that is about us or belongs to us. Look at that
coffin of mine—yet I tell you in its day
it was a piece of furniture that would have attracted
attention in any drawing-room in this city.
You may have it if you want it—I can’t
afford to repair it. Put a new bottom in her,
and part of a new top, and a bit of fresh lining along
the left side, and you’ll find her about as comfortable
as any receptacle of her species you ever tried.
No thanks no, don’t mention it you have been
civil to me, and I would give you all the property
I have got before I would seem ungrateful. Now
this winding-sheet is a kind of a sweet thing in its
way, if you would like to—No? Well,
just as you say, but I wished to be fair and liberal
there’s nothing mean about me. Good-by,
friend, I must be going. I may have a good way
to go to-night —don’t know.
I only know one thing for certain, and that is that
I am on the emigrant trail now, and I’ll never
sleep in that crazy old cemetery again. I will
travel till I fiend respectable quarters, if I have
to hoof it to New Jersey. All the boys are going.
It was decided in public conclave, last night, to
emigrate, and by the time the sun rises there won’t
be a bone left in our old habitations. Such cemeteries
may suit my surviving friends, but they do not suit
the remains that have the honor to make these remarks.
My opinion is the general opinion. If you doubt
it, go and see how the departing ghosts upset things
before they started. They were almost riotous
in their demonstrations of distaste. Hello,
here are some of the Bledsoes, and if you will give
me a lift with this tombstone I guess I will join
company and jog along with them—mighty
respectable old family, the Bledsoes, and used to always
come out in six-horse hearses and all that sort of
thing fifty years ago when I walked these streets
in daylight. Good-by, friend.”
And with his gravestone on his shoulder he joined
the grisly procession, dragging his damaged coffin
after him, for notwithstanding he pressed it upon
me so earnestly, I utterly refused his hospitality.
I suppose that for as much as two hours these sad
outcasts went clacking by, laden with their dismal
effects, and all that time I sat pitying them.
One or two of the youngest and least dilapidated
among them inquired about midnight trains on the railways,
but the rest seemed unacquainted with that mode of
travel, and merely asked about common public roads
to various towns and cities, some of which are not
on the map now, and vanished from it and from the
earth as much as thirty years ago, and some few of
them never had existed anywhere but on maps, and private
ones in real-estate agencies at that. And they
asked about the condition of the cemeteries in these
towns and cities, and about the reputation the citizens
bore as to reverence for the dead.