of bones,
muscles, sinews, arteries, like yourself.

_Then, I presume, you mean to be pleasant.--That expression of yours,
Mr. Correspondent, must be taken somehow in a metaphorical sense----_

In the plainest sense, without trope or figure--Yes, Mr. Editor! this
neck of mine has felt the fatal noose,--these hands have tremblingly
held up the corroborative prayer-book,--these lips have sucked the
moisture of the last consolatory orange,--this tongue has chanted the
doleful cantata which no performer was ever called upon to
repeat,--this face has had the veiling nightcap drawn over it----

But for no crime of mine.--Far be it from me to arraign the justice
of my country, which, though tardy, did at length recognize my
innocence. It is not for me to reflect upon judge or jury, now that
eleven years have elapsed since the erroneous sentence was
pronounced. Men will always be fallible, and perhaps circumstances
did appear at the time a little strong----

Suffice it to say, that after hanging four minutes (as the spectators
were pleased to compute it,--a man that is being strangled, I know
from experience, has altogether a different measure of time from his
friends who are breathing leisurely about him,--I suppose the minutes
lengthen as time approaches eternity, in the same manner as the miles
get longer as you travel northward),--after hanging four minutes,
according to the best calculation of the bystanders, a reprieve came,
and I was CUT DOWN--

Really I am ashamed of deforming your pages with these technical
phrases--if I knew how to express my meaning shorter--

But to proceed.--My first care after I had been brought to myself by
the usual methods (those methods that are so interesting to the
operator and his assistants, who are pretty numerous on such
occasions,--but which no patient was ever desirous of undergoing a
second time for the benefit of science), my first care was to provide
myself with an enormous stock or cravat to hide the place--you
understand me; my next care was to procure a residence as distant as
possible from that part of the country where I had suffered. For that
reason I chose the metropolis, as the place where wounded honor (I
had been told) could lurk with the least danger of exciting inquiry,
and stigmatized innocence had the best chance of hiding her disgrace
in a crowd. I sought out a new circle of acquaintance, and my
circumstances happily enabling me to pursue my fancy in that respe