Amazing Stories/Volume 01/Number 05/The International Electro-Galvanic Undertaking Corporation

by Jacque Morgan

The Scientific Adventures of Mr. Fosdick

By Jacque Morgan

The International Electro-Galvanic Undertaking Corporation

Mr. Fosdick had succeeded in lifting him out of the trough and had balanced him on one foot—a Winged Mercury of bright shining copper.

"Splendid!" he ejaculated and gazed at his handiwork admiringly.

 

Mr. Fosdick Interests an Old Victim in One of His New Inventions

he first two envelopes contained only circulars. But from the third dropped a bright yellow slip of paper, and as Eben Stetzle, loafing in the tinshop during the noon hour, picked it up from the floor and handed it to Mr. Fosdick, he saw that it was a check signed by the Ajax Manufacturing Company and that it called for four hundred and twenty dollars in real money.

"Last month's royalties on my curling iron," carelessly explained the inventor.

He always spoke of the device as a curling-iron, although it was advertised and sold by the manufacturing company as a nut-cracker.

Mr. Stetzle sighed. "Gee, I wish I could get in on some thing like that. Running a chop mill is a mighty slow method of getting rich."

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Dr. Fosdick, who we know is a friend of our readers, after his experiments with the "Seidlitzmobile" and the "Feline Electric Plant" takes a new departure and proposes to electroplate the dead in order to preserve them as beautiful statues for posterity. Although the author of this story is a comical genius, his idea is certainly a beautiful one but he gives it a very funny touch and the reader will find that for sustained interest and pure comedy, it is equal to the preceding stories which we have been fortunate enough to obtain.

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The sight of the check removed the last trace of bitterness that had lingered in Eben’s heart since his unhappy experience with The Feline Light and Power Company.

"I should like to get in on the next good thing you get up," he continued, eyeing the check that protruded from Mr. Fosdick's waistcoat pocket. "But, of course, I'm not going in on any more electrified cats. The very sight of a cat makes me shudder even now."

Mr. Fosdick gazed at his friend pensively. "I have been thinking," he said, "of the organization of a company that will make 'Standard Oil' look like a penny savings bank."

Eben Stetzle drew in his breath with audible inquisitiveness. "What is it? What is it?" he demanded.

Mr. Fosdick smiled blandly. "Yes, what is it?" he mimicked, genially. “You don’t think I’m going to divulge a secret that’s worth millions, do you?”

Eben’s face fell. “I thought you’d let an old friend in—a brother lodge member,” he said wistfully. And at the same time Eben formed his hands into the distress signal of the order.

Mr. Fosdick pondered. His lodge was to him a thing sacred. Every Wednesday night in the hall over Lem Whitley’s grocery store, Mr. Fosdick sat in state; he was the presiding officer, and the thunder of his voice as he read the ritual to the trembling neophytes was a thing that was very dear to him. And Eben had given him the grand hailing sign!

“Brother Stetzle,” he said at last, “I’m going to tell you—and what’s more I’m going to let you in.”

Mr. Stetzle leaned forward and with great enthusiasm gave Mr. Fosdick the grip. “Brother!” he exclaimed.

Picking up his textbook, “Electricity at a Glance,” Mr. Fosdick turned the pages until he came to the following paragraph:

“Flowers and even insects can be preserved indefinitely by powdering them with graphite and then depositing a thin film of copper over them by means of a plating battery.”

“Does that mean anything to you?” His voice was tense with feeling.

Mr. Stetzle read the paragraph and slowly shook his head.

“Who would want to preserve insects indefinitely? I just hate the sight of ’em,” and Eben scratched his back as though the very suggestion brought back unpleasant memories.

Mr. Fosdick smiled tolerantly. “You are deficient in imagination, Eben.” He leaned forward and whispered: “What would you say to a scheme of using the principle for undertaking purposes?”

Mr. Stetzle failed to grasp the significance of the question.

