in; and we soon heard no more of the voices.' In spite of these alarms, however, fear at length gives place to fatigue; but their rest is of short duration. Trevor's brief slumber is disturbed by his companion, whom he finds 'shaking in the most violent agitation he ever beheld in any human being,' and who only replies with a groan to his question of 'What is the matter?' Awakened from his own wild slumbers, and strongly partaking of his companion's sensations, Trevor yet endeavors to rouse him to speech and recollection, by asking again: 'What have you heard?—what ails you?' 'It was some time before he could utter an articulate sound. At last, shaking more violently as he spoke, and with inexpressible horror in his voice, he gasping said: 'A dead hand!' 'Where?' 'I felt it—I had hold of it—it is now at my neck!' Trevor, trembling in sympathy with his companion, hardly dares to stretch out his arm to examine. At length he ventures: 'Never shall I forget the sensation I experienced, when to my full conviction I actually felt a cold, dead hand between my fingers! I was suffocated with horror! I struggled to overcome it, but it again seized me, and I sank half entranced!' At this instant the shrill sound of the whistle rings piercing through the dismal place in which they are confined. It is answered; and the same hoarse voices are once more heard. The prisoners lie silent, not daring to breathe, when they hear the door unlock; and with a dialogue of mingled oaths and reproaches, at the want of care in leaving the door unlocked, and the prospect of being 'smoked' and 'blown,' two men enter with a lantern, bearing a sack, one of whom exclaims: 'Lift the sack on end! Why the h—ll don't you lend a hand and keep it steady, while I untie it? Do you think a dead man can stand on his legs?' After much colloquy of this sort, the men quit the place, leaving the two travellers not only with the dead body, but with bones and human skeletons, revealed by the light of the lantern, on every side! The dancing lights they had seen, the shrill signals, and the dreadful howls they had heard, are no longer mysterious. It was no ignis fatuus, but the lantern of those assassins; no dog or wolf baying the moon, but the agonizing yells of murder! After the departure of the desperadoes, they hear various noises in the adjoining house; among others, the occasional ringing of a chamber-bell. Soon other sounds approach more nearly; and presently the inner door once more opens, and a livery servant, bearing two lighted candles, comes in, followed by a man with an apron tied round him, having a kind of bib up to his chin, and linen sleeves drawn over his coat. The master (for such he evidently is) has a meagre, wan countenance; and the servant seems in great trepidation; to whom the gentleman observes: 'Don't be afraid, Matthew; you will soon be accustomed to it, and you will then laugh at your present timidity. Unless you conquer your fears, you will not be able to obey my directions in assisting me; consequently, you will not be fit for your place; and you know you cannot get so good wages in any other.' To all this the prisoners are not inattentive listeners; and as the servant turns round, he beholds Trevor standing with his eyes fixed, watchful for the interpretation of these enigmas. The man stares, gasps, turns pale, and at last drops down, overcome with terror; while the master, whose attention is thus directed to the apparition of Trevor, stands motionless, his face assuming a death-like hue, and the power of utterance apparently lost. This incident hastens the éclaircissement. In their benighted wanderings, they had at last found a refuge in the dissecting-room of an anatomist, who had risen before day to operate upon the subject which had been secured for him in the course of the night by the desperadoes before mentioned.
The picture, it will be perceived, was reflected through the medium of consternation and terror. The imaginations of the travellers had been strongly preyed upon by their distress, by the accident of falling, and by the mingled noises they had heard; proceeding from the church-yard robbers, the village dogs disturbed by them, and the whistling, roaring, and howling so common to high gusts of wind; all which was sufficient to distract minds already in a state of visionary deception and alarm. Being engaged in a desperate deed, for selfish purposes, the 'body-snatchers' had the manners of murderers, which the more effectually deceived the terrified travellers. Add to this the spectacle of a dissecting-room; here preparations of arms, pendent in rows, with the vessels injected; and there legs, feet, and other limbs; and a satisfactory catalogue raisonné will have been established. For the rest, the anatomist subsequently explains to his unexpected auditors, that finding his health such as to compel him to forego the winter lectures of able surgeons in London, he had continued his practical studies in the country, by the means which they had discovered, and the necessity of procuring which he defended, on the ground that a surgeon must be acquainted with the direction, site, and properties of the muscles, arteries, ligaments, nerves, and other parts, before he can cut the living body with the least possible injury; and that a dead body, being no longer subject to pain, could no more be disgraced by the knife of a surgeon than by the gnawing of the worm. Rather specious reasoning, it strikes us; at least an argument not likely to be particularly convincing to surviving relatives and friends. Hood's soliloquy of an exhumed 'subject' comes also in aid of the other side of the question:
'I thought the last of all my cares
Would end with my last minute;
But though I went to my long home,
I didn't stay long in it.
