Strolling through Lone Mountain cemetery one day my attention was
arrested by the inconsolable grief of a granite angel bewailing the
loss of "Jacob Hunker, aged 67." The attitude of utter dejection,
the look of matchless misery upon that angel's face sank into my
heart like water into a sponge. I was about to offer some words of
condolence when another man, similarly affected, got in before me,
and laying a rather unsteady hand upon the celestial shoulder tipped
back a very senile hat, and pointing to the name on the stone
remarked with the most exact care and scrupulous accent: "Friend of
yours, perhaps; been dead long?"

There was no reply; he continued: "Very worthy man, that Jake; knew
him up in Tuolumne. Good feller-Jake." No response: the gentleman
settled his hat still farther back, and continued with a trifle less
exactness of speech: "I say, young wom'n, Jake was my pard in the
mines. Goo' fell'r I 'bserved!"

The last sentence was shot straight into the celestial ear at short
range. It produced no effect. The gentleman's patience and
rhetorical vigilance were now completely exhausted. He walked round,
and planting himself defiantly in front of the vicarious mourner, he
stuck his hands doggedly into his pockets and delivered the
following rebuke, like the desultory explosions of a bunch of
damaged fire-crackers: "It wont do, old girl; ef Jake knowed how
you's treatin' his old pard he'd jest git up and snatch you bald
headed-he would! You ain't no friend o' his'n and you ain't yur fur
no good-you bet! Now you jest 'sling your swag an' bolt back to
heaven, or I'm hanged ef I don't have suthin' worse'n horse-stealin'
to answer fur, this time."