chairs, the table pushed back, a decanter and glasses. A heavy, suffocating, discordant scent of flowers—roses, carnations, lilies, gardenias. A general stuffiness and mugginess, as if it were raining outside, which it isn’t.
A door leads into the front parlor. It is open, and through it the flowers may be seen. They are banked about a long black box with huge nickel handles, resting upon two folding horses. Now and then a man comes into the front room from the street door, his shoes squeaking hideously. Sometimes there is a woman, usually in deep mourning. Each visitor approaches the long black box, looks into it with ill-concealed repugnance, snuffles softly, and then backs of toward the door. A clock on the mantel-piece ticks loudly. From the street come the usual noises—a wagon rattling, the clang of a trolley car’s gong, the shrill cry of a child.
In the back parlor six pallbearers sit upon chairs, all of them bolt upright, with their hands on their knees. They are in their Sunday clothes, with stiff white shirts. Their hats are on the floor beside their chairs. Each wears upon his lapel the gilt badge of a fraternal order, with a crêpe rosette. In the gloom they are indistinguishable; all of them talk in the same strained, throaty whisper. Between their remarks they pause, clear their throats, blow their noses, and shuffle in their chairs. They are intensely uncomfortable. Tempo: Adagio lamentoso, with occasionally a rise to andante maesto. So:
First Pallbearer
Who woulda thought that he woulda been the next?
Second Pallbearer
Yes; you never can tell.
Third Pallbearer
(An oldish voice, oracularly.) We’re here to-day and gone to-morrow.
Fourth Pallbearer
I seen him no longer ago than Chewsday. He never looked no better. Nobody would have——
Fifth Pallbearer
I seen him Wednesday. We had a glass of beer together in the Huffbrow Kaif. He was laughing and cutting up like he always done.
Sixth Pallbearer
You never know who it’s gonna hit next. Him and me was pallbearers together for Hen Jackson no more than a month ago, or say five weeks.
First Pallbearer
Well, a man is lucky if he goes off quick. If I had my way I wouldn’t want no better way.
Second Pallbearer
My brother John went thataway. He dropped like a stone, settin’ there at the supper table. They had to take his knife out of his hand.
Third Pallbearer
I had an uncle to do the same thing, but without the knife. He had what they call appleplexy. It runs in my family.
Fourth Pallbearer
They say it’s in his’n, too.
Fifth Pallbearer
But he never looked it.
Sixth Pallbearer
No. Nobody woulda thought he woulda been the next.
First Pallbearer
Them are the things you never can tell anything about.
Second Pallbearer
Ain’t it true!
Third Pallbearer
We’re here to-day and gone to-morrow.
(A pause. Feet are shuffled. Somewhere a door bangs.)
Fourth Pallbearer
(Brightly.) He looks elegant. I hear he never suffered none.
Fifth Pallbearer
No; he went too quick. One minute he was alive and the next minute he was dead.
Sixth Pallbearer
Think of it: dead so quick!
First Pallbearer
Gone!
Second Pallbearer
Passed away!
Third Pallbearer
Well, we all have to go some time.
Fourth Pallbearer
Yes; a man never knows but what his turn’ll come next.
Fifth Pallbearer
You can’t tell nothing by looks. Them sickly fellows generally lives to be old.
Sixth Pallbearer
Yes; the doctors say it’s the big stout person that goes off the soonest. They say typhord never kills none but the healthy.
First Pallbearer
So I have heered it said. My wife’s youngest brother weighed 240 pounds. He was as strong as a mule. He could lift a sugar-barrel, and then some. Once I seen him drink damn near a whole keg of beer. Yet it finished him in less’n three weeks—and he had it mild.
Second Pallbearer
It seems that there’s a lot of it this fall.
Third Pallbearer
Yes; I hear of people taken with it every day. Some say it’s the water. My brother Sam’s oldest is down with it.
Fourth Pallbearer
I had it myself once. I was out of my head for four weeks.
Fifth Pallbearer
That’s a good sign.
Sixth Pallbearer
Yes; you don’t die as long as you’re out of your head.
First Pallbearer
It seems to me that there is a lot of sickness around this year.
Second Pallbearer
I been to five funerals in six weeks.
Third Pallbearer
I beat you. I been to six in five weeks, not counting this one.
Fourth Pallbearer
A body don’t hardly know what to think of it scarcely.
Fifth Pallbearer
That.rss what I always say: you can’t
