It were an easy matter to multiply such histories as these- but I
forbear- for, indeed, we have no need of such to establish the fact
that premature interments occur. When we reflect how very rarely, from
the nature of the case, we have it in our power to detect them, we
must admit that they may frequently occur without our cognizance.
Scarcely, in truth, is a graveyard ever encroached upon, for any
purpose, to any great extent, that skeletons are not found in postures
which suggest the most fearful of suspicions.
Fearful indeed the suspicion- but more fearful the doom! It may be
asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well
adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress,
as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs-
the stifling fumes from the damp earth- the clinging to the death
garments- the rigid embrace of the narrow house- the blackness of
the absolute Night- the silence like a sea that overwhelms- the unseen
but palpable presence of the Conqueror Worm- these things, with the
thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who
would fly to save us if but informed of our fate, and with
consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed- that our
hopeless portion is that of the really dead- these considerations, I
say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of
appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring
imagination must recoil.
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