“I hope they won’t bury me in New York. I’ve heard it said that the metropolis is noisy enough to wake the dead and it is certain that my presence would make Captain Landais turn over in his grave. I always did bore Landais and so if I invaded the territory of the tired, St. Patrick’s cemetery would yawn and give up its dead.”
“Had you been a politician,” observed Matt Quay, “some faction of our party would long since have unearthed one of your letters in which you had selected your burial place.”
“You have not yet told me your choice,” I reiterated, remembering the city editor’s parting words.
“I would rather be embalmed in the throbbing heart of the sea, with which my own heart beat so long in unison. My grave has been unmarked for a century, so why not forever? I would prefer to be commander of that greatest army of all, the unknown dead, whose resting place is marked only by monuments of billows and flowers of feathery spray. A bridal veil of silver surge is as elaborate a shroud as I desire.”
“How about cremation?”
“We’ll get enough of that down here some day, so it is useless to undergo the ‘roasting’ process twice. Yet it has its advantages. Soldiers and sailors don’t get much time for godliness, you know, and as cleanliness is next to it, cremation might—”
“John Brown’s body lies a smouldering in—”
That was as far as Mr. Anon could proceed, for he had fired John Brown’s anger. That worthy said he was hanged if he were going to allow anybody to “roast” him by any such incendiary remark.
“Choke him off,” came the chorus from all sides. “Here’s a rope. String him up.”
This brought up such unpleasant recollections of the past that John Brown subsided. I hastened to pacify him by observing: