Year: 1867

THE ARREST OF A CORPSE.


[From Harper's Weekly.


1t was not an army corpse, but that
of a man who, when in the flesh-or
rather, when life was in his body-was
one of the most distinguished in his
calling.


Pat O'Shaughnesey was his name
3 He was called Pat for short Pats
meter was to wheel coal from raised
platform by the side Of the vessels
which lay at our wharf, over narrow
staging, to some coal bins on the other
side of street which ran down the
wharf This was in Boston, where
they have respectable wharves, and not
the narrow, crowded, rotten concerns
called piers which are the hindrance
to commerce in the city of New York


There may be occupations requiring
more genius than that of wheeling coal,
but when that operation is carried on
over two-foot platform, at height
of twenty feet from a cobble-st
pavement, it not only demands scien-
tific turn of the wheel, which all the
while is out of sight, but it requires a
cool head and firm hand, for it is a
task of danger as well.


Pat used to boast that he "was a
bully wheeler;'' he 'could wheel the
barrow across Niagara falls without
winking. Bother your Blondinr' he
would say. ''Let him put tub of coal
in his barrow, and he'll say what wheel
ing is!'' Unquestionahly Pat was the
best wheeler in the yard and barrin' a
spree which laid him up from work for
a day or two, he pursued this business
without any of those accidents which
befell his less capable or experienced
brethren. But one day an event oc-
Cured against which even Pat
O'Shaughnesey could not provide. The
plank broke just as he was in the mid
die of it, and poor Pats head, after a
rapid descent, inpinged upon the cob
ble-stones, arresting the circulation of
blood. His wheeling days were over.
In fact, Pat was a dead Irishman -
There was great grief in Pats family
over this incident, for he was husband
and the father of numerous children ;
there was greater sorrow, if possible,
among the coal-heavers and the long
shoremen, for, as they asserted, ''He
was the pride Of the trade, and a harder
head and betther fist there wusn't in
the First Ward!'' There was no help
for it, however; Mrs. O'Shaughnesey
must now depend upon her own exer-
tions for living, and the knuckles of
the defunct coal HEAVIER, which had i'm
printed themselves upon many an en-
sanguined countenance, were now stiff
with death. ..a.. .i


But there was one satisfaction left
to his mourning friends: they could
wake him, and wake him they would.
AS Henry, the foreman of the yard, and
| had been friends Of the deceased, we
were honored by an invitation to the
ceremony. Neither of us had ever
witnessed this singular method Of an
attempt to raise the dead; both our
curiosity and respect for the memory
of Pat led us to accept the invitation


1t was a sloppy, slippery, foggy night
as we arrived at the entrance to the
dark alley way where the O'Shaughne-
seys lived. A dismal hole it was, and
as we peered into its obscurity we might
have thought it uninhabited but for the
screams ard yells, wild and inhuman,
which re-echoed in the passage, remind
ing me of the howl of the coyotes on
the prairie feasting upon the carcass of
some dead animal.


"Blacl Alley" the locality where
my companion and l now found our
selves, was of bad Reputation. The
quiet citizen whose business called him
through this neighborhood always gave
it wide berth. Men and women had
been violently killed there. Itwas the
theatre of endless quarrels and fights.
The police never entered Black Alley
except when well armed, and then in
squads. I knew the place very well,
and had passed in the daytime. when
ray ofsunshine rested across the top
most story of the high stone building,
revealing the misery and filth within.
Tonight the place is black indeed
AS we proceeded up the narrow inclos-
ure the light from dirty, patched win
dows family struggled through the mis-
ty darkness. Our feet were entangled
in heaps of garbage, or we stumbled
into pools of mud and water, while the
breath was almost .suffocated with the
noisome smells which filled the air. A
narrow, forbidding cavern was this
with no outlet but that of the way by
which we came.


ga nice hole for the cholera is this p
said Henry, as he halted for moment
upon bit of dry stone.


'sIt looks-what we can see of it
more like one of the entrances to the
internal dominions, ] Ireplied 'sAnd
there are legion of devils just let
loose" I continued, as a chorus of
howls broke forth in one of the houses
near by. a 3.


"This must be the wake" said Hen