'The body-snatchers they have come,
And made a snatch at me;
It's very hard them kind of men
Won't let a body be!'
Gossip with Readers and Correspondents.—We must beg leave to say, once for all, and to all, that we cannot permit this Magazine to be made the medium of theological controversy. Several pamphlets, letters, tracts, etc., have been sent us for examination, connected with 'Puseyism and Anti-Puseyism;' themes also which give the title to a long communication before us, from some one who seems, in 'cramming' for his article, to have gone through a course of the fathers; poured over the canonists, and searched all the schoolmen; for he brings forward a very formidable array of authorities to prove something or other, yet what, we cannot justly make out. But if the case be not quite clear, then have Tertullian, Chrysostom, Austin, Jerome, and the rest, been summoned in vain; in vain the citations from famous high churchmen; archbishops, bishops, deans, and doctors; from Whitgift to Waterland, from Rogers to Rutherforth, 'marshalled in dread array, a host invincible.' Then again we have 'A Dialogue between a Puseyite and an Anti-Puseyite,' which we came near sending to an esteemed friend and correspondent, as an illustration of a recent comment of his upon this species of antagonism; a dialogue in which one speaker does all the talking; here ingeniously sinking a truth, and there raising a swelling fiction, and all with such an air of fairness, and 'triumph through the right!' 'Have you not been amused sometimes,' says our friend, 'to see a reverend disputant set up a little man of straw on the opposite side, and making him support positions he would never take, by arguments he would never use, trip him up with an adroit catch, or knock him down with an annihilating blow; and continue this diverting process of setting up and knocking down, till all sensible people were convinced that he was a mighty cudgeller as well as a sound believer, and his opponent a fool as well as a heretic?' But, 'something too much of this.' We took up our pen merely to say, that while we reverence that true religion which is 'first pure, then peaceable,' we hold in no respect sectarian quarrels, and especially the 'family cat-fights' in which the Puseyites and their opponents are at present so vindictively engaged. Of all employments, quarrelling about religion is the worst; and he that does quarrel about it, can have none worth quarrelling about, in our humble opinion. 'The man who committed the fatal presumption of first saying to his fellow man, 'You shall think as I do,' is responsible for by far the greater part of all the wretchedness and injustice of this world.'... We shall not invite the reader's attention to 'The Innocence of a Galley-Slave,' the first of two parts of which will be found in preceding pages, simply because it requires no such incentive to perusal. But we cannot forego the satisfaction of assuring the translator that so long as we have been connected with this Magazine, we have never read any thing that impressed itself so forcibly upon our imagination. The faithful yet most dramatic portraiture of character; the deep interest excited by the incidents of the story, which proceed by a natural convergence to the dénouement; the felicitous management of the dialogue, and the grouping of the scenes and dramatis personæ, have never been equalled, to our conception, by any previous writer in the Knickerbocker. Being what is termed 'an old stager,' in a literary sense, we are not wont to be deeply affected by narratives of this sort; but we are bound to state, that after reading 'The Galley-Slave' at night, we retired to rest, but not to sleep. Its scenes, its characters, were before us during the night-watches, and until the morning dawned; with such variations only as were produced by the vagaries of half-waking dreams. If there be a reader of the Knickerbocker who shall disagree with us in opinion, after the perusal of the conclusion of the story in our October number, why we should like to see him—'some day when he is passing.' * * * The following was found upon the body of a suicide, taken from the Thames in London. It was well pronounced 'an act of attainder against the whole community, in the infamy of which each man of means had his share. It is irresistible in its truth and pathos:
