University of Virginia Library

A CURIOUS DREAM.

CONTAINING A MORAL.

MARK TWAIN.

Night before last I had a singular dream. I seemed to be sitting on a
doorstep (in no particular city, perhaps), ruminating, and the time of
night appeared to be about twelve or one o'clock. The weather was balmy
and delicious. There was no human sound in the air, not even a footstep.
There was no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead stillness, except the
occasional hollow barking of a dog in the distance and the fainter answer of
a further dog. Presently up the street I heard a bony clack-clacking, and
guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party. In a minute more a tall
skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and mouldy shrond whose shreds
were flapping about the ribby lattice-work of its person, swung by me with a
stately stride, and disappeared in the gray gloom of the starlight. It had a
broken and worm-eaten coffin on its shoulder and a bundle of something in its
hand. I knew what the clack-clacking was then; it was this party's joints
working together, and his elbows knocking against his sides as he walked.
I may say I was surprised. Before I could collect my thoughts and enter
upon any speculations as to what this apparition might portend, I heard another
one coming—for I recognised his clack-clack. He had two-thirds of a
coffin on his shoulder, and some foot-and head-boards under his arm. I
mightily wanted to peer under his hood and speak to him, but when he turned
and smiled upon me with his cavernous sockets and his projecting grin as he
went by, I thought I would not detain him. He was hardly gone when I
heard the clacking again, and another one issued from the shadowy half-light.
This one was bending under a heavy gravestone, and dragging a
shabby coffin after him by a string. When he got to me he gave me a steady
look for a moment or two, and then rounded to and backed up to me, saying:

“Ease this down for a fellow, will you?”

I eased the gravestone down till it rested on the ground, and in doing so
noticed that it bore the name of “John Baxter Copmanhurst,” with “May,
1839,” as the date of his death. Deceased sat wearily down by me, and
wiped his os frontis with his major maxillary—chiefly from former
habit I judged, for I could not see that he brought away any perspiration.

“It is too bad, too bad,” said he, drawing the remnant of the shroud
about him and leaning his jaw pensively on his hand. Then he put his left
foot up on his knee and feil to scratching his ankle bone absently with a
rusty nail which he got out of his coffin.

“What is too bad, friend?”

“Oh, everything, everything. I almost wish I never had died.”

“You surprise me. Why do you say this? Has anything gone wrong?
What is the matter?”

Matter! Look at this shroud—rags. Look at this gravestone, all
battered up. Look at that disgraceful old coffin. All a man's property
going to ruin and destruction before his eyes, and ask him if anything
is wrong? Fire and brimstone!”

“Calm yourself, calm yourself,” I said. “It is too bad—it is certainly
too bad, but then I had not supposed that you would much mind such
matters, situated as you are.”

“Well, my dear sir, I do mind them. My pride is hurt, and my comfort
is impaired—destroyed, I might say. I will state my case—I will put it
to you in such a way that you can comprehend it, if you will let me,” said
the poor skeleton, tilting the hood of his shroud back, as if he were clearing
for action, and thus unconsciously giving himself a jaunty and festive
air very much at variance with the grave character of his position in life—
so to speak—and in prominent contrast with his distressful mood.

“Proceed,” said I.

“I reside in the shameful old graveyard a block or two above you here,
in this street—there, now, I just expected that cartilage would let go!—
third rib from the bottom, friend, hitch the end of it to my spine with a
string, if you have got such a thing about you, though a bit of silver wire
is a deal pleasanter, and more durable and becoming, if one keeps it
polished—to think of shedding out and going to pieces in this way, just on
account of the indifference and neglect of one's posterity!”—and the poor
ghost grated his teeth in a way that gave me a wrench and a shiver—for
the effect is mightly increased by the absence of muffling flesh and cuticle.
“I reside in that old graveyard, and have for these thirty years; and I tell
you things are changed since I first laid this old tired frame there, and
turned over, and stretched out for a long sleep, with a delicious sense upon
me of being done with bother, and grief, and anxiety, and doubt, and fear,
for ever and ever, and listening with comfortable and increasing satisfaction
to the sexton's work, from the startling clatter of his first spadeful on
my coffin till it dulled away to the faint patting that shaped the roof of my
new home—delicious! My! I wish you could try it to-night!” and out of
my reverie deceased fetched me with a rattling slap with a bony hand.