“I don’t know of any insect undertakers—of course there’s fellows in the big cities that make a business of killing———”

“But I mean for men—for human beings!”

Preserving the Dead. A Beautiful Silver Statue

EBEN shook his head hopelessly. “I just can’t quite get you.”

Mr. Fosdick sank back in his chair with almost a feeling of disgust. He surveyed his unimiginative lodge brother for a long minute and then straightening up, outlined his scheme in words of few syllables.

“It’s like this, Eben,” he began. “If insects can be copper-plated, human beings can be copper-plated. And if a human being can be plated he, or she, can be preserved indefinitely—and with absolute fidelity as to face and form. You take the old Egyptian mummies—what are they to-day? Why, just crumbling shells that don’t look like anything. But suppose those bodies had been electroplated? Why, they would simply be statues of their original selves.”

Mr. Stetzle nodded. “I begin to understand now,” he said.

“Listen. We’d simply make every corpse its own monument. Mount the monument on a cheap concrete base and stand it up in the cemetery. No excavating, no coffin, no box—nothing but the monument itself. Think of the saving! The cadavers can be plated not planted, at an expense of three dollars apiece—we can get fifty, or even a hundred. And there are annually over one and a half million deaths a year in this country alone. Suppose we only made a profit of ten dollars apiece. The total is fifteen million for the United States, annually. Add to that the profits on the undertaking of seven million funerals throughout the balance of the civilized world. Can you grasp it? Why, Eben, a hundred thousand a day would be nothing!”

Mr. Stetzle sat as one in a trance. “It’s overpowering,” he gasped.

Mr. Fosdick smiled. “Why, I haven’t begun yet. As a matter of fact the profit per job of The International Electro-Galvanic Undertaking Corporation—that will be the name of the concern—will be more like fifty dollars than ten. And even more. Listen. Only the cheaper grades of corpses will be finished in copper. The majority will be nickel-plated; silver will be used for those of moderate means; and gold for the aristocrats.”

The proprietor of the chop-mill was speechless.

“And just think what a handsome place the new cemeteries will be of a sunny morning. Copper, nickel, silver and gold statues all sprinkled about. Cheerful is no word for it! Why, man, they’d become amusement parks!”

Mr. Fosdick softly drummed his fingers upon the arm of his chair while he allowed the idea to sink in.

“I’ve thought of a splendid new feature to the scheme,” suddenly said Mr. Stetzle. “How would it do to have mounted in the statue somewhere a phonograph with a cylinder of ‘last words,’ or a song or a recitation—you remember how Clem Titus that’s dead and gone now, used to recite every time he got drunk, ‘Goodbye, Jim. Take keer of yourself.’ Well, that’s the idea. By pulling a string the phonograph reels out anything that was characteristic of the deceased. Old man Fisher used to cuss the administration———”

“I think that would be undignified,” interrupted Mr. Fosdick, “a thousand of your confounded phonographs working at full blast—songs, recitations, speeches, and so on! Why, it would be noisier than Coney Island!”

The enthusiasm of the new idea slowly faded from Mr. Stetzle’s face and he subsided.

“Well,” said he, after a silence of some minutes, “when do we try it?”

“As soon as we can get a corpse.”

“Must we wait? There hasn’t been a death in Whiffleville in five years.”

Mr. Fosdick had not thought of that. For a moment his dream was shattered, and then with the resourcefulness of the true inventor he thought of a way to overcome the difficulty.

“No,” said he, “we will not wait. We will try the scheme upon a living person—you.”

Mr. Stetzle paled. “I’d rather not,” he protested weakly. “I’m too fat and wouldn’t look good.”

“The first statue will be you,” declared Mr. Fosdick. “Why, man, it will be an honor!”

“But I don’t want my ears and eyes and nose stopped up with no dodgasted copper-plating,” protested Eben.

Once more Mr. Fosdick’s resourceful brain came to the rescue: “You will only be plated from the neck down.”

