FUNERALS.

"Hic niger est-hunc tu Romane caveto."-HOR.

(Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1838.)

"UPON my honour, sir, my father does not get more than 40 per cent!" This conscientious and genteel speech haunted me not very long since, during a painful and dangerous illness. It came certainly very mal a-propos; but having come, would not depart, like an imp of evil, as it was-for some one has observed, or, if not, some one might have observed, that words once embodied in sense or sentence have a living existence, the good or bad spirits taking conception in the mind, and birth from the mouth, never to return again, but invisible agents in the world, that do a world of mischief in it, and often standing in a court of justice against their parents in the flesh-such as imp of evil, I assert, was that sentence to me, for, having taken possession of the best room in the house of my brains, it kicked its heels there, and called about it lustily, and innumerable were the train of thought-imps that came at its call. Upon my honour, sir, my father does not get more than 40 per cent." gave it existence ? It was the son of an undertaker, my dear Eusebius. The occasion this :-I was present when the said very genteel youth presented the bill for a funeral, a few weeks after my acquaintance had buried his father. I am sure the old gentleman never would have slept with his fathers, could he have read over the items of his last journey, and would have again died over the sum-total. The bill was indeed startling. It was upon a slight remonstrance that this nicely dressed mincing son of his father, in about the nineteenth year of his age, and full

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Who

promise of his trade of hatbands and scarfs, laid his hand upon the left side of his waistcoat, and unhesitatingly swore like any peer of Parliament-"Upon my honour, sir, my father does not get above 40 per cent!!" Years have passed away since I heard this sentence, nor have I thought of it in the interim; but that it should just then, above all times, when I lay in a feverish state, and when it appears by no means improbable that an inquest of "40 per cents" might be called to sit upon my body, was a remarkable proof of a fiendish existence of words that, like vultures, come to the wreck. From that day I know an undertaker by instinct, and abhor him, as dogs in China fly from a butcher. Long days and nights did I lie upon my uneasy bed; and this son of an undertaker was at the foot or head of it continually. At one time he brought me a list of friends and relatives to attend my funeral, most of whom I thoroughly disliked; at another time he laid out the scarfs, and hatbands, and gloves upon my bed, and changed my curtains into black cloaks. At another time he presented me with a book of patterns of nicely drawn coffins, and coffin-ornaments, tin-lacquered cherubims, with wings, cloud, and trumpet. Then stepped out of the room, and came in again with a stonecutter, and his book of monuments and tablets-and then I racked my brain for inscriptions, and he suggested many, so abominable, that I was quite angry. Then the discussions upon the relative merits of stone and marble, the cost of cutting per letter; the clergyman's fee, the clerk's, the sexton's-if all were to have silk hatbands? the charges for pumping the grave dry. But the worst was when I felt that I was in my coffin, and yet knew all that was going on in the room about me, just the same as if I had been purposely gifted with the faculties of mesmerism-only I was conscious of sense of suffocation. Under this new magnetism I saw them carry me out of the room, the ever polite son of an undertaker pointing the way. I felt the shock as they knocked against a bureau (of which, by the by, I told them to take care), in which I had many treasures-alas! thought I-farewell! never to see them again. I very distinctly saw a near relative, to whom I had left, for me and for

him, too, a handsome legacy, smile with more hilarity than was becoming the peculiar situation, and I believed he inwardly thought he should rummage my bureau. I would call to them to stop-I wished to alter my will— but no utterence came to my wishes. "This then," says I, "is being dead in law."-"I am infant-oh! the rogues! they will ransack all-I shall have nothing.". "You shall have the bill," looked the son of an undertaker, and "upon my honour, my father does not get more than 40 per cent." Extortion! miscreant!" Lift the poor gentleman cautiously over the banisters, and don't hurt the wall for the next comer," muttered an oily-faced fellow in damp black, the smell of which was awfully suffocating. I saw and smelt through the boards that covered me. Bang they went against the staircase wall, and they staggered under me. "Well done, Old Scratch," cried another. I was horrified-was he one of my bearers? We passed the door of the room where my "mourning friends" were assembled. It was open. Who would believe it? they were in jocund conversation. My surgeon, whom I had considered the tenderest and most humane of beings, was facetious with the parson; how they, too, were "true" sportsmen-always in at the death! There was some confusion in the hall. The great door was open. I saw the two mutes, the horses of a part of the body of the hearse, and heard the wheels of the mourning coaches behind. "Go on," says one. "We can't," says another. Lawyer Codicil isn't come yet," said another.—“I sent him hatband and gloves," said the son of an undertaker, "and a coach at his door." -"Coach is returned," said another; "he can't come, he says, but will be here after the funeral to read the will.”—“Oh, he will, will he," thought I; but I couldn't jump out of the coffin, though I tried. "He will take the

