rd of the "Crow," who is a hospitable man, finding that my
trunk contained sufficient to indemnify him for any little trouble
he might take in my behalf, sent forthwith for a surgeon of his
acquaintance, and delivered me to his care with a bill and receipt for
ten dollars.

The purchaser took me to his apartments and commenced operations
immediately. Having cut off my ears, however, he discovered signs of
animation. He now rang the bell, and sent for a neighboring apothecary
with whom to consult in the emergency. In case of his suspicions with
regard to my existence proving ultimately correct, he, in the meantime,
made an incision in my stomach, and removed several of my viscera for
private dissection.

The apothecary had an idea that I was actually dead. This idea I
endeavored to confute, kicking and plunging with all my might, and
making the most furious contortions--for the operations of the surgeon
had, in a measure, restored me to the possession of my faculties.
All, however, was attributed to the effects of a new galvanic battery,
wherewith the apothecary, who is really a man of information, performed
several curious experiments, in which, from my personal share in their
fulfillment, I could not help feeling deeply interested. It was a course
of mortification to me, nevertheless, that although I made several
attempts at conversation, my powers of speech were so entirely in
abeyance, that I could not even open my mouth; much less, then, make
reply to some ingenious but fanciful theories of which, under other
circumstances, my minute acquaintance with the Hippocratian pathology
would have afforded me a ready confutation.

Not being able to arrive at a conclusion, the practitioners remanded me
for farther examination. I was taken up into a garret; and the surgeon's
lady having accommodated me with drawers and stockings, the
surgeon himself fastened my hands, and tied up my jaws with a
pocket-handkerchief--then bolted the door on the outside as he hurried
to his dinner, leaving me alone to silence and to meditation.

I now discovered to my extreme delight that I could have spoken had not
my mouth been tied up with the pocket-handkerchief. Consoling myself
with this reflection, I was mentally repeating some passages of the
"Omnipresence of the Deity," as is my custom before resigning myself to
sleep, when two cats, of a greedy and vituperative turn, entering at a
hole in the wall, leaped up with a flourish a la Cat