Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. I (of 2)

My wrath gave way when I found myself in prison; and hearing from the jailer that the grand jury was then in session, and the prosecuting attorney actually engaged in framing a bill of endictment against me, to send up to its members, I began to think the matter rather serious, and resolved to end it before it proceeded further.

I had already experienced the ill effects of attempting to sustain the character of Sheppard Lee while in the body of another man, and for this reason was resolved to be more cautious for the future; but I now perceived I had no better way of relieving myself of my troubles than by making the prosecutor, who had been an old friend of mine, and had always treated me with respect, acquainted with my transformation; after which, I had no doubt, he would throw his bill of endictment into the fire. I sent for him accordingly; but was obliged to repeat the message before he thought fit to make his appearance.

"You have perhaps made a mistake, Mr. Higginson," said he, as he entered. "You have occasion for counsel, but none that I can imagine for me; for as to my giving you any advice in this unfortunate affair – ".

"The devil take the affair," said I, in no amiable voice; "it was to get rid of it entirely that I sent for you; for I must stop that cursed endictment of yours. I don't want it said of me hereafter that I was once in my life endicted for a felony."

"Oh, sir," said he, with a smile, "we are in no hurry about these things; the bill will lie over till we can procure a little more evidence, and some of a better quality. Don't be in any alarm; but allow me to recommend you to employ counsel. My friend Sharphead, I think, will be your best man."

"I don't want any counsel," said I, "and Sharphead may go to the devil; I want to confide to you the true secret of this extraordinary affair."

"Faith, sir," said he, looking at me in surprise, "if you can do that, the case is not so ridiculous as I thought. Really, Mr. Higginson, I was rather amused than otherwise at the charge brought against you, not supposing you knew any thing of, or had any connexion whatever with, the disappearance of poor Sheppard Lee. But, since you talk of secrets, sir, I must inform you, I am not the person you should make any confessions to. I must again recommend you to employ counsel."

And with that he was about leaving me, but I arrested him. "Stop, Jack," said I (his name was John Darling, and he is very well known in the state, though he was turned out of office), "you and I are old friends, and we must have a talk together."

At these words he gave me a hard stare, looking more astonished than ever.

"Jack," said I, taking him by the hand, "I'll make you stare harder than that. Sheppard Lee is no more dead than I am; though, as for his body, I believe Old Nick has got it. Now, my boy, I take it you will act as a friend in this matter, and not blab my secret: but the truth is, it is John H. Higginson who is dead, and I who am living."

"The deuse it is!" said the lawyer, whose amazement set me into a capital humour. "And pray, sir," he added, "if John H. Higginson is dead, who are you?"

"Sheppard Lee!" said I, bursting into a laugh, "only that you see me now in John H. Higginson's body."

I then proceeded to inform him, as I have informed the reader, of my digging for the treasure, of my sudden death, of the visit of my spirit to old Turnbuckle's, of the disappearance of my body, of my finding and entering that of Squire Higginson, in which he now saw me, and, in fine, of all the other circumstances connected with the transformation; all which he heard like a man whom the novelty of the relation astounded into marble.

"Upon my soul," said he, when I had done, "you have told me a most surprising story. And so you really think yourself Sheppard Lee – that is, Sheppard Lee's spirit in Squire Higginson's body?"

"Think myself, sir!" said I, a little fiercely.

"Do you presume to slight my veracity, sir? or to doubt my common sense?"

"By no means," said he; "I have the utmost respect for both. Your story has completely satisfied me of your innocence. A most wonderful story, sir! truly, a most wonderful story!" And repeating these words over and over again, he fell to nodding his head and musing, staring at me all the time, like one who is lost in wonder; and then suddenly rousing up, he burst into a roar of laughter. Seeing that I was incensed at his merriment, he hastened to apologize, declaring that he was not laughing at my story, but at the absurdity he had been so nigh committing in endicting me for my own murder; and he added, that my relation was altogether the most remarkable he had ever heard in his life.

