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

[figure description] Page 257.[end figure description]

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

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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.

[figure description] Page 259.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 260.[end figure description]

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

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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-strom to ducks, or a high wind to
the bristly herd in an apple-orchard, and they are

p016-271 [figure description] Page 262.[end figure description]

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.