“Yes, sir, thirty years ago I laid me down there, and was happy. For
it was out in the country, then—out in the breezy, flowery, grand old
woods, and the lazy winds gossiped with the leaves, and the squirrels
capered over us and around us, and the creeping things visited us, and the
birds filled the tranquil solitude with music. Ah, it was worth ten years
of a man's life to be dead then! Everything was pleasant. I was in a
good neighborhood, for all the dead people that lived near me belonged to
the best families in the city. Our posterity appeared to think the world of
us. They kept our graves in the very best condition; the fences were
alway in faultless repair, head-boards were kept painted or whitewashed, and
were replaced with new ones as soon as they began to look rusty or decayed;
monuments were kept upright, railings intact and bright, the rosebushes
and shrubbery trimmed, trained, and free from blemish, the walks clean and
smooth and gravelled. But that day is gone by. Our descendants have
forgotten us. My grandson lives in a stately house built with money made
by these old hands of mine, and I sleep in a neglected grave with invading
vermin that gnaw my shroud to build them nests withal! I and friends
that lie with me founded and secured the prosperity of this fine city, and
the stately bantling of our loves leaves us to rot in a dilapidated cemetery

[ILLUSTRATION]

A MIND AT REST.
Nervous Thin Man.—"It seems that this train is behind time, Sir; we are making nearly a mile a minute."
Choleric Fat Man.—"Well, what of it?"
Nervous Man.—"Rather dangerous! Some one should speak to the Conductor."
Choleric Man.—"Not I, Sir! I have a $5,000 ACCIDENT POLICY IN THE
'TRAVELERS';' and don't intend to exert myself in the interests of any corporation."

[Description: 497EAF. Page 005. Image of three rows in a train car. The row on the left is occupied by a person sleeping with their back to the reader and an arm thrown up on the seat back in front of them. The row on the right is occupied by a man with a bowler hat, who is also asleep with his head falling forward on his chest. The middle row is occupied by two men in suits and top hats, described in the caption as the "Nervous Thin Man" and the "Choleric Fat Man".]

which neighbors curse and strangers scoff at. See the difference between
the old time and this, for instance. Our graves are all caved in, now; our
head-boards have rotted away and tumbled down; our railings reel this
way and that, with one foot in the air, after a fashion of unseemly levity;
our monuments lean wearily, and our grave stones bow their heads discouraged;
there be no adornments any more—no roses, nor shrubs, nor
gravelled walks nor anything that is a comfort to the eye, and even the
paintless old board fence that did make a show of holding us sacred from
companionship with beasts and the defilement of heedless feet, has tottered
till it overhangs the street, and only advertises the presence of our dismal
resting-place and invites yet more derision to it. And now we cannot hide
our poverty and tatters in the friendly woods, for the city has stretched its
withering arms abroad and taken us in, and all that remains of the cheer
of our old home is the cluster of lugubrious forest trees that stand,
bored and weary of city life, with their feet in our coffins, looking into the
hazy distance and wishing they were there. I tell you it is disgraceful!

“You begin to comprehend—you begin to see how it is. While our
descendants are living sumptuously on our money, right around us in the
city, we have to fight hard to keep skull and bones together. Bless you,
there isn't a grave in our cemetery that doesn't leak—not one. Every time
it rains in the night we have to climb out and roost in the trees—and sometimes
we are awakened suddenly by the chilly water trickling down the
back of our necks. Then I tell you there is a general heaving up of old
graves and kicking over of old monuments, and scampering of old skeletons
for the trees! Bless me, if you had gone along there some such
nights after twelve you might have seen as many as fifteen of us roosting
on one limb, with our joints rattling drearily and the wind wheezing through
our ribs! Many a time we have perched there for three or four dreary
hours, and then come down, stiff and chilled through and drowsy, and borrowed
each other's skulls to bale out our graves with—if you will glance
up in my mouth, now as I tilt my head back, you can see that my head-piece
is half full of old dry sediment—how top-heavy and stupid it makes me
sometimes! Yes, sir, many a time if you had happened to come along
just before the dawn you'd have caught us baling out the graves and hanging
out our shrouds on the fence to dry. Why, I had an elegant shroud
stolen from there one morning—think a party by the name of Smith took
it, that resides in a plebeian graveyard over yonder—I think so because the
first time I ever saw him he hadn't anything on but a check-shirt, and the
last time I saw him, which was at a social gathering in the new cemetery,
he was the best dressed corpse in the company—and it is a significant
fact that he left when he saw me; and presently an old women from here
missed her coffin—she generally took it with her when she went anywhere,
because she was liable to take cold and bring on the spasmodic rheumatism
that originally killed her if she exposed herself to the night air much. She
was named Hotchkiss—Anna. Matilda Hotchkiss—You might know her?
She has two upper front teeth, is tall, but a good deal inclined to stoop, one
rib on the left side gone, has one shred of rusty hair hanging from the left
side of her head, and one little tuft just above and a little forward of her
right ear, has her under jaw wired on one side where it had worked loose,
small bone of left forearm gone—lost in a fight—has a kind of swagger in
her gait and a `gallus' way of going with her arms akimbo and her nostrils
in the air—has been pretty free and easy, and is all damaged and battered

up till she looks like a queensware erate in ruins—maybe you have met
her?”