I then gave him to understand, I expected, for very good and obvious reasons, that he would keep the story to himself; which he faithfully promised. He then fell to cross-questioning me in relation to different points; and he was particularly curious to know what I supposed had become of my body; when, not being able to satisfy him on that point, he himself suggested that perhaps Squire Higginson's spirit had taken possession of it, as I had done with his, and carried it off for some purpose or other, and that we should soon have news of him; an idea that was so agreeable to him, that he fell to laughing as hard as ever. "Sir," said he, shaking me by the hand in excellent good-humour, "we will soon have you out of this dog-hole, and that without betraying your secret. Heaven forbid I should spoil the good fortune of my old friend Sheppard Lee! No, sir, I am no tale-bearer, or blabber of secrets. Comfort yourself, sir; I never had the least idea of endicting you on this absurd charge. Nobody believes Sheppard Lee has been murdered by you, nor, indeed, by any one else. No, poor devil! the general opinion now is, that he has taken himself off, to get clear of duns and sheriffs; and as for the bloody shoe and hat, why that's a common way of turning pursuers off the scent, by throwing dust in their eyes. The charge will be abandoned, sir; you will be liberated, and may, if you like such amusement, prosecute your captors by the dozen for assault and battery. Farewell, Mr. Higginson, – that is, Mr. Lee; fortune smiles upon you at last; and you are a happy, – a wonderful man, sir. – Farewell!"

The attorney then left me; and so much diverted was he by my adventure, that I could hear him indulge peal after peal of mirth, until he had got out of the prison.

Now it may be supposed that my story, from its reasonableness, carried conviction to the attorney's mind; and so I was persuaded. But I reckoned without my host; the hypocritical gentleman did not believe a word of it, however much he pretended to do so. But in this he was like the rest of the fraternity: I never, indeed, knew a lawyer to believe any thing unless he was paid for it; and I forgot to present my gentleman a fee. My story, therefore, not being paid for, or proved according to law, only convinced this skeptical person that I – "the unfortunate Higginson," as he called me – had suddenly lost my senses, and gone staring mad; and in consequence, disregarding all his promises of secrecy, he ran over the whole village, diverting every one he could lay hands on with an account of "the poor squire's hallucination," as he termed it – that is to say, his conceit that his body was now inhabited by the soul of Sheppard Lee.

But to give a certain personage his due, or one of that personage's representatives, I must confess that Darling, who was at bottom a good-natured fellow, recollected one part of his promise, and took measures to effect my discharge from prison; which was no very difficult matter, people being now pretty well aware of the folly of the charge they had brought against me, and the absurdity of the evidence designed to support it. The opinion was already entertained that poor Sheppard Lee, instead of being murdered, had taken himself out of the neighbourhood to avoid his creditors, having left his hat and shoe in the swamp only as blinds to those who might be most anxious to secure his person; and pursuers had already left the village to discover his place of concealment.

CHAPTER III.

SHEPPARD LEE IS VISITED BY NEW FRIENDS, RELEASED FROM PRISON, AND CARRIED TO HIS NEW PLACE OF ABODE

Another service that the attorney did me, according to the jailer, through whom I discovered all these things, was to despatch a messenger to my friends in Philadelphia, with the news of my insanity and imprisonment, and a request that they should send proper persons to take charge of me after being liberated: and I was roused the following morning by the appearance of some half a dozen kinsmen who had come to the village for that purpose, fully persuaded that they should find me a raging lunatic.

But the jailer's information had set me to reflecting upon my difficulties, all of which, as I clearly perceived, were owing to my indiscretion in attempting to keep up the character of Sheppard Lee while in another man's body. I saw the necessity I was now placed under to be Mr. John H. Higginson, and nobody else, for the future; and so I resolved to be – for I did not like the idea of being clapped into a mad-house by my new friends.

Yet they took me so much by surprise that I was guilty of some few inconsistencies; for it was not immediately that I felt myself at case in my new character.

The truth is, my situation was peculiar and embarrassing. With the body of Mr. Higginson, I had acquired all his distinctive peculiarities, as I mentioned before. But many of these were in a manner stupified within me, and required to be renewed, or resuscitated, by processes of association. I was like a man who has been roused from a lethargy, which had destroyed or obscured his memory, though not his instincts; and who betrays complete ignorance of past events, and forgetfulness of old friends, until some accidental circumstance – a casual reference to some past event, the tone of a voice, or other such cause – recalls him, it may be, to sudden and complete, though usually imperfect, consciousness.

Thus, when I was roused up in the morning, and beheld a good-looking personage of about my own years shaking me by the shoulder, I regarded him only as some impertinent stranger intruding upon my privacy, saluted him with divers epithets expressive of rage and indignation, and concluded by asking him "who the devil he was?"

