A Journey from This World to the Next

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BOOK I



CHAPTER I

The author dies, meets with Mercury, and is by him conducted
to the stage which sets out for the other world.

On the first day of December 1741 [1] I departed this life at my
lodgings in Cheapside. My body had been some time dead before I was at
liberty to quit it, lest it should by any accident return to life: this
is an injunction imposed on all souls by the eternal law of fate, to
prevent the inconveniences which would follow. As soon as the destined
period was expired (being no longer than till the body is become
perfectly cold and stiff) I began to move; but found myself under a
difficulty of making my escape, for the mouth or door was shut, so that
it was impossible for me to go out at it; and the windows, vulgarly
called the eyes, were so closely pulled down by the fingers of a nurse,
that I could by no means open them. At last I perceived a beam of light
glimmering at the top of the house (for such I may call the body I had
been inclosed in), whither ascending, I gently let myself down through a
kind of chimney, and issued out at the nostrils.