enrich the soil from which they draw their sustenance. According to the economical Chinese method, each of these bodies could be converted into five tons of excellent manure; and the whole number would therefore produce just one hundred and fifty millions of tons; of which one hundred and fifty thousand, being their due proportion, would fall to the share of the United States of America, enabling our farmers, in the course of ten or twelve years, to double the value of their lands. This, therefore, would be a highly profitable way of disposing of the mass of mankind. Such a disposition of their bodies would prove especially advantageous among American cultivators in divers districts, as a remedy against bad agriculture, and as the only means of handing down their fields in good order to their descendants. Such a disposition of bodies should be made upon every field of victory, so that dead heroes might be made to repair some of the mischiefs inflicted by live ones. The English farmers, it is well known, made good use of the bones left on the field of Waterloo; and though they would have done much better had they carried off the flesh with them, they did enough to show that war may be reckoned a good as well as an evil, and a great battle looked upon as a public blessing. A similar disposition (to continue the subject) of their mortal flesh might be, with great propriety, required, in this land, of all politicians and office-holders, from the vice-president down to the county collector; who, being all patriots, would doubtless consent to a measure that would make them of some use to their country. As for the president, we would have him reserved for a nobler purpose; we would have him boiled down to soap, according to the plan recommended by the French chymists, to be used by his successor in scouring the constitution and the minds of the people.

In this manner, I repeat, the great bulk of human bodies could be profitably appropriated; but other methods should be taken with particular classes of men, who might claim a more distinguished and canonical disposition of their bodies. The rich and tender would esteem it a cruelty to be disposed of in the same way with the multitude. I would advise, therefore, that their bodies should be converted into adipocire, or spermaceti, to be made into candles, to be burnt at the tops of the lamp-posts; whereby those who never shone in life might scintillate as the lights of the public for a week or two after. Their bones might be made into rings and whistles, for infant democrats to cut their teeth on.

The French and Italian philosophers, as I have learned from the newspapers, have made sundry strange, and, as I think, useful discoveries, in relation to the practicability of converting the human body into different mineral substances. One man changes his neighbour's bones into fine glass; a second turns the blood into iron; while a third, more successful still, transforms the whole body into stone. If these things be true, and I have no reason to doubt them, seeing that I found them, as I said before, in the newspapers, they offer us new modes of appropriation, applicable to the bodies of other interesting classes. Lovers might thus be converted into jewels, which, although false, could be worn with less fear of losing them than happens with living inamoratos; or, in case of extreme grief on the part of the survivers, into looking-glasses, where the mourners would find a solace in the contemplation of their own features. The second process, namely, the conversion of blood into iron, would be peculiarly applicable in the case of soldiers too distinguished to be cast into corn-fields; and, indeed, nothing could be more natural than that those whose blood we buy with gold, should pay us back our change in iron. The last discovery could be turned to equal profit, and would do away with the necessity of employing statuaries in all cases where their services are now required. But I would confine the process of petrifaction to those in whom Nature had indicated its propriety by beginning the process herself. None could with greater justice claim to have their bodies turned into stone, than those whose hearts were of the same material; and I should propose, accordingly, that such a transformation of bodies should be made only in the case of tyrants, heroes, duns, and critics.

But this subject, though often reflected on, I have had no leisure to digest properly. For which reason, begging the reader's pardon for the digression, I shall now leave it, and resume my story.

CHAPTER VIII.

SHEPPARD LEE'S SEARCH FOR A BODY.—AN UNCOMMON INCIDENT.

I was provoked, I say, to think there were so many millions of dead bodies thrown away every year, for which I, in the greatest of my difficulties, should be none the better. Such was the extremity to which I was reduced, that I should have been content to change conditions with a beggar.

It was a night in February. The day had been uncommonly fine, with a soft southern air puffing through the streets; the frost was oozing from the pavement, and the flags—I beg their pardon, the bricks—were floating in the yellow mud, so that one walked as if upon a foundation of puddings. Such had been the state of things in the day; such also as late as at nine o'clock P. M.

But it was now eleven; the wind had chopped round to the northwest and northeast, and perhaps some half a dozen other points beside, for it seemed to blow in all directions, and the thermometer was galloping downward towards zero. A savage snow-storm had just set in, and with such sharp and piercing gusts of wind, and such fierce rattling of hail, that, had not my mind been in a ferment, I should have hesitated to expose myself to its fury. But I reflected that I was flying from wo and terror; and the hope of diving into some body that might introduce me to a life of sunshine, rendered me insensible to the rigours of the tempest.

Having stumbled about in the snow for a while, I began to inquire of myself whither I was going; and the answer, or rather the want of an answer, somewhat confounded me. Where was I to look for a dead body, at such a time of night? It occurred to me I had better refer to a newspaper, and see what persons had lately died in town and were yet unburied. I stepped accordingly into a barber's shop, that happened to be open, and snatched up an evening paper. The first paragraph I laid my eyes on contained an account of the forgeries of my son, Ralph Skinner. It was headed Unheard-of Depravity, and it blazoned, in italics and capitals, the crime, the unnatural crime of committing frauds in the name of a father.

The shock with which I beheld the fatal publication renewed my horror, and sharpened my desire to end it. I threw down the paper, without consulting the column of obituaries, and ran towards the Hospital, where, it appeared to me, I should certainly find one or more bodies which the doctors had no longer occasion for. But my visit was at a highly unseasonable hour, and the porter, being knocked out of a comfortable nap, got up in an ill humour. "Whose cow's dead now?" I heard him grumble from his lodge—"I wonder people can't break their necks by daylight!"

But my neck was not broken; and he listened to my eager inquiry—"whether there were no dead bodies in the house?"—with rage and indignation.

"I tell you what, mister," said he, "we takes no mad people in here, except they comes the regular way."

And with that he shut the door in my face, leaving me to wonder at his want of civility.

But the air was growing more frigid every moment, and the hour was waxing later and later. I ran to the Alms-house, not doubting, as that was a more democratic establishment, that I should be there received with greater respect. But good-breeding is not a whit more native to a leather shirt than to a silk stocking. My Cerberus here was cut from the same flint as the other; his civility had been learned