There was no escape. Mr. Fosdick was adamant, and it was with great reluctance that Mr. Stetzle finally agreed to submit to the experiment.

"To-morrow," said Mr. Fosdick, "the embalming vat—the plating bath, I should say—will be ready for you."

Mr. Fosdick's Associate to Be Experimented On

The wooden trough, borrowed for the occasion from Jasper Wilcox’s hog-lot, contained a solution of copper sulphate. The telegraph company, through the agency of Hi Scruggs, the local operator, had loaned the batteries; and Moses Galblat had contributed the slab of copper junk to be used for the anode—in consideration of the sum of four dollars and eighteen cents.

Everything was ready and at the quiet word of command from the chief engineer of The International Electro-Galvanic Undertaking Corporation, Mr. Stetzle quickly divested himself of his clothing and assisted Mr. Fosdick, who briskly began to powder the rotund form with graphite.

"Makes me look like a nigger—I—I suppose it will come off all right," remarked Mr. Stetzle dubiously.

"Certainly. It's just a matter of a little soap and water," said the inventor, smiling as he caught a distorted reflection of himself upon the highly polished surface of Mr. Stetzle's stomach. "Sure. No doubt about it."

It was the work of only a few minutes for Mr. Fosdick to pose Mr. Stetzle in the plating bath.

"You will represent the Winged Mercury, one of the finest examples of ancient Greek art," said Mr. Fosdick, arranging the legs and arms as he had seen them in the illustration in the back of a dictionary. "I can make some little wings and solder them to your ankles afterwards."

Mr. Stetzle, thoroughly resigned to submit to anything, made no comment.

"And now," said Mr. Fosdick, "I'll just lock you up in the shop for an hour while I go out and fix the Widow Johnson's doorbell, and put in a window at Sam Horton's, and get Lem Hunter's umbrella what’s busted, and needs mending, and do a few other little odds and ends."

The Object Experimented on—the Unhappy Mr. Stetzle—Has Fallen Asleep During the Process

It was late in the afternoon when Mr. Fosdick returned to the shop. His errands had taken him much longer than he had supposed.

In the trough lay Mr. Stetzle, snoring. The afternoon had been hot and the cooling influence of the plating bath had been more than he could resist. Flies had bothered him at first, and in his endeavors to brush them off he had saturated his face and hair with the copper solution and Mr. Fosdick was somewhat startled to see that it had turned them a dark green.

"Wake up, Eben!" Mr. Fosdick punched the recumbent form with a broom handle. It was like punching a stone; Mr. Stetzle's ribs were incased in a quarter-inch armor of solid copper.

A tweak of the green nose brought better results, and Mr. Stetzle opened his eyes and endeavored to stir. There was not the slightest movement.

It was the work of an hour, perhaps, and Mr. Stetzle had begun to become petulant. But in the end, with the aid of a block and tackle, Mr. Fosdick had succeeded in lifting him out of the trough and had balanced him on one foot—a Winged Mercury of bright, shining copper.

"Splendid!" he ejaculated, and he gazed at his handiwork admiringly. "I'll get some of the boys down here to-morrow with old Judge Henley and we'll get up the incorporation papers in no time."

"To-morrow!" yelled Mr. Stetzle with a sudden and fierce indignation. "Do you think I'm going to stand here on one foot all night like a dodgasted cigar store Indian? Not on your life! I've got complimentary tickets for 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' for this evening and I've got to take Mrs. Stetzle and the children. Now you get me out of this dodgasted boiler plate union suit right now!"

Mr. Fosdick scratched his chin reflectively. "All right, Eben," he soothed. "I'll split you up the back and you can scrawl out like a locust. The shell will demonstrate the success of the idea." He picked up a pair of calipers and applied it to various portions of Mr. Stetzle's anatomy. "I should say that the metallic envelope is from a quarter to a half inch thick," he remarked pensively.

“You quit that figurin’ and get me out,” raged Mr. Stetzle. “I ought to have had more sense after fooling with your dodgasted electrified cats and spending ten days on a foot square insulated galvanometer pier endurin’ the grins of all them dodgasted students.”

