Chapter 6 AN INCONVENIENCE OF BEING IN ANOTHER MAN'S BODY, WHEN CALLED UPON TO GIVE EVIDENCE AS TO ONE'S OWN EXIT.

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It may be supposed that the treatment I (for, of a verity, I myself came in for some share of the hard usage that killed the true Zachariah) had received from the base and brutal John Smith, must have cooled my regard for him, if it did not affect my feelings of philanthropy in general. I confess that I did regard that personage with sentiments of disgust and indignation; but, nevertheless, I was very loath to appear against him when summoned (as I was, soon after leaving my sick-bed) to give evidence on the charges preferred against him. These were two in number, and afforded matter for as many separate endictments. In the first-and, verily, I was startled when I heard it-John Smith was charged with the murder of Abram Skinner; in the second, with an assault, with intent to kill, upon myself-that is, my second self, Zachariah Longstraw-and also with robbery.

Now, if the reader will reflect a moment upon the relation in which I stood to these charges, he will allow that the necessity of testifying on them reduced me to a quandary. In the first place, I knew very well that Mr. John Smith, rogue and assassin as he was, had not killed Abram Skinner, but that I had finished that unhappy gentleman myself; and I knew also, in the second, that my admitting this fact would, without doing Mr. John Smith any good, produce a decided inconvenience to myself:-not that there was any fear I should be arraigned for murder, but because nobody would believe me. I remembered how my telling the truth to my friend John Darling, the deputy attorney, in regard to my first transformation, had caused him to believe me mad; and I foresaw that telling the truth on the present occasion would reduce me to the same predicament, and perhaps the Friends' mad-house into the bargain.

There was the same difficulty in relation to the second charge, accompanied by another still greater; for, whereas John Smith was there only accused of assault with intent to kill, he had in reality committed a murder; which if I had affirmed, as I must have done had I affirmed any thing at all, I should have been a living contradiction of my own testimony, and thus considered madder than ever.

The truth is, I was in a dilemma, out of which the truth could not extract me; and the more I thought the matter over, the greater was my embarrassment. A feeling of integrity within me (for Zachariah Longstraw was a man of conscience) urged me to speak the truth; while common sense showed me how much worse than useless truth would be in such an extraordinary conjuncture.

I received a visit from the prosecuting attorney, who very naturally expected a clear and satisfactory account of Mr. John Smith's doings on the night of the murder; and the difficulty I had with him (that is, the attorney) gave me a foretaste of what I was to expect when summoned into the witness's box in court. I remember that the gentleman, after plying me with many questions, to which he got that sort of replies invidiously termed "Quaker answers," flew into a huff, and threatened me with what would be the consequence if I should prove backward in court. And, sure enough, his prediction was verified; for, not giving a straight answer to any one question when the trial came on, I received divers reprimands from the court, and was finally committed for a contempt to prison; where I lay two or three days, until called into court again to give evidence on the second endictment, Mr. John Smith having been found not guilty on the first. This was owing in part, I presume, to the testimony of several surgeons, who deposed that there were no marks of violence upon Abram Skinner's body; although the evidence of the watchman, who had seen him alive through the window, and afterward found John Smith burying his dead body in the same hole with myself, went rather hard with him. I say the acquittal was perhaps owing in part to the testimony of the surgeons; though much of it might be attributed to the marvellous humanity that reigns in the criminal courts of the city of Brotherly Love, to the great benefit and encouragement of that proscribed and injured class of men, namely-murderers.

I made little better work of the second attempt at witnessing; but, as I have matters of much greater importance to demand my attention, and the reader can easily infer what I did and what I did not affirm, I must beg to despatch the second trial by relating that I was packed off a second time to prison for contempt, but that the evidence of the watchman, and my late wounds and bruises, were esteemed sufficient to secure the prisoner's conviction; and accordingly John Smith was convicted, and accommodated with lodgings in the penitentiary for the fourth time.

My own incarceration was of no long duration. My contumacy, as it was called, was considered extraordinary; but it was generally thought to be owing to a mistaken humanity, and a perverted, Quixotic conscientiousness, such as are common enough among persons of the persuasion I then belonged to. This, and perhaps the circumstance that I was yet in feeble health (for the trial, as I said, took place soon after I left my bed), caused me to be treated with lenity; and in a few days I was liberated.

All this, I beg the reader to understand, happened before the reconciliation with my nephew Jonathan, and, of course, before I had well begun my career of philanthropy. Of that career, of some of my deeds of goodness, and of the consequences they produced, I shall now speak.

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