- description
- # Donning the Disguise
## Overview
This is a subsection titled "Donning the Disguise" from Chapter XIII of Herman Melville's novel *Israel Potter*. It describes Israel Potter dressing in the clothes of the recently deceased Squire Woodcock as part of his plan to escape. The subsection appears on lines 3238-3250 of the source file, [israel_potter.txt](arke:01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW).
## Context
This subsection is part of [CHAPTER XIII. HIS ESCAPE FROM THE HOUSE, WITH VARIOUS ADVENTURES FOLLOWING.](arke:01KG8AJJ261FWJ1RK528BTY9AX) within the novel *Israel Potter*, which is included in the [Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW) collection. It follows the subsection [Planning the Escape and Acquiring Disguise](arke:01KG8AK5N1E116AC2YR9PRMQK6) and precedes [Attempting to Leave the Room](arke:01KG8AK5MYSMGNZEEJA189TTF5).
## Contents
The subsection details Israel Potter's deliberate act of putting on the clothes of the dead Squire Woodcock, including silk small-clothes, a cocked hat, and grasping a silver-headed cane. He uses a shaving-glass to ensure he resembles the Squire's phantom. Despite initial self-satisfaction, Israel experiences superstitious unease, feeling unreal and shadowy while wearing the deceased's broadcloth coat, the very one in which the Squire had his fatal fit.
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- description_title
- Donning the Disguise
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- 3250
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- text
- Slipping off his own clothing, he deliberately arrayed himself in the
borrowed raiment, silk small-clothes and all, then put on the cocked
hat, grasped the silver-headed cane in his right hand, and moving his
small shaving-glass slowly up and down before him, so as by piecemeal
to take in his whole figure, felt convinced that he would well pass for
Squire Woodcock’s genuine phantom. But after the first feeling of
self-satisfaction with his anticipated success had left him, it was not
without some superstitious embarrassment that Israel felt himself
encased in a dead man’s broadcloth; nay, in the very coat in which the
deceased had no doubt fallen down in his fit. By degrees he began to
feel almost as unreal and shadowy as the shade whose part he intended
to enact.
- title
- Donning the Disguise