After cutting him down, his body, as we have said, was delivered to his
friends, who, having wrapped it in a quilt, conveyed it on a common car
to his own house, where he received the usual ablutions and offices of
death, and was composed upon his own bed into that attitude of the grave
which will never change.

The house was nearly filled with grave and aged people, whose
conversation was low, and impressed with solemnity, that originated from
the painful and melancholy spirit of the event that had that morning
taken place. A deal table was set lengthwise on the floor; on this were
candles, pipes, and plates of cut tobacco. In the usual cases of death
among the poor, the bed on which the corpse is stretched is festooned
with white sheets, borrowed for the occasion from the wealthier
neighbors. Here, however, there was nothing of the kind. The
associations connected with murder were too appalling and terrible
to place the rites required, either for the wake or funeral of the
murderer, within the ordinary claims of humanity for these offices
of civility to which we have alluded. In this instance none of the
neighbors would lend sheets for what they considered an unholy purpose;
the bed, therefore, on which the body lay had nothing to ornament it. A
plain drugget quilt was his only covering, but he did not feel the want
of a better.

It was not the first time I had ever seen a corpse, but it was the
first time I had ever seen that of a murderer. I looked upon it with an
impression which it is difficult, if not impossible, to describe. I felt
my nerves tingle, and my heart palpitate. To a young man, fresh, and
filled with the light-hearted humanity of youth, approximation to such
an object as then lay before me is a singular trial of feeling, and a