The Court of Cacus; Or, The Story of Burke and Hare — John Shaqi
The Court of Cacus; Or, The Story of Burke and HareLeighton, Alexander
History
The Court of Cacus; Or, The Story of Burke and Hare
Leighton, Alexander
Body snatching; Burke, William, 1792-1829; Hare, William, 1792?-1870?
bashfulness?--which Burke had betrayed at his prior visit. They
accordingly placed their load at the door of a cellar in the lower part of
the buildings, and mounting to the room where one of them had been before,
encountered the same three young assistants still engaged in their ardent
work.
"Bring it up," was the reply of more than one, when they had heard the
words of the merchants, as they hung fire in their mouths and tongues. Up
soon _it_ was, and drawn out and laid upon the table in the winding-sheet.
Yes, a piece of delicacy that which was soon to be dispensed with as
extravagant and unnecessary. And the covering partially drawn off, there
is that rapid and curious, yet never perfectly composed, scanning of the
eyes of even old students, but with no recoil on the part of the sellers,
who had sat and drank with the old soldier, and heard his stories of
Peninsular battles, and laughed at his jokes. Not the less racy these,
that he thought his companions kind and jolly souls--how far away from
the intention of selling his body for gold he never imagined, for the idea
could not have entered the mind of Suspicion herself, if there be any such
goddess in the mythology of poets. But all such reminiscences, if they
threatened to force an entry into the minds of these men, were quickly
sent back to the limbo of obliviousness by the obdurate mammon.
By and by, and after the exit of one of the students, there came in the
monoculus himself, Knox, and the covering was altogether withdrawn. It
seemed to him a fair mercantable commodity. That is, it was not too old
for any of the valuable tissues,--in the midst of which lay the secrets
these students were so anxious to reveal, not for the purpose of filling
their pockets in after-times, but for the benefit of mankind,--to have
been dissolved or injured. Seven pounds ten shillings is pronounced as the
price of the body of the veteran. A shadow passed over the faces of the
sellers; the sum did not come up to the hopes inspired by the reports
which had oozed out of the earnings of the Merry-Andrews and the "Spunes."
Yet the sum, to these wretched earners of pennies for vagrants' beds and
cobbled shoes, was a _coup_ of mammon sufficient to have made their
hardened hearts clatter upon their ribs, and scare away the last trace of
humanity inspired by the lips of a mother, kept otherwise, and up to this
time, unscathed by the temptations of the devil. But they could not refuse
the sum,--that is, they had not yet hardihood to chaffer; and, the money
being paid, they were on the eve of departing, when they were told that
they would be made welcome again, if they came with an equally good
recommendation. And as they went, they did not forget the shirt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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