'This body, if ever this body should be found, was once a thing which moved about the earth, despised and unnoticed, and died indigent and unlamented. It could hear, see, feel, smell, and taste, with as much quickness, delicacy, and force as other bodies. It had desires and passions like other bodies, but was denied the use of them by such as had the power and the will to engross the good things of this world to themselves. The doors of the great were shut upon it; not because it was infected with disease or contaminated with infamy, but on account of the fashion of the garments with which it was clothed, and the name it derived from its forefathers; and because it had not the habit of bending its knee where its heart owed no respect, nor the power of moving its tongue to gloze the crimes or flatter the follies of men. It was excluded the fellowship of such as heap up gold and silver; not because it did, but for fear it might, ask a small portion of their beloved wealth. It shrunk with pain and pity from the haunts of ignorance which the knowledge it possessed could not enlighten, and guilt that its sensations were obliged to abhor. There was but one class of men with whom it was permitted to associate, and those were such as had feelings and misfortunes like its own; among whom it was its hard fate frequently to suffer imposition, from assumed worth and fictitious distress. Beings of supposed benevolence, capable of perceiving, loving, and promoting merit and virtue, have now and then seemed to flit and glide before it. But the visions were deceitful. Ere they were distinctly seen, the phantoms vanished. Or, if such beings do exist, it has experienced the peculiar hardship of never having met with any, in whom both the purpose and the power were fully united. Therefore, with hands wearied with labor, eyes dim with watchfulness, veins but half nourished, and a mind at length subdued by intense study and a reiteration of unaccomplished hopes, it was driven by irresistible impulse to end at once such a complication of evils.'
'A Temperance Story' relies mainly for its 'fun, which the Editor seems to enjoy,' upon an ancient Josephus Millerius. The collateral anecdote, however, toward its close, is not so much amiss. Two young men, 'with a humming in their heads,' retire late at night to their room in a crowded inn; in which, as they enter, are revealed two beds; but the wind extinguishing the light, they both, instead of taking, as they supposed, a bed apiece, get back-to-back into one bed, which begins to sink under them, and come around at intervals, in a manner very circumambient, but quite impossible of explication. Presently one observes to the other: 'I say, Tom, somebody's in my bed.' 'Is there?' says the other; 'so there is in mine, d—n him! Let's kick 'em out!' The next remark was: 'Tom, I've kicked my man overboard.' 'Good!' says his fellow-toper; 'better luck than I; my man has kicked me out—d—d if he hasn't—right on the floor!' Their 'relative positions' were not apparent until the next morning. * * * What a personal presence was that of the Father of his Country! All accounts agree in this. We heard an old gentleman say, not long ago, that when a clerk in Philadelphia, he used to walk two or three squares every morning, to meet Washington as he came down Market-street to his quarters. 'The dignity,' said he, 'of his movements, the grace of his salutation, and the calm sweetness of his smile, were beyond description or comparison.' Sitting the other day on a log, scarcely a stone's throw from where Andre was captured, and not far from the little Sleepy-Hollow church, we conversed for an hour with a revolutionary patriot, tremulous with the palsy of age, who pointed out to us the spot, over the Tappan Sea which lay before us, where Andre was hung, and where on that day the troops 'spread out thick and black a long way from the gallows.' He lived at Verplanck's Point, close by, when Arnold came down in his barge, and went on board the Vulture, all which he himself saw. 'They fired two cannon at the barge,' said he, from this side: having got news of the treason by express; but the gun burst at the second discharge, and took off the legs, to the thighs, of one poor fellow, who was brought to our house, but he died in two hours. The army then lay at Bedford,' continued the old veteran; 'and I saw General Washington almost every day. He was a noble-looking man; his countenance was terribly pleasant. He did not talk much; but even the little children fairly loved him; and they used to gather about the door of his marquée every morning, to see him; and he used to pat their heads and smile on them: it was beautiful to see.' How uniform and universal is this 'testimony of the eye' in the recollections of Washington! * * * We know not why it is, but the fact is so, that many affected persons are prone to interpolate superfluous letters into a certain class of words, apparently to make them more high-sounding than they would otherwise be. 'Ordure! ordure! gentlemen!' exclaimed a court-crier to a noisy audience the other day, in our hearing. 'That is a fine burst!