Read Online Not Quite Dead by John MacLachlan Gray - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John MacLachlan Gray
Ads: Link
cemetery, it was generally thought that the deceased slept in their graves there for hardly twenty-four hours before they lay stretched out on a dissecting table at Washington College. Vile speculations grew from there, including the rumor that citizens had been kidnapped live for dissection, and other atrocities as well.
To make things worse, a feature article in the Baltimore Clipper by a professional alarmist named Tibbs (accompanying an advertisement for “safety coffins”), advanced the myth that many corpses were buried who were not really dead. One story had it that two grave robbers had unearthed a female cadaver, and as soon as the coffin was open she began to scream. (Some versions of the tale claimed that she had eaten her fingers.)
Of course there was also a perfectly rational basis for the public antipathy regarding Washington College Hospital—namely, the abysmal cure rate; a tendency for patients to arrive with one malady, stay because of another, and die because they contracted a third. Let it suffice to note that, for a variety of reasons, an institution founded as a wellspring of public health had become an object of terror, and seldom would a person willingly go near it once the sun went down.
Given the almost total lack of visitors, the atmosphere in the hospital at night resembled that of a fire station between alarms. Any sense of tasks being done in the normal way disappeared. Staff who worked a second job during the day took naps. Others formed informal clubs, discussing books and playing cribbage and other games in the kitchen and back rooms while awaiting the ambulance bell.
As for the patients on the wards in their fevered slumber, life ground to a standstill at night, with only the ticking of a clock at the foot of the ward to punctuate the empty hours. The halls and stairways took on an atmosphere of still suspension, with only the faint odor of camphor and infection to distinguish it from an enormous crypt, an empty castle, an architectural ghost.
Though it was by no miracle that we carried out our highly incriminating activities, at the time it felt as though we operated under a spell.
CHAPTER EIGHT
----
Philadelphia
T ext of a speech delivered to the Irish-American Literary League, sponsored by the Society for United Irishwomen, Philadelphia:
To appreciate the depth of the imperial conquest of America, let us visit a bookstand near the Marketplace, and let us peruse the titles on display.
How speaks the voice of freedom in the New World? What new American ethic, what American vision of democracy has found expression on the pages of your novels, poetry, and periodicals?
Ah. I see Vanity Fair is popular this year: Mr. Thackery’s spiteful vilification of ambition—especially in an ambitious woman.
And in advance of his much-anticipated tour of America, I see that our bookstand is well stocked with the works of the author Charles Dickens, and his universe of contented servants and saintly wives. Whose poor bewail their starvation—but not their poverty. Whose servants resent their mistreatment—but not their servitude. Whose villains are bad schoolmasters—not the rulers of the country. And when the well born do go bad, which is seldom, it is because they are corrupted by persons of lesser rank. And of course the worst that can befall a woman is that she might lose her virtue—not that she might be worked to death.
With the spirit of America so infected by submission to imperial authority, do we wonder that Mr. Washington Irving’s headless horseman is a Hessian—a European ghost haunting America? Do we wonder that hardly a single tale by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe takes place in the land in which he lives? What do you expect, in a country whose vice-president, Colonel Aaron Burr, who had fought in the Revolution, attempted to evade a charge of murder by claiming that he was a British subject?
With the brains of America hostage to Europe, will not the body follow?
According to the Tain
To make things worse, a feature article in the Baltimore Clipper by a professional alarmist named Tibbs (accompanying an advertisement for “safety coffins”), advanced the myth that many corpses were buried who were not really dead. One story had it that two grave robbers had unearthed a female cadaver, and as soon as the coffin was open she began to scream. (Some versions of the tale claimed that she had eaten her fingers.)
Of course there was also a perfectly rational basis for the public antipathy regarding Washington College Hospital—namely, the abysmal cure rate; a tendency for patients to arrive with one malady, stay because of another, and die because they contracted a third. Let it suffice to note that, for a variety of reasons, an institution founded as a wellspring of public health had become an object of terror, and seldom would a person willingly go near it once the sun went down.
Given the almost total lack of visitors, the atmosphere in the hospital at night resembled that of a fire station between alarms. Any sense of tasks being done in the normal way disappeared. Staff who worked a second job during the day took naps. Others formed informal clubs, discussing books and playing cribbage and other games in the kitchen and back rooms while awaiting the ambulance bell.
As for the patients on the wards in their fevered slumber, life ground to a standstill at night, with only the ticking of a clock at the foot of the ward to punctuate the empty hours. The halls and stairways took on an atmosphere of still suspension, with only the faint odor of camphor and infection to distinguish it from an enormous crypt, an empty castle, an architectural ghost.
Though it was by no miracle that we carried out our highly incriminating activities, at the time it felt as though we operated under a spell.
CHAPTER EIGHT
----
Philadelphia
T ext of a speech delivered to the Irish-American Literary League, sponsored by the Society for United Irishwomen, Philadelphia:
To appreciate the depth of the imperial conquest of America, let us visit a bookstand near the Marketplace, and let us peruse the titles on display.
How speaks the voice of freedom in the New World? What new American ethic, what American vision of democracy has found expression on the pages of your novels, poetry, and periodicals?
Ah. I see Vanity Fair is popular this year: Mr. Thackery’s spiteful vilification of ambition—especially in an ambitious woman.
And in advance of his much-anticipated tour of America, I see that our bookstand is well stocked with the works of the author Charles Dickens, and his universe of contented servants and saintly wives. Whose poor bewail their starvation—but not their poverty. Whose servants resent their mistreatment—but not their servitude. Whose villains are bad schoolmasters—not the rulers of the country. And when the well born do go bad, which is seldom, it is because they are corrupted by persons of lesser rank. And of course the worst that can befall a woman is that she might lose her virtue—not that she might be worked to death.
With the spirit of America so infected by submission to imperial authority, do we wonder that Mr. Washington Irving’s headless horseman is a Hessian—a European ghost haunting America? Do we wonder that hardly a single tale by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe takes place in the land in which he lives? What do you expect, in a country whose vice-president, Colonel Aaron Burr, who had fought in the Revolution, attempted to evade a charge of murder by claiming that he was a British subject?
With the brains of America hostage to Europe, will not the body follow?
According to the Tain
Similar Books
