Mark Twain's sketches, new and old now first published in complete form |
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A CURIOUS DREAM.
CONTAINING A MORAL. |
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 | Mark Twain's sketches, new and old |  |
A CURIOUS DREAM.
CONTAINING A MORAL.
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
of its person swung by me with a stately stride, and disappeared in the grey
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 recognized 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 fell 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 shredding 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 give me a wrench and a
shiver—for the effect is mightily 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
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
always 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 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 gravestones 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
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 a 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 wakened 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 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 woman 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
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 crate 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 honor—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
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 further 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, your 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
bar-keeper 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
`GONE TO HIS JUST REWARD'
an old friend of mine came along he would hook his chin on the railing and pull a
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-bye, old friend! That's Meredith Higgins—died in '44—
belongs to our set in the cemetery—fine old family—great-grandmother was an
Injun—I am on the most familiar terms with him—he didn't hear me was the reason
he didn't answer me. 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 Dalhousie, 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 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 grisly procession, 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 outcasts 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
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, and the weird procession 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 favorable 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.
| Mark Twain's sketches, new and old | |