Chapter 27 - Page 2

happening, but I couldn't tell.

Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come
with his man, and they set the coffin in the middle of
the room on a couple of chairs, and then set all our
chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors
till the hall and the parlor and the dining-room was
full. I see the coffin lid was the way it was before,
but I dasn't go to look in under it, with folks around.

Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats
and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of
the coffin, and for a half an hour the people filed
around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the
dead man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear,
and it was all very still and solemn, only the girls and
the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keep-
ing their heads bent, and sobbing a little. There
warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on
the floor and blowing noses -- because people always
blows them more at a funeral than they do at other
places except church.

When the place was packed full the undertaker he
slid around in his black gloves with his softy soother-
ing ways, putting on the last touches, and getting
people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and
making no more sound than a cat. He never spoke;
he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he
opened up passageways, and done it with nods, and
signs with his hands. Then he took his place over
against the wall. He was the softest, glidingest,
stealthiest man I ever see; and there warn't no more
smile to him than there is to a ham.

They had borrowed a melodeum -- a sick one; and
when everything was ready a young woman set down
and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and colicky,
and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the
only one that had a good thing, according to my
notion. Then the Reverend Hobson opened up, slow
and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the
most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body
ever heard; it was only one dog, but he made a most
powerful racket, and he kept it up right along; the
parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait
-- you couldn't hear yourself think. It was right
down awkward, and nobody didn't seem to know what
to do. But pretty soon they see that long-legged
undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to
say, "Don't you worry -- just depend on me." Then
he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall,
just his shoulders showing over the people's heads.
So he glided along, and the powwow and racket get-
ting more and more outrageous all the time; and at
last, when he had gone around two sides of the room,
he disappears down cellar. Then in