CHAPTER I.

THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF ABRAM SKINNER, THE SHAVER.

My swoon was, I believe, of no great duration, and I awoke from it a new man, as well as an old one.

Yes, I was changed, and with a vengeance; and into such a miserable creature, that had I justly conceived what I was to become in entering old Goldfist's body, I doubt whether even the extremity in which I was placed would have forced me upon the transformation. I forgot that the title to Skinner's wealth was saddled with the conditions of age, infirmity, and a thousand others equally disagreeable. But I soon made the discovery, though it was some time before I discovered all.

The first inconvenience of the transformation which I felt was a thousand aches in my bones, a great disturbance in my inner man, and a general sense of feebleness and impotency, highly vexatious and tormenting. My eyesight was bad, my hearing indistinct, and, indeed, all my senses were more or less confused; my hand trembled when I lifted it to my face, my voice quavered while I spoke, and every effort to breath seemed to fill my lungs with coal-gas and ashes. In a word, I was a man of sixty years or more, with a constitution just breaking up, if not already broken.

My resuscitation produced a hubbub of no ordinary character. My sons--for, wonderful to be said, I _had_ sons, and I soon felt as if they were in reality mine--were confounded, and so, doubtless, was Barbara, the housekeeper; to the latter of whom it was perhaps owing that I ever recovered from my swoon; for my two boys, overcome with horror and despair, rushed out of the house, and it was a week before I saw their faces again.

What added to the confusion was the discovery of my late body, lying on the floor, no one being at all able to account for its appearance. To this day, indeed, the thing remains a mystery among tailors and shop-keepers. It was pretty generally considered that the unfortunate I. D. Dawkins met his death by dunning, and I believe the coroner's jury returned a verdict accordingly; but how he made his way into the chamber of the usurer to give up the ghost, just at the moment the other was resuming it, was never known. Some supposed he had visited the old gentleman to borrow money, and had knocked his head against the bedpost in despair upon finding the lender past lending. Speculation was alive upon the subject for two full days, and was then buried in the young gentleman's grave, along with his body and his memory; for the memory of a dandy passeth away, unless recorded on the books of his tailor.

I was confined to my bed a week, suffering with a complication of disorders; for, though I possessed the power to reanimate a corpse, I had none to conjure away its diseases. In this period I had leisure to exchange all previous characteristics that might have clung to me, for those that more properly belonged to my new casing; and when I rose from my bed the transformation was in every particular complete. My soul had lost its identity; it had taken its shape from the mould it occupied; it was the counterpart of the soul of Abram Skinner.

My last act as I. D. Dawkins was to chuckle over the prospect of spending Abram Skinner's money; my first as Abram Skinner was to take care it should be spent neither by myself nor by any one else. The desire to enjoy myself had vanished; the thoughts of fine clothes, horses and carriages, and so on, entered my mind no more. The only idea that possessed me was, "What am I worth? how much more can I make myself worth?" and the first thing I did, when I could sit in a chair, was to ransack a certain iron chest that stood under my bed, containing my prototype's books of accounts, over which I gloated with the mingled anxiety and delight that had doubtless distinguished the studies of the true Goldfist.

I found myself rich beyond all my previously-formed expectations; and, glum and rigid as were now all my feelings, I think I should have danced around my chamber for joy, had not the first flourish of a leg introduced me to the pangs of rheumatism. I indulged my rapture, therefore, in a soberer way; and while awaiting the period of emancipation from my chamber, arranged a thousand plans for increasing my wealth.

My sons had deserted me, but I was not left entirely to solitude. I received divers visits from old fellows like myself, who, after growling out a variety of wonder and congratulation at my return to life, proceeded to counsel with me on subjects, the discussion of which speedily brought me to the knowledge of my new condition, where it had not been supplied by the iron chest and my instincts.

These persons formed a confraternity, of which it seems I, or rather my prototype, Abram Skinner, was a prominent member; and the objects of the association were to secure to each member the fruits of his ambition with as little danger and trouble as possible. We were a knot of what the censorious call stock-gamblers; and by working in common, and playing into each other's hands, without taking pains to acknowledge any connexion, we were pretty sure of our game.

It is astonishing how soon I entered into the spirit of my new character. On previous occasions, the adaption of soul to body was a work of time; but here it seemed the work of but a few hours. The cause was, however, simple; Abram Skinner was possessed of but one, or, at most, two characteristics, and with these I easily became familiar. The love of money was the ruling passion; and this, I honestly confess, came to me so naturally, that I was not conscious, while giving up my whole soul to it, of any change of character whatever. Before I left the house I was as busy shaving notes, receiving bonds, mortgages, and pledges (for Abram Skinner was a gambler of all work), and devising schemes for "cornering" and blowing high and low in the stock-market, as if I had been born to the business.

I found on my books the records of all imaginable operations, from the _mem_. of a thousand shares of the Moonlight Manufacturing Company, bought of A. B. on time, to the entry of "Mrs. C. D.'s silver spoons and pitcher, _purchased_" (Abram Skinner scorned all dealing on _pawns_, that being illegal to the unlicensed) "at such a sum, but redeemable at such another sum, which was generally at fifty per cent. advance, on a certain day, or--forfeit." Here was a memorandum of a note bought at half its value, there of a mortgage taken in form of a purchase; and in other places a thousand other forfeitures, such as marked the extent and universality of business, the skill, the forethought, and the success of Abram Skinner the shaver.

I have my compunctions when I think of the life I led that winter; for so long did I continue the life of a money-maker. But I entreat the reader to remember that I had got into Abram Skinner's body, and that the burden of my acts should be therefore laid upon his shoulders. A swearing gentleman once borrowed a Quaker's great-coat, with a promise not to dishonour it by any profanity while it was on his back; upon returning it to his friend, he was demanded if he had kept his promise. "Yes," said the man of interjections, with one of the most emphatic; "but it has kept me lying all the time." I never heard anybody doubt that the lying was the fault of the coat; and, in like manner, I hope that the reader will not hesitate to attribute all my actions, while in Abram Skinner's body, to Abram Skinner's body itself.

Besides my friends of the honest fraternity, I had other visiters before my infirmities permitted me to leave the house; and the dealings I had with them, besides enabling me to get my hand in, as the saying is, would afford the reader, if described, some insight into the excellences of my new character.

But I cannot pause over such pictures in detail. The rulers then over us, to please the poor, had got up a pressure in the money-market, whereby the poor were, as is usual in such cases, put under contribution by the rich. Such a pressure, however, may be said to please everybody, though it puts everybody in a passion. To the rich, who have money to lend, it is as great a season of jubilee as a rain-storm to ducks, or a high wind to the bristly herd in an apple-orchard, and they are in a passion because they fear it will be soon over; to the poor, who borrow their money at a higher rate than usual, it affords an opportunity to rail at the aristocracy, and the grinders of the poor; which is a pleasing recreation after a bad dinner. At such times Abram Skinner was a happy man, for he made money without the trouble of stirring from his house: every knock at the door was the signal of a god-send; every jerk at the bell was as the jingle of coming dollars and cents.