ENTOMBED ALIVE.

Oh, what a fearful dream! Thank God I woke !
I thought I was within a noisome tomb immured,
Where all was dark; no sound the silence broke—
Ah, who can tell the terrors I endured!

Too horror-struck to even form a prayer,

I could but writhe upon the ground and scream; Curse my hard fate, give way to wild despair,

And, wake at length-to find it all a dream.

I'll call my maid and bid her strike a light,
For even now I feel oppressed with fear;
How cold I am-I'll sleep no more to night;

I shall feel better when the girl is here.

She does not come!

Wherefore this awful gloom?

Why does my heart thus beat with unknown dread? How came I hither? This is not my room, It seems but little larger than my bed.

This is not my couch-'tis clammy ground! head a roof of stone I feel

Above my

Stone, too, on either side-stone all around!

I stagger up, and reach an orifice,

To which I glue my hot and blood-shot eyes.

I never knew how beautiful it was till now,
To watch the rising sun his radiance throw
O'er hill and dale, on every bush and bough-
Tinging all nature with a golden glow.

Help! Hither! Save me! Come and set me free!
My piercing screams attract the passers by ;-
Oh! are you men? Can you look on and see
A girl-a woman- -shut up thus to die?

'Tis not the dread of death my heart appalls; It is this lingering, living death I fear,Shut up alive, to die within these walls,

Where every moment lengthens to a year.

Break down these walls! What if my crime was great, Say, could it merit such a death as this!

Kill me at once—if death must be my fate

The hand that strikes the welcome blow, I'll kiss!

Help, I implore you! 'Tis a woman calls!

I'm young and fair! Oh, save me from this death! Oh, snatch me from this tomb, break down these wallsAnd I will bless you with my latest breath!

Help! Give me but my liberty-my life!

Save me from death-from this my living grave! Whoever saves me, I will be his wife

His mistress-leman-minion-menial-slave!

Poor though he be, his poverty I'll share;
The whole devotion of a life I'll give!
I'll toil for him-his troubles I will bear-
I'll beg for him-so he but bids me live!

Help! I am stifling! Oh! for the fresh

pure

To feel it on my hot and fevered cheeks! Help! Save me! or my very hands shall tear

air!

These cursed walls! I'll rend them with my shrieks!

Water! One drop, to quench my maddening thirst!
My tongue is swollen-my throat is parched and dry!
Can this be death ?-Father, you've done your worst,
But oh! 'twas hard to doom me thus to die!

The circumstances on which the foregoing verses are founded took place at Pekin about twenty-five years ago. The facts were these:-Chun-tu-lao-yeh, well-known censor, who lived near the Tung-ssu-pai-lou,

a

, had a daughter, aged twenty-one, who fell in love with one of the servants, a carter, and eventually eloped with him. They were captured by the patrol, when some distance from Peking, and brought back prisoners. The father caused the man to be banished, and had his daughter built in a tomb in the family cemetery, where she was left to die.

The cemetery where she was entombed alive is distant from Peking about twenty li, in a southerly direction from the Tung-chih-mên. The tomb was built of brick and plastered over with mud, with a small square hole in front of it, so that she was visible to those who wished to see her. The cemetery was open, having no walls round it, but having a man to look after it. Numbers of persons visited the tomb out of curiosity, and saw the girl through the hole, but no one attempted to rescue her, although entreated to do so by her in the most heart-rending language.

My informant both saw and heard the girl himself, and he describes her entreaties and cries of despair as awful in the extreme. She died on the fourth day of her incarceration, some say from poison, administered in water, which she drank ravenously, as her continual screaming must have parched her throat. Many of the lookers on entreated the man in charge to save her, but he dared not do it, for fear of the consequences to himself.

That such horrible barbarity is by no means extinct among the Chinese will be obvious to all who have read or will read the description in the North-China Daily News of the 20th May 1874, of a son having been buried alive for the murder of his father.

The author of the following verses supposes the victim to awake during the darkness of the night, in her living tomb, from a fearful dream that she has been buried

alive. At first her sense of relief is intense at finding that she has only been dreaming. But by-and-bye she realises that she is indeed entombed, and, as day dawns, she is able to see through the hole the people passing by. These she attracts by her shrieks, and tries to influence by her pathetic appeals; but in vain! Delirium and death darkly close the scene.