Page:The Pocket Magazine (Volume 1, 1827).djvu/79

 AND THE TAILOR OF LIEBENAU. 71

himself to cabbage the cloth of his customers in ever so small a degree. At about the moment that Benedict was rapping at Clara’s door, another gentleman was knocking at the ate of the prison at Hirschberg. He was in the dress a grey monk, who had risen thus early in the morning to finish the pious work of converting a criminal. Ru- bezahl, having taken the part of the delinquent, thought himself obliged to go’ through with it. He put on an air of penitence which perfectly delighted the old monk, who made him a beautiful sermon to his great edification. The time soon arrived for finishing the ceremonies which justice had prescribed for dismissing the criminal from this troublesome world. He mounted the ladder like a man who had a proper sense of what was ex- ected from him; and being tumed off, kicked and struggled.as if he was suffering all the pains of strangu- lation, He rather over-acted this part of his character, and had nearly got the poor executioner into a scrape; for the rabble, who are great connoisseurs on these oc- easions, proposed to pelt the hangman for putting the culprit to unnecessary torture. As soon as the Gnome heard this, he stretched himself out as stiff as a st, and affected to be dead. The crowd dispersed ; ut when, about an hour afterwards, some curious lads came to look at the criminal, by way of amusin them and himself, Soawas a few a er dierre By the evening a report was spread throughout the city, that the tailor had been so badly hanged that he was still alive; and this was considered ‘so scandalous a business, that in the morning, a deputation from the city authorities came to examine into the circumstances, ‘Ben, ‘to their astonishment, they found, instead of a tailor, a figure made of straw, such as they place in the fields to frighten away the birds from thecorn. The de- putation ordered this figure to be taken down, and as ing better occurred to them to say, they reported at,in the course of the night, the wind had carried the tailor’s body beyond the frontier.