“I heard once, but I've forgotten,” growled the undertaker. .
“'He paid the debt,'” said the Judge, soberly, with another whack. “I added something free of charge, an' it was this, 'but not the one due me.—B. Crocket.'”
Mr. Boggs, who sat watching the door of his shop across the way as he listened, let out his mirth in heavy bolts of sound.
There was to be a political meeting, and the town was filling up with people. Mr. Crocket and his friend went to the open door of the marble-shop and looked at the crowds passing in the main street. Soon the Judge returned to his task, and Mr. Boggs stood looking out of the door.
“They've all got to die,” said the latter, cheerfully, as he surveyed the people. “Whenever I get blue I just think o' that an' take courage.”
These hard old cynics were to me a new kind of people. They rejoiced in death—in the destruction of hopes, in the slaughter of reputations. Their rough word-play gave my young soul a shock that I have not yet forgotten. It went on day after day, while I wore away the cold marble and my tender youth.
The whole place and its people reminded me of those lines which I had heard the minister quote in a sermon:
“The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave,
The deep, dank vault, the darkness, and the worm.”
But I made no complaint, for my first undertaking had come to naught, and if I failed again what would they think of me—especially Jo and my mother. My employer pecked away at the epitaphs with his chisel and amended them with his conversation. Every morning Mr. Boggs and his three companions sat in a corner playing old sledge and boarding their cards with appalling thumps in trying stages of the game, and, after each hand', loudly confessing their calculations.