“God forbid!” I involuntarily ejaculated, for somehow I was not
looking for that form of question, and it caught me a little off my guard.
But I hastened to make amends for my rudeness and say, “I simply meant
I had not had the honour—for I would not deliberately speak discourteously
of a friend of yours. You were saying that you were robbed—and it
was a shame, too—but it appears by what is left of the shroud you have
on that it was a costly one in its day. How did—”

A most ghastly expression began to develop among the decayed features
and shrivelled integuments of my guest's face, and I was beginning to grow
uneasy and distressed, when he told me he was only working up a deep,
sly smile, with a wink in it, to suggest that about the time he acquired his
present garment a ghost in a neighboring cemetery missed one. This
reassured me, but I begged him to confine himself to speech thenceforth,
because his facial expression was uncertain. Even with the most elaborate
care it was liable to miss fire. Smiling should especially be avoided.
What he might honestly consider a shining success was likely to strike
me in a very different light. I said I liked to see a skeleton cheerful, even
decorously playful, but I did not think smiling was a skeleton's best hold.

“Yes, friend,” said the poor skeleton, “the facts are just as I have
given them to you. Two of these old graveyards—the one that I resided
in and one futher along—have been deliberately neglected by our descendants
of to-day until there is no occupying them any longer. Aside from
the osteological discomfort of it—and that is no light matter this rainy
weather—the present state of things is ruinous to property. We have
got to move or be content to see our effects wasted away and utterly destroyed.
Now you will hardly believe it, but it is true nevertheless, that
there isn't a single coffin in good repair among all my acquaintance—now
that is an absolute fact. I do not refer to low people who come in a pine
box mounted on an express wagon, but I am talking about your high-toned,
silver-mounted burial-case, monumental sort, that travel under black
plumes at the head of a procession and have choice of cemetery lots—I
mean folks like the Jarvises, and the Bledsoes and Burlings, and such.
They are all about ruined. The most substantial people in our set, they
were. And now look at them—utterly used up and poverty-stricken.
One of the Bledsoes actually traded his monument to a late barkeeper for
some fresh shavings to put under his head. I tell you it speaks volumes,
for there is nothing a corpse takes so much pride in as his monument. He
loves to read the inscription. He comes after awhile to believe what it
says himself, and then you may see him sitting on the fence night after
night enjoying it. Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world
of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was alive.
I wish they were used more. Now I don't complain, but confidentially I
do think it was a little shabby in my descendants to give me nothing but
this old slab of a gravestone—and all the more that there isn't a compliment
on it. It used to have

