head-piece is half full of old dry sediment how top-heavy and stupid it
makes me sometimes! Yes, sir, many a time if you had happened to come
along just before the dawn you’d have caught us bailing out the graves
and hanging our shrouds on the fence to dry. Why, I had an elegant
shroud stolen from there one morning–think a party by the name of Smith
took it, that resides in a plebeian graveyard over yonder–I think so
because the first time I ever saw him he hadn’t anything on but a check
shirt, and the last time I saw him, which was at a social gathering in
the new cemetery, he was the best-dressed corpse in the company–and it
is a significant fact that he left when he saw me; and presently an old
woman from here missed her coffin–she generally took it with her when
she went anywhere, because she was liable to take cold and bring on the
spasmodic rheumatism that originally killed her if she exposed herself to
the night air much. She was named Hotchkiss–Anna Matilda Hotchkiss–you
might know her? She has two upper front teeth, is tall, but a good deal
inclined to stoop, one rib on the left side gone, has one shred of rusty
hair hanging from the left side of her head, and one little tuft just
above and a little forward of her right ear, has her underjaw wired on
one side where it had worked loose, small bone of left forearm gone–lost
in a fight has a kind of swagger in her gait and a ‘gallus’ way of going
with: her arms akimbo and her nostrils in the air has been pretty free
and easy, and is all damaged and battered up till she looks like a
queensware crate in ruins–maybe you have met her?”
“God forbid!” I involuntarily ejaculated, for somehow I was not looking
for that form of question, and it caught me a little off my guard. But I
hastened to make amends for my rudeness, and say, “I simply meant I had
not had the honor–for I would not deliberately speak discourteously of a
friend of yours. You were saying that you were robbed–and it was a
shame, too–but it appears by what is left of the shroud you have on that
it was a costly one in its day. How did–”
A most ghastly expression began to develop among the decayed features and
shriveled integuments of my guest’s face, and I was beginning to grow
uneasy and distressed, when he told me he was only working up a deep,
sly smile, with a wink in it, to suggest that about the time he acquired
his present garment a ghost in a neighboring cemetery missed one. This
reassured me, but I begged him to confine himself to speech thenceforth,
because his facial expression was uncertain. Even with the most
elaborate care it was liable to miss fire. Smiling should especially be
avoided. What he might honestly consider a shining success was likely to
strike me in a very different light. I said I liked to see a skeleton
cheerful, even decorously playful, but I did not think smiling was a
skeleton’s best hold.
“Yes, friend,” said the poor skeleton, “the facts are just as I have
given them to you. Two of these old graveyards–the one that I resided
in and one further along have been deliberately neglected by our
descendants of to-day until there is no occupying them any longer. Aside
from the osteological discomfort of it–and that is no light matter this
rainy weather–the present state of things is ruinous to property. We
have got to move or be content to see our effects wasted away and utterly
destroyed.
Now, you will hardly believe it, but it is true, nevertheless, that there
isn’t a single coffin in good repair among all my acquaintance–now that
is an absolute fact. I do not refer to low people who come in a pine box
mounted on an express-wagon, but I am talking about your high-toned,
silver-mounted burial-case, your monumental sort, that travel under black
plumes at the head of a procession and have choice of cemetery lots–