"What! I?" said he, with the most doleful visage in the world; "why, Timothy – that is, Tim Doolittle, your brother-in-law – Don't you know me?"

And "Don't you know me? and me? and me? your cousin, Tom This, and your old friend, Dick That?" cried they all, with horrible long faces; the oddity of which after a while set me a laughing, especially when I came to recollect them all, as I did by-and-by when they had pronounced their names; for at each name it seemed to me as if a film fell from my eyes, and some spirit within awakened me to a vague recollection of the person to whom it belonged. In a word, I became aware that I was surrounded by a knot of my oldest and best friends, all of them excellent jolly dogs and good fellows, who were come to escort me home, and assured me that I was no longer a prisoner.

I shook them all by the hand, and contrasting for a moment in my mind the melancholy condition in which I had lived as Sheppard Lee, with my present glorious state, surrounded by friends, and conscious of possessing lands, houses, stocks, Schuylkill coal-mines, and the Lord knows what other goods beside, I fell into a rapture, danced about my cell, and hugged every person present, as well as the jailer, and my old friend Darling, the attorney, who happened at that moment to enter.

"Bravo!" said Tim Doolittle; "now you're the true Jack Higginson again; and I don't believe you are mad a bit."

"Mad!" said I, thinking it needful to explain away that imputation, "No, and I never was. I tumbled over an old rotten fence, and hurt my head, which was, in consequence, in a whiz all day yesterday; but now it is clear enough. I think I said some silly things about one thing and another; but that's neither here nor there."

"Ah!" said Tim Doolittle, touching his forehead and looking as grave as a bullfrog, "it's well it's no worse; for I always thought you had a turn for apoplexy. But I'm glad you are so well; it will be good news for poor Margaret."

"Margaret! who the deuse is she?" said I, feeling quite strange at the name.

"Why, my poor sister, your wife, to be sure," said he.

My wife!!! I recollected that I had a wife; but the recollection made me feel, I knew not exactly why, as if I had been suddenly soused into cold water. It was a highly uncomfortable idea, and accordingly I hastened to get rid of it.

"Let us leave this confounded place," I said; and we left the prison.

The prospect of a fine sunshiny day infused animation into my mind, which was vastly increased when I stepped into a splendid new barouche, with a pair of bay horses worth a thousand dollars – for so much Tim gave me to understand I– that is to say, my prototype – had given for them scarce a month before – the whole establishment being therefore my own! "What a happy man am I! Ah! poor miserable Sheppard Lee! Farewell now to poverty! farewell to discontent!"

Such were my secret ejaculations as we set out in my splendid barouche, followed by a train of gigs and carriages that contained my friends. I esteemed myself the happiest man in the world; and I gave my last sigh to the memory of Sheppard Lee.

What a glorious time we had of it on our way to Philadelphia! I found myself the richest man in the company – my pocketbook was full of bank-notes – and I resolved to give my friends a blow-out. We stopped at a certain village, and at a certain hotel therein, the master of which prepares the best dinners, and has the best butt of genuine Madeira, in all New-Jersey. "Let us rest and rejoice," I said, "and we will drive into town after nightfall."

My friends agreed; we ate, drank, and were merry; and it was not until after sunrise the next morning that we found ourselves in Philadelphia, and in my – yes, excellent reader – in my house in Chestnut-street, south side, two doors from the corner of – But it is needless to be particular. The house is yet standing, in a highly aristocratic neighbourhood, and is not yet converted into a dry-goods shop.

I reached my house: I – But before I relate what befell me in that splendid pile of red bricks, which, like its neighbours, seems to be blushing all the year round at its naked simplicity, I must say a few words more of Sheppard Lee.

CHAPTER IV.

CONTAINING ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ADVANTAGES OF DYING AN UNUSUAL DEATH, IN TIMES OF HIGH POLITICAL EXCITEMENT

I never felt the slightest inclination to revisit the scenes of my late trouble and discontent; but the newspapers, which are the lights of the age, though occasionally somewhat smoky, acquainted me with the events that followed after my marvellous disappearance. "What has become of Sheppard Lee?" was the cry, after his creditors had sought for him in vain during a space of two weeks and more. No vestige of him was discovered, not the slightest clew to indicate his fate, beyond those already brought to light in the Owl-roost. It was impossible he could have fled without leaving some traces; and none were found. "And why should he fly?" men at last began to ask. He was in debt, it was true; but what could he gain by absconding, since his little property was necessarily left behind him?

