Genre:

Extract, Short Fiction

Publications extracted:

Knight's Quarterly Magazine

Subjects:

Phrenology

    The narrator joins the clergyman, sheriffs, city-marshal and others for breakfast after an execution. The clergyman expressing alarm at the idea of having taken cold through officiating without a wig, the conversation turns to craniology. There are some witty exchanges, but the narrator reports: 'the ordinary beat us all hollow, when it was contended that the disposition and the mind might be known from the exterior of the skull, by remarking that he had now an additional reason to regret having come there without his wig' (152).