The duties assigned to me at the rooms of Sir ---- ---- brought me in contact, under cloud of night, with wretches whose character was revolting, and caused me to shudder. Scores of bodies were brought me--valued at from five to twenty guineas each.
Use and wont is everything, and by me at that time they were viewed as coolly and callously as we may the fish that lie on marble slabs in the curer's window.
Weary with a long day's work at the dissecting-room, I had retired to my little lodgings, and thinking sadly over the bright past that could come no more, I felt disposed to ask heaven, upbraidingly, why I had ever been cast under the spell of Gertrude, when I was startled by the unusual sound of carriage-wheels stopping before my humble place. There were steps on the rickety stairs, and to my astonishment the professor entered, and shutting the door, said he wished to speak to me alone, as he had suddenly "an expedition" to suggest to me--one that would require decision and care to carry out, as so many morbid and vulgar rumours of violated graves were abroad, and the suspected, if caught, had but small chance of mercy from the mob.
"But, Sir ---- ----, surely you don't expect me to go on such an errand?" I asked, with an incredulous smile.
"By Jove, but I do!" said he, laughing. "I have frequently done so, when a student here, in many a fetid London burying ground, now closed up or built over; but this is a most particular case--a subject we must positively have for demonstration, and, if possible to skeletonize afterwards."
"At R----, eight miles from town. No 'outrage,' as they call it, has occurred there. The place is unwatched and open. Would go with you myself--but two, you see--should be just in the way. Yesterday an old woman was buried there. Cholera, they say, caused her death; but anything is called cholera now. She was fifty-eight years old, and known well in the neighbourhood for a singular malformation of the spinal column, and I must have that portion of her for my museum; but as the old dame will not be very heavy you may as well bring the whole of her. Young Phosfat, so long my assistant, who has the practice there, has written me all about it. Take a trap and Bob Asher with you--he's game for anything--to-morrow afternoon, and, if you can, manage the matter without fuss. We'll call her an old Dutch woman in the class, say she came pickled in a cask from Holland."