With great labor Mr. Fosdick managed to lower Mr. Stetzle to the floor, and then with a cold chisel and hammer he began the work of divesting him of the metal that incrusted him. With every blow of the hammer Mr. Stetzle let forth a groan.

“That chisel is going right into my backbone!”

The Subject in Trouble—Trying to Get Him Out of His Metallic Casing

Mr. Fosdick considerately laid aside the chisel and took up a hacksaw. It was slow work. Supper time came, it grew dark, and notwithstanding the lamentations and curses of Mr. Stetzle, the now somewhat alarmed Mr. Fosdick had only cut a groove of about six inches along Mr. Stetzle's spine.

"Dodgast you!" he bellowed. "I've missed my supper, I've missed the opry, and I'm missing my sleep!"

"Why, Eben, I'll get you a pillow and you can sleep while I work."

"Sleep!" ejaculated Mr. Stetzle hotly. "How in thunder can I sleep with you a hammerin' my vitals and a punchin' into my backbone with a dodgasted cold chisel?"

At dawn the thoroughly exhausted Mr. Fosdick began to despair. "I'm afraid, Eben," he said gravely, "that I'll have to crate you up and ship you down to the city where they have steam hammers and hydraulic jacks and things—unless—unless"—why hadn't he thought of it before—"unless I can take the metal off the same way I put it on."

"Do anything," snarled Mr. Stetzle. "Put me under a steam hammer, rip me open with a hydraulic jack, grind me apart on an emery wheel, blow me open with dynamite, melt me apart with an acetylene blowpipe—do any of the dodgasted things you have been talking about!"

Mr. Fosdick made no reply. With the aid of the block and tackle he lifted the protesting Mr. Stetzle back into the trough.

"Sufferin' snakes, but this water is cold!" gasped Mr. Stetzle, his teeth chattering.

The battery was now reversed. The copper shell was made the anode and the small remaining slab served as the cathode. And then Mr. Fosdick calmly locked up the shop and departed for home for a much-needed rest.

Sad State of All the Subjects of Mr. Fosdick’s Experiment

It was noon before Mr. Fosdick awoke. Quickly making up a bundle of soap and towels he hastened back to the tinshop where he arrived just in time to see the martyr to science slowly crawl out of the plating bath, the now fragile copper shell falling from his body in flaky showers.

"Splendid!" exclaimed Mr. Fosdick. "See what science will do?"

Mr. Stetzle turned on him with a glare of unutterable hatred.

Seeing a film of copper hanging down between the shoulder blades, Mr. Fosdick grasped it and gave a sharp pull.

"Yow!" Mr. Stetzle leaped a couple of feet into the air and wheeled about in a rage of fury. "The dodgasted stuff sticks like a porous plaster!" he shouted. "I've been all night a' pullin' of it off."

At last, after the expenditure of much patience on the part of Mr. Fosdick and of a great deal of profanity on the part of Mr. Stetzle, the coating was removed—all except that around the toes which gave much trouble.

The most vigorous application of soap and water, however, failed utterly to make the slightest impression upon the glistening black skin.

At this unexpected phenomenon Mr. Fosdick was both astonished and interested.

"Castaphoresis!" he exclaimed after a moment's study. "The current, Eben, has driven the black pigment, graphite, into the skin. You may never be white again," he added cheerfully. "And that gives me another idea."

"Another idea!" bellowed Mr. Stetzle, "Well, if you ever hook me again into another one of your dodgasted ideas—if you ever interest me again in any electrified cats or idiotic copper-plated undertakin' schemes—why, then they can lock me up in the foolish-house. Good b-y-e!" and grabbing his coat and hat Mr. Stetzle rushed out of the tinshop, leaving a trailing wisp of profanity in his wake.

Mr. Fosdick watched the retreating form meditatively. "I wonder what made Eben so angry?" he muttered.

THE END