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will for the deed," said I; "I never will employ Lawyer Codicil again."-There are no lawyers where you are going, a something suggested to me: and do you forget you are dead? you are going to be buried." Go on,' said the son of an undertaker. Out came the procession in cloaks, and he was ranging them in order, two and two. I saw the paraphernalia, hatbands, &c. blown by

the wind as we got out of doors, but I couldn't feel a breath of it. I have no breath in my body, thought I, and therefore the air will have no sympathy with me; I shall never feel it again. Then all the men about me looked the most solid substances I ever beheld; they had been all the morning real beef-eaters. They shoved me into the hearse. I was sensible of the first slow motion-then that I was quite dead-in fact, I fell fast asleep; and when I awoke they told me I was better-and the good surgeon was feeling my pulse, and did look jocund, and I forgave him. But it was some time before I could reconcile myself to the sight of my relatives, who had put on a hilarious look as they struck against my bureau. Though I knew perfectly that I was then alive, I had at first a confused notion as if I were two persons, one dead and one alive; then that I the living and I the dead were at issue and had a lawsuit, and that I the living had a decision of the Court of Chancery in my favour-that my dead self was outlawed for contempt of court, and that the court below had issued an "habeas corpus" against him. He was condemned in costs. The surgeon was plainly metamorphosed before my face into Lawyer Codicil. I insisted upon discharging his bill; he told his clerk to make it out; and then behind him, with his pen in his hand, I saw the aforesaid son of an undertaker, who asked him if he should tack on more than "forty per cent."

I will not attempt to run through an hundredth part of the detail of the wanderings of these two miserable days and nights, scenes various in character, but in all of which, in one shape or other, this forty per centage was my persecutor. But, while I am on the subject of this mental delusion during illness, I will just mention two dreams, the effects of laudanum, which I do not recollect that I had ever taken before.

It is utterly inconceivable to one awake and (as he trusts) in his senses how such an idea could even enter into a sick brain. I thought my head was a forest; that there was a battue in it; there were plenty of birds and of sportsmen; shots were fired, and a brace of partridges fell right through my eyes to my feet. The shots were suggested only by the slamming of a door.

The other dream was more painful. To understand which it must be told that I had suffered under acute inflammation, and it had been found necessary to apply a mustard-plaster. And here I cannot but remember my own simplicity, for when my medical friend, good creatureand he was really my friend, and I ought to be thankful to him that I am able to write this-when, I say, he told me that I might keep on the said mustard-plaster, if I pleased, till I saw him next day, I, who had enjoyed such good health that I never had had such a thing in my life, and knew not what a mustard-plaster was, said, in the innocence of my heart, that, to oblige him, I would keep it on for a week if he wished it. But, oh! tortures, all that ever were or will be, are centered in that thing called a mustard-plaster! One hour was torture beyond description. Whether it was that it was upon the tender and afflicted part, or that my constitution has a particular antipathy to such "ticklers," as my worthy friend called them, I know not; but never did I ever feel such torment as that gave me-ay, for a day and a half at least, after it was off. Now, after this pleasant little episode of the mustard conflagration, the scenes, the remembrance of which makes the horrors of Milton and Dante tame, let us pass on to my second dream. I thought I was lying on a sofa. A servant entered, and announced that a woman wished to see me. I desired her to be shown up, supposing it to be some parochial affair. With this idea, the furniture of my room was gone, all but the sofa, and I was in an up-stair room of the miserable old parish poor-house. I arose to receive the woman, whose steps I heard upon the stairs. She entered, and we met in the middle of the room. She was dressed in an old black bonnet and red cloak, a gaunt haggard creature whom I had never seen before. She instantly caught hold of me, and wrestled with me, and as I was very weak, threw me on the floor. Then I beheld such a change come over her. She threw off her cloak and her bonnet, and was instantly no longer the woman-but my friend O, my amiable friend 0- and how altered! His features assumed the most terrific aspect of rage, and his hair stood on end with fury, and his gesture was violent in the extreme. Now