THE INDIGNANT CORPSE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1174, 26 August 1885, Page 3

THE INDIGNANT CORPSE.

I forget exactly the year, but I think it must have been in 1876, that the following adventure happened to me: —

I had appointed the inquest at halfpast twelve, and was at the place punctually at a quarter to three. I gathered that the body on whom, for the sake of a ridiculously small salary, I was to sit, was that of a drowned man, aud the witnesses deposed that he had left a public house late one night very much the worse for drink. The next morning he had been picked up quite dead by the river. There seemed no doubt or difficulty about the case. Witness, who knew the deceased, testified to his habitual insobriety, I was just in the middle of summing up to the jury, when the door opened, and a swollen, soddenfaced man, with shabby, bedraggled clothes, entered the room. "You have no business here, sir," said I. And the man smiled curiously " Oh ! I have no business here, haven't I ? Oh, no ! Ain't this a crowner's quest?" " It's an inquest, conducted by one of Her Majesty's servants entitled a coroner." " And ain't you sitting on Bill Jones' corpse." II We are endeavoring' to discover by what means the late lamented Mr William Jones left us for another, and we trust better, world." " So. And you find that Bill was blind drunk on the night of the | smash ?" " We find that on the evening of the ever to be regretted accident, the lamented William Jones had indulged in alcoholic stimulants with a zest over which prudence had apparently no control." " And did a spotfcy-faeed beast, with ft mug like an intoxicated hyaena's, say that Bill Jones was always blind and speechless ?" "A witness suffering from some cutaneous disorder, who certainly possessed prominent front teeth, gave it as his opinion that the late Mr William Jones was often more inebriated than painfully sober." " And did a fat old woman, with the figure of a barge, and did a lank son of a sea-cook tell the same story ?" "A lady evidently endowed with adipose tissue and a gentleman of rather slim build certainly gave similar evidence." \ "And have you said in \y our summing up that he was a howling drunkard ?" " I have suggested to the intelligent gentlemen you see around me that sobriety was not his strongest characteristic." " Ter 'aye 'aye yer ! Then take that, and that, and that !" And, so saying, this stranger hopped up to me and hit me one, two, three, straight in the face, knocking me clean in the fire-place, where I lay till I was pulled out. Then he waltzed round and battered the witnesses, and finally wound up by kicking the foreman downstairs. Then he stood at the door and said — " The next time any of yer wishes to say what's nasty about Bill Jones just take care that Bill Jones is dead. He ain't this time, and what's more, he ain't going to be jußt yet. And I ought to know, /or lam Sill Jones" He had only been in a trance. Since then I have been very careful about saying anything nasty about my corpses until I have been firmly con- ! vinced by the evidence of my eyes and nose that they were not in a position to arise, and annotate my summingsup with uncalled for and brutal remarks of their own.