by Mark Twain
All the journeyings I had ever done had been purely
in the way of business. The pleasant May weather
suggested a novelty namely, a trip for pure recreation,
the bread-and-butter element left out. The Reverend
said he would go, too; a good man, one of the best
of men, although a clergyman. By eleven at night
we were in New Haven and on board the New York boat.
We bought our tickets, and then went wandering around
here and there, in the solid comfort of being free
and idle, and of putting distance between ourselves
and the mails and telegraphs.
After a while I went to my stateroom and undressed,
but the night was too enticing for bed. We were
moving down the bay now, and it was pleasant to stand
at the window and take the cool night breeze and watch
the gliding lights on shore. Presently, two
elderly men sat down under that window and began a
conversation. Their talk was properly no business
of mine, yet I was feeling friendly toward the world
and willing to be entertained. I soon gathered
that they were brothers, that they were from a small
Connecticut village, and that the matter in hand concerned
the cemetery. Said one:
“Now, John, we talked it all over amongst ourselves,
and this is what we’ve done. You see,
everybody was a-movin’ from the old buryin’-ground,
and our folks was ’most about left to theirselves,
as you may say. They was crowded, too, as you
know; lot wa’n’t big enough in the first
place; and last year, when Seth’s wife died,
we couldn’t hardly tuck her in. She sort
o’ overlaid Deacon Shorb’s lot, and he
soured on her, so to speak, and on the rest of us,
too. So we talked it over, and I was for a lay
out in the new simitery on the hill. They wa’n’t
unwilling, if it was cheap. Well, the two best
and biggest plots was No. 8 and No. 9 —both
of a size; nice comfortable room for twenty-six—twenty-six
full-growns, that is; but you reckon in children and
other shorts, and strike an everage, and I should
say you might lay in thirty, or maybe thirty-two or
three, pretty genteel—no crowdin’
to signify.”
“That’s a plenty, William. Which
one did you buy?”
“Well, I’m a-comin’ to that, John.
You see, No. 8 was thirteen dollars, No. 9 fourteen—”
“I see. So’s’t you took No.
8.”
“You wait. I took No. 9. And I’ll
tell you for why. In the first place, Deacon
Shorb wanted it. Well, after the way he’d
gone on about Seth’s wife overlappin’
his prem’ses, I’d ‘a’ beat
him out of that No. 9 if I’d ‘a’
had to stand two dollars extra, let alone one.
That’s the way I felt about it. Says
I, what’s a dollar, anyway? Life’s
on’y a pilgrimage, says I; we ain’t here
for good, and we can’t take it with us, says
I. So I just dumped it down, knowin’ the Lord
don’t suffer a good deed to go for nothin’,
and cal’latin’ to take it out o’