In a word, the improbabilities of his having voluntarily fled were so great, that men began to recur to their original idea of his having been murdered. But why was he murdered? and by whom? Some few began to revive the charges against me – that is to say, against John H. Higginson; but brighter ideas were struck out, and John H. Higginson was forgotten. An old friend of mine, who never cared a fig for me, but who was ambitious to create a tumult, and become the leader of a party, got up in a public place, and recounted the history of William Morgan, and his mysterious abduction and murder by the masons of the empire state. A terrible agitation at once seized his listeners. "Poor, dear, unfortunate Sheppard Lee!" they cried; "the masons have Morganized him, for apostatizing from his oaths, and revealing the secrets of the society! Yes, he has been Morganized!" And, giving way to their rage, they were on the point of tarring and feathering all the free-masons they could lay their hands on; when, presto– as the conjurers say, they suddenly made discovery that the masons could not have murdered me for divulging secrets, inasmuch as I had never known them, nor for apostatizing, as I had never been a mason in my life.

But the tumult was not allowed to subside. My old friends of the administration, finding that their strength was dwindling away in the country, and dreading the event of the coming election, unless a reaction could be got up in their favour, suddenly burst into a fury, swore that I had been made away with by the opposition, on account of my remarkable zeal, energy, and success, as an electioneerer and political missionary; and taking my old hat and shoe, and carrying them round the village in solemn procession, they stopped in the market-place, where one of their chief orators – my faithful friend, the new postmaster – delivered a sort of funeral address, in which he compared the opponents of the administration to cut-throats and cannibals, pronounced them the enemies of liberty, swore that no honest patriot was safe among them, and declared – his declaration being illustrated by shouts, and groans, and grim faces – "that I had perished, the victim of a murderous opposition!"

But, as if that was not immortality enough for one of my humble pretensions, the opposition instantly turned the tables upon their accusers. Witnesses stepped forward to prove that, on the night when I was seen for the last time, I had, in the bar-room of the first hotel in the village, publicly denounced the hurrah party, as being based upon deception and fraud, and avowed my determination not only instantly to leave it, but to go my death thenceforth in opposition. "See the bloody vindictiveness and malice of the hurrah party!" they cried; "before the sun rose upon this unfortunate and honest man – honest, because he deserted his party the moment his eyes were opened to its corruption – he was a living man no longer. The bravoes of this horrible gang of mid-night murderers, who have trampled on our rights and liberties, and now trample on our lives, met the unlucky patriot as he returned to his lowly cot, and – just Heavens! – where was he now, save in his bloody and untimely grave? he, the humble, the unoffending, the honest, the universally-esteemed, the widely-beloved, the patriotic Sheppard Lee! – waylaid and ambushed! killed, slain, murdered, massacred! the victim of a despotic and vindictive cabal, – the martyr of liberty, the – " In short, the noblest, honestest, dearest, best, and most ill-used creature that ever dabbled in the puddle of politics. One might suppose that this outcry of the antis, backed as it was by the full proof of my change of politics, would have stopped the mouths of the hurrah-boys. But it did no such thing; they only raved the louder. As for the proof of my backsliding, they treated that with contempt; proofs being as little regarded in politics as arguments. They accused the antis more zealously than before; and the antis recriminated with equal enthusiasm.

There were some men in the village who strove to appease the ferment, by directing suspicion upon the German doctor, and divers other personages, just as the humour of suspicion seized them, furiously accusing these suspected individuals of having had some hand in the catastrophe. But the German doctor and the other persons accused had nothing to do with politics, and were therefore suffered to go their ways. It is a great protection to one's reputation to keep clear of politics. The guilt of my murder was left to be borne by the hurrah-boys and the antis, one party or the other; but as the evidence was equally strong against either party, and just as strong against any one individual of either party as another, it resulted that I was murdered not only by both parties, but by every man of both parties; – a peculiarity in my history that proved me to have possessed, though I never dreamed it before, a vaster number both of energetic friends and bloodthirsty enemies (each man being both friend and enemy) than any other man in the whole world.