e, now and
then, to premature interments--apart from this consideration, we have
the direct testimony of medical and ordinary experience to prove that a
vast number of such interments have actually taken place. I might refer
at once, if necessary to a hundred well authenticated instances. One of
very remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh
in the memory of some of my readers, occurred, not very long ago, in the
neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense,
and widely-extended excitement. The wife of one of the most respectable
citizens-a lawyer of eminence and a member of Congress--was seized with
a sudden and unaccountable illness, which completely baffled the skill
of her physicians. After much suffering she died, or was supposed to
die. No one suspected, indeed, or had reason to suspect, that she was
not actually dead. She presented all the ordinary appearances of death.
The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline. The lips were of
the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lustreless. There was no warmth.
Pulsation had ceased. For three days the body was preserved unburied,
during which it had acquired a stony rigidity. The funeral, in short,
was hastened, on account of the rapid advance of what was supposed to be
decomposition.

The lady was deposited in her family vault, which, for three subsequent
years, was undisturbed. At the expiration of this term it was opened
for the reception of a sarcophagus;----but, alas! how fearful a shock
awaited the husband, who, personally, threw open the door! As its
portals swung outwardly back, some white-apparelled object fell rattling
within his arms. It was the skeleton of his wife in her yet unmoulded
shroud.

A careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived within
two days after her entombment; that her struggles within the coffin had
caused it to fall from a ledge, or shelf to the floor, where it was so
broken as to permit her escape. A lamp which had been accidentally
left, full of oil, within the tomb, was found empty; it might have been
exhausted, however, by evaporation. On the uttermost of the steps which
led down into the dread chamber was a large fragment of the coffin,
with which, it seemed, that she had endeavored to arrest attention by
striking the iron door. While thus occupied, she probably swooned, or
possibly died, through sheer terror; and, in failing, her shroud became
entangled in so