“Yes, I died last Wednesday; the coffin will be here presently, and I shall be buried to-morrow.”

The surgeon, a man of sense and skill, immediately felt the patient’s pulse, and shaking his head, said, “I find it is indeed too true; you are certainly defunct; the blood is in a state of stagnation, putrefaction is about to take place, and the sooner you are buried the better.”

The coffin arrived, he was carefully placed in it, and carried towards the church. The surgeon had previously given instructions to several neighbours how to proceed. The procession had scarcely moved a dozen yards, when a person stopped to inquire who they were carrying to the grave? “Mr. ——, our late worthy overseer.”

“What! is the old rogue gone at last? a good release, for a greater villain never lived.”

The imaginary deceased no sooner heard this attack on his character, than he jumped up, and in a threatening posture said, “You lying scoundrel, if I was not dead I’d make you suffer for what you say; but as it is, I am forced to submit.” He then quietly laid down again; but ere they had proceeded half way to church, another party stopped the procession with the same inquiry, and added invective and abuse. This was more than the supposed corpse could bear; and jumping from the coffin, was in the act of following his defamers, when the whole party burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, the public exposure awakened him to a sense of his folly, and he fought against the weakness, and, in the end, conquered it.

Prisons,
ANCIENT AND MODERN.

The prisons of the classical ancients consisted of “souterains,” or, sometimes, of only simple vestibules, where the prisoners saw their friends, &c.: it was in this latter kind of confinement that Socrates was placed. Their “latomiæ” and “lapidicinæ” were caves or vast quarries, guarded at the entrance: in the “latomiæ” prisoners could move about; but in the “lapidicinæ” they were chained and fettered. The famous “latomiæ” at Syracuse made a capital prison. The prisoners bribed the lictor or executioner to introduce food, and allow them to visit friends, &c. Some prisoners had merely chains upon the legs, others were set fast in stocks. There were also free prisons; as committal to the house of a magistrate, or custody of the accused in his own house.[277] Felix, at Cesarea, commanded a centurion to keep Paul, and to let him have liberty, and that he should forbid none of his acquaintance to minister or come to him. At Rome, Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him; and while in that custody the chief of the Jews came and heard him expound. He spoke to them of being “bound with this chain.” He dwelt two whole years in his own hired house preaching and teaching with all confidence, no man forbidding him.[278]

In the middle age there were prisons provided with collars, handcuffs, and other fetters, without doors or windows, and descended into only by ladders. Other prisons were made like a cage, with portcullised doors, as now; and there was a kind of prison, called “pediculus,” because in it the feet were bound with chains, and prisons were made dark on purpose.

Anglo-Saxon prisons were annexed to palaces, with a work-place in them; the prisoners were chained and had guards. In castles there were dungeons, consisting of four dark apartments, three below, and one above, up a long staircase, all well secured; in the uppermost, a ring to which criminals were chained. Prisons were sometimes guarded by dogs, and prisoners bound in chains, brought in carts, and discharged upon a new reign.[279]