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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 soothering 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

passage-ways, and done it all 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. ssssssssss

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, ac-

cording 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 pow-wow

and racket getting 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

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