—what a calm, beautiful forward!' said a lisping young lady, one evening at the National Academy, as she called the attention of her cavalier to Launitz's lovely 'Rose of the Alhambra,' in breathing marble. These are vulgarisms of the baser sort, and require the lash. * * * Right glad are we that 'our contemporary' the Knickerbocker steamer, that Palace of the Hudson, sustains so well the honor of her name. The metropolitan journals are full of her praises; pronouncing her, in speed, in richness and splendor of decoration, in symmetry of form, and in sumptuousness of convenience and luxury, unequalled by any boat that floats on our waters. It is even so; and what is especially pleasant to observe, is the fact, that there is so much resemblance between the ornamental externals of the 'Old Knick.,' with whom she shares her name, and the 'palace' in question. Our vignettes and title are enlarged in colors upon her sides, and multiplied in exquisite stained glass and other transparencies, in divers quarters; indeed Maga triumphs in all her borders. And among all the superb state-rooms, there is not one more gorgeously furnished and decorated than that which bears the silver-plate of 'Knickerbocker;' and which, thanks to the admiral! is subject to our order, 'when we sail.' Shakspeare was right; it is a good thing to have a good name. May the Knickerbocker steamer be as cordially cherished as her namesake; and may she labor as unceasingly, and as successfully, to unite the suffrages of the 'universal public.' That she will do so, few who know her own qualities, or those of her justly popular commander, Captain St. John, can for a moment doubt. * * * Our Heavenly Father 'does not willingly grieve nor afflict the children of men;' yet sometimes we encounter examples of the chastenings of His rod, which 'give us pause,' and almost lead us to ask, in the spirit of sympathy with suffering, 'Why hath the Almighty done this?' Such for a moment were our thoughts the other day, in returning from an excursion by water to the charming retreat of Flushing. Among the passengers who were drinking in the bland airs of the day, and regarding with delight the verdant villa-sprinkled shores, was a man of imposing presence, with a fine intellectual head and face, and with one exception, 'a man altogether pleasant to behold.' He was constantly engaged, however, in that involuntary exercise known as 'St. Vitus's Dance.' It was very painful to look upon, nor did we permit the afflicted man to know that we were regarding his contortions; but so inexpressibly ludicrous were some of his movements, that a strong sense of the ridiculous was mingled with pity, and it was impossible to conjecture which had the ascendancy. Motions there were in plenty, that no skill of the Ravels could imitate. In legs and feet, arms, hands, and fingers, there was not a muscle that was not 'unexpectedly called upon' to illustrate the composite style of the saltatory saint. In one instance, the breeze slightly lifted the gentleman's hat; and in raising his hand, quite miscellaneously, to secure it, his fingers were arrested opposite his nose, and forced into a species of gyratory motion, not unfrequently adopted to give force to the phrase, 'Don't you wish you may get it?' Oh! it would have made a Quaker laugh in meeting, to have seen that movement! The poor gentleman now sat down, but not to rest; his feet still kept up an alternate single and double shuffle; his arms dangled down behind him, where one twitched up and down, as if working a fancy-pestle in an imaginary mortar; while his head seemed struggling to look over first one shoulder and then the other, to see what they were doing. But with all this physical affliction, there was peace in that man's bosom. He was a Christian, a minister of the cross of Christ. That 'thorn in the flesh had been given him to buffet him,' and no doubt often pierced him sorely; 'yet,' said a friend at our side, 'he can even 'glory in his infirmity;' for looking beyond the fleeting present, he awaits with patience the time when he may 'finish his course with joy, and the ministry which he has received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God;' and leaving behind him the shattered tenement in which for a little while he lived—perhaps at times complainingly, yet as in a home—be 'clothed upon with immortality,' and walk in white with the shining ones around the eternal throne!' * * * 'Evening in the City' is inadmissible. We coincide entirely with the writer in a humble opinion of his literary acquirements. It is quite true, nevertheless, that there are not a few bardlings who job occasionally in the Balaam line for the inferior magazines, who are no whit superior to our correspondent. Let us not however condemn him without a hearing. Listen:
'Anon the poor mechanic comes staggering by;
Bearing aloft upon his shoulders a huge pile of wood.
Which, mindful of his good spouse wants, throughout the day
He has with care and patience culled from out
The refuse wood which has been thrown aside as useless:
With weary and unsteady gait he creeps along.
Anxious too to gaze upon his wife, and rest his weary limbs.
By high command, by the sweat of his brow
Has he won his bread; and if perfect else, has done his duty.
And acted the good part, as well as he
Who bears upon his shoulders the weight of empires;
And legislates for his fellow man; alas! too often
Ignorant of his wants, too often careless and uncaring.