University of Virginia Library

THE FASTEST FUNERAL ON RECORD.

Mr. P.—I had just crossed the long bridge leading
from Boston to Cambridgeport, and was plodding my
dusty way on foot through that not very agreeable
suburb, on a sultry afternoon in July, with a very
creditable thunder-cloud coming up in my rear, when a
stout elderly gentleman, with a mulberry face, a brown
coat, and pepper-and-salt smalls, reined up his nag,
and after learning that I was bound for Old Cambridge,
politely invited me to take a seat beside him in
the little sort of tax-cart he was driving. Nothing
loath, I consented, and we were soon en route. The
mare he drove was a very peculiar animal. She had
few good points to the eye, being heavy-bodied, hammer-headed,
thin in the shoulders, bald-faced, and

rejoicing in a little stump of a tail which was almost
entirely innocent of hair. But there were "lots of
muscle," as Major Longbow says, in her hind
quarters.

"She aint no Wenus, Sir," said my new acquaintance,
pointing with his whip to the object of my scrutiny
—"but handsome is as handsome does. Them's my
sentiments. She's a rum 'un to look at, but a good 'un
to go."

"Indeed?"

"Yes, Sir! That there mare, sir, has made good
time—I may say, very good time before the hearse."

"Before the hearse?"

"Before the hearse! S'pose you never heard of
burying a man on time! I'm a sexton, sir, and undertaker—Jack
Crossbones, at your service—`Daddy
Crossbones' they call me at Porter's."

"Ah! I understand. Your mare ran away with the
hearse."

"Ran away! A child could hold her. Oh! yes, of
course she ran away," added the old gentleman, looking
full in my face with a very quizzical expression,
and putting the fore finger of his right hand on the right
side of his party-coloured proboscis.

"My dear Sir," said I, "you have excited my
curiosity amazingly, and I should esteem it as a particular
favour if you would be a little less oracular and
a little more explicit."

"I don't know as I'd ought to tell you," said my
new acquaintance very slowly and tantalizingly. "If
you was one of these here writing chaps, you might
poke it in the `Spirit of the Times,' and then it would

be all day with me. But I don't care if I do make a
clean breast of it. Honour bright, you know."

"Of course."

"Well, then, I live a piece up beyond Old Cambridge—you
can see our steeple off on a hill to the
right, when we get a little further. Well, one day, I
had a customer—(he was carried off by the typhus)—
which had to be toted into town—cause why? he had
a vault there. So I rubbed down the old mare and
put her in the fills. Ah! Sir! that critter knows as
much as an Injun, and more than a Nigger. She's as
sober `as be d—d' when she get's the shop—that's
what I call the hearse—behind her. You would not
think she was a three-minute nag, to look at her.
Well, sir, as luck would have it, by a sort of providential
inspiration, the day before, I'd took off the old
wooden springs and set the body on elliptics. For I
thought it a hard case that a gentleman who'd been
riding easy all his life, should go to his grave on
wooden springs. Ah! I deal well by my customers. I
thought of patent boxes to the wheels, but I couldn't
afford it, and the parish are desperate stingy.

"Well, I got him in, and led off the string—fourteen
hacks, and a dearbourn wagon at the tail of the funeral.
We made a fine show. As luck would have it, just as
we came abreast of Porter's, out slides that eternal torment,
Bill Sikes, in his new trotting sulky, with the
brown horse that he bought for a fast crab, and is
mighty good for a rush, but hain't got nigh so much
bottom as the mare. Bill's light weight, and his sulky's
a mere feather. Well, sir, Bill came up alongside, and
walked his horse a bit. He looked at the mare and

then at me, and then he winked. Then he looked at
his nag and put his tongue in his cheek, and winked.
I looked straight ahead, and only said to myself, `Cuss
you, Bill Sikes.' By and by, he let his horse slide.
He travelled about a hundred yards, and then held up
till I came abreast, and then he winked and bantered
me again. It was d—d aggravatin'. Says I to myself,
says I—`that's twice you've done it, my buzzum friend
and sweet-scented shrub—but you doesn't do that 'ere
again.' The third time he bantered me, I let him have
it. It was only saying `Scat you brute,' and she was
off—that mare. He had all the odds, you know, for
I was toting a two hundred pounder, and he ought to
have beat me like breaking sticks, now hadn't he? He
had me at the first brush, for I told you the brown horse
was a mighty fast one for a little ways. But soon I
lapped him. I had no whip, and he could use his
string—but he had his hands full. Side by side, away
we went. Rattle-te-bang! crack! abuz! thump! And
I afraid of losing my customer on the road. But I was
more afraid of losing the race. The reputation of the
old mare was at a stake, and I swore she should have
a fair chance. We went so fast that the posts and rails
by the road side looked like a log fence. The old
church and the new one, and the colleges, spun past
like Merry Andrews. The hackmen did not know
what the — was to pay, and, afraid of not being in
at the death, they put the string onto their teams, and
came clattering on behind as if Satan had kicked 'em
on eend. Some of the mourners was sporting characters,
and they craned out of the carriage windows and
waved their handkerchiefs. The President of Harvard
College himself, inspired by the scene, took off his
square tile as I passed his house, and waving it three
times round his head, cried, `Go it, Boots!' It is a
fact. And I beat him, sir! I beat him, in three miles,
a hundred rods. He gin it up, sir, in despair."

"His horse was off his feed for a week, and when he
took to corn again he wasn't worth a straw. It was
acknowledged on all hands to be the fastest funeral on
record, though I say it as shouldn't. I'm an undertaker,
sir, and I never yet was overtaken."

On subsequent inquiry at Porter's, where the sporting
sexton left me, I found that his story was strictly true
in all the main particulars. A terrible rumpus was
kicked up about the race, but Crossbones swore lustily
that the mare had run away—that he had sawed away
two inches of her lip in trying to hold her up, and that
he could not have done otherwise, unless he had run
her into a fence and spilled his "customer" into the
ditch. If any one expects to die anywhere near the
sexton's diggings, I can assure them that the jolly old
boy is still alive and kicking, the very "Ace of Hearts"
and "Jack of Spades," and that now both patent boxes
and elliptic springs render his professional conveyance
the easiest running thing on the road.