it keeps away custom and interferes with business. It is the most
convincing inanimate object in all this part of the world, perhaps. Dan
and I were roommates in all that long "Quaker City" voyage, and whenever
I desired to have a little season of privacy I used to fire up on that
pipe and persuade Dan to go out; and he seldom waited to change his
clothes, either. In about a quarter, or from that to three-quarters of a
minute, he would be propping up the smoke-stack on the upper deck and
cursing. I wonder how the faithful old relic is going to sell?






A REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS

"Now that corpse [said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of the
deceased approvingly] was a brick--every way you took him he was a brick.
He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and simple in his last
moments. Friends wanted metallic burial case--nothing else would do.
I couldn't get it. There warn't going to be time anybody could see that.
Corpse said never mind, shake him up some kind of a box he could stretch
out in comfortable, he warn't particular 'bout the general style of it.
Said he went more on room than style, any way, in the last final
container. Friends wanted a silver door-plate on the coffin, signifying
who he was and wher' he was from. Now you know a fellow couldn't roust
out such a gaily thing as that in a little country town like this. What
did corpse say? Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and dob his address
and general destination onto it with a blacking brush and a stencil
plate, long with a verse from some likely hymn or other, and pint him for