e
blandest manner of the triumphs of his system.

"There are certain pretenders," he said, "who are at this moment
imposing upon the Government. I regret that it is necessary to repeat
it, but the fact exists that the Government is the prey of harpies. And
in the art of which I am an humble disciple,--that of injecting,
commonly called embalming,--the frauds are most deplorable. There was
Major Montague,--a splendid subject, I assure you,--a subject that any
_Professor_ would have beautifully preserved,--a subject that one
esteems it a favor to obtain,--a subject that I in particular would have
been proud to receive! But what were the circumstances? I do assure you
that a person named Wigwart,--who I have since ascertained to be a
veterinary butcher; in plain language, a doctor of horses and
asses,--imposed upon the relatives of the deceased, obtained the body,
and absolutely ruined it!--absolutely _mangled_ it! I may say,
shamefully disfigured it! He was a man, sir, six feet two,--about your
height, I think! (to a bystander.) About your weight, also! Indeed quite
like you! And allow me to say that, if you should fall into my hands, I
would leave your friends no cause for offence! (Here the bystander
trembled perceptibly, and I thought that the doctor was about to take
his life.) Well! _I_ should have operated thus:--"

Then followed a description of the process, narrated with horrible
circumstantiality. A fluid holding in solution pounded glass and certain
chemicals, was, by the doctor's "system," injected into the
bloodvessels, and the subject at the same time bled at the neck. The
body thus became hard and stony, and would retain its form for years. He
had, by his account, experimented for a lifetime, and said that little
"Willie," the son of President Lincoln, had been so preserved that his
fond parents must have enjoyed his decease.

It seemed to me that the late lamented practitioners, Messrs. Burke and
Hare, were likely to fade into insignificance, beside this new light of
science.

I went upon deck for some moments, and marked the beating of the waves;
the glitter of sea-lights pulsing on the ripples; the sweep of belated
gulls through the creaking rigging; the dark hull of a passing vessel
with a grinning topmast lantern; the vigilant pilot, whose eyes glared
like a fiend's upon the waste of blackness; the foam that the panting
screw threw against the cabin windows; the flap of fishes caught in the
threads