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 in the same school, and his English studied from the same grammar. "I tell you what, uncle Barebones," said he, without waiting to be questioned, "we takes no paupers here, except they comes with an order." And so saying, he slapped to the door with an energy that dislodged from the roof of his den a full hundred weight or more of snow, which fell in my face, and had wellnigh smothered me. The case began to look desperate; but the difficulty of finding what I wanted only rendered my wits more active. I resolved to run to one of the medical schools, make my way into its anatomical repositories, and help myself to the best body I could find; for, indeed, I was in such a rage of desire to be released from my present tenement, that I did not design to stand upon trifles. I set out accordingly, with this object in view; but fate willed I should seek my fortune in another quarter.