on it, and I was proud when I first saw it, but by-and-by I noticed that
whenever an old friend of mine came along he would hook his chin on the
railing and pull a long face and read along down till he came to that, and
then he would chuckle to himself and walk off, looking satisfied and comfortable.
So I scratched it off to get rid of those fools. But a dead man
always takes a deal of pride in his monument. Yonder goes half-a-dozen
of the Jarvises, now, with the family monument along. And Smithers
and some hired spectres went by with his a while ago. Hello, Higgins,
good-by, old friend! That's Meredith Higgins—died in '44—belongs to
our set in the cemetery—fine old family—great-grand-mother was an Injun
—I am on the most familiar terms with him—he didn't hear me was the
reason he didn't answer. And I am sorry, too, because I would have liked
to introduce you. You would admire him. He is the most disjointed,
sway-backed, and generally distorted old skeleton you ever saw, but he is
full of fun. When he laughs it sounds like rasping two stones together,
and he always starts it off with a cheery screech like raking a nail across a
window-pane. Hey, Jones! That is old Columbus Jones—shroud cost
four hundred dollars—entire trousseau, including monument, twenty-seven
hundred. This was in the spring of '26. It was enormous style for those
days. Dead people came all the way from the Alleghanies to see his
things—the party that occupied the grave next to mine remembers it well.
Now do you see that individual going along with a piece of a head-board
under his arm, one leg-bone below his knee gone, and not a thing in the
world on? That is Barstow Dalhouse, and next to Columbus Jones he
was the most sumptuously outfitted person that ever entered our cemetery.
We are all leaving. We cannot tolerate the treatment we are receiving at
the hands of our descendants. They open new cemeteries, but they leave
us to our ignominy. They mend the streets, but they never mend anything
that is about us or belongs to us. Look at that coffin of mine—yet
I tell you in its day it was a piece of furniture that would have attracted
attention in any drawing-room in this city. You may have it if you want it
—I can't afford to repair it. Put a new bottom in her, and part of a new
top, and a bit of fresh lining along the left side, and you'll find her about
as comfortable as any receptacle of her species you ever tried. No thanks
—no, don't mention it—you have been civil to me, and I would give you
all the property I have got before I would seem ungrateful. Now this
winding-sheet is a kind of a sweet thing in its way, if you would like
to—. No? Well, just as you say, but I wished to be fair and liberal—
there's nothing mean about me Good-by, friend, I must be going. I
may have a good way to go to-night—don't know. I only know one thing
for certain, and that is, that I am on the emigrant trail, now, and I'll
never sleep in that crazy old cemetery again. I will travel till I find respectable
quarters, if I have to hoof it to New Jersey. All the boys are
going. It was decided in public conclave, last night, to emigrate, and by
the time the sun rises there won't be a bone left in our old habitations.
Such cemeteries may suit my surviving friends, but they do not suit the remains
that have the honor to make these remarks. My opinion is the
general opinion. If you doubt it, go and see how the departing ghosts
upset things before they started. They were almost riotous in their demonstrations
of distaste. Hello, here are some of the Bledsoes, and if you
will give me a lift with this tombstone I guess I will join company and jog
along with them—mighty respectable old family, the Bledsoes, and used
to always come out in six horse hearses, and all that sort of thing fifty
years ago when I walked these streets in daylight. Good-by, friend.”

And with his gravestone on his shoulder he joined the grizzly procession,

[ILLUSTRATION]

The Weed Sewing Machine.
Mrs. M.—"Does your sewing machine work well, dear?"
Mrs. N.—"Only so, so."
Mrs. M.—(Exhibiting a beautiful piece of work done by the WEED SEWING
MACHINE.)—"So does mine. It is a 'WEED,' and it does SEW, SEW,
beautifully. Take my advice and get one, dear; you will find it a
great saving of time and temper. Send to the Weed Sewing Machine
Company, 26 Union Square, New York, and get their circulars and
samples of work.

[Description: 497EAF. Page 009. Image of two well-dressed women, Mrs. M. and Mrs. N. sitting in a parlor, with a sewing machine between them. Mrs. M. is showing Mrs. N. a sample of her sewing results.]

dragging his damaged coffin after him, for notwithstanding he pressed it
upon me so earnestly, I utterly refused his hospitality. I suppose that for
as much as two hours these sad out-casts went clacking by, laden with
their dismal effects, and all that time I sat pitying them. One or two of
the youngest and least dilapidated among them inquired about midnight
trains on the railways, but the rest seemed unacquainted with that mode
of travel, and merely asked about common public roads to various towns
and cities, some of which are not on the map now, and vanished from it and
from the earth as much as thirty years ago, and some few of them never
had existed anywhere but on maps, and private ones in real estate agencies
at that. And they asked about the condition of the cemeteries in these
towns and cities, and about the reputation the citizens bore as to reverence
for the dead.

This whole matter interested me deeply, and likewise compelled my
sympathy for these homeless ones. And it all seeming real, and I not
knowing it was a dream, I mentioned to one shrouded wanderer an idea that
had entered my head to publish an account of this curious and very sorrowful
exodus, but said also that I could not describe it truthfully, and just as
it occurred, without seeming to trifle with a grave subject and exhibit an
irreverence for the dead that would shock and distress their surviving
friends. But this bland and stately remnant of a former citizen leaned
him far over my gate and whispered in my ear, and said:—

“Do not let that disturb you. The community that can stand such
graveyards as those we are emigrating from can stand anything a body can
say about the neglected and forsaken dead that lie in them.”

At that very moment a cock crowed, an the weird processsion vanished
and left not a shred or a bone behind. I awoke, and found myself lying
with my head out of the bed and “sagging” downwards considerably—a
position favourable to dreaming dreams with morals in them maybe but
not poetry.

Note.—The reader is assured that if the cemeteries in his town are kept in good
order, this Dream is not levelled at his town at all, but is levelled particularly and
venomously at the next town.