But so it is; generations and generations are born, live, and die, and the old bells, a-takin' life easy, jest swing on, and ring out jest as sweet and calm and kinder careless at our death as at our birth.
The bells sounded dretful melancholy and heart achin' to me; that day they seemed to be soundin' a requiem clear from California to Jonesville for the good Man who had passed away.
Jest as we went down the steps we hearn a bystander a-tellin' another one "that Leland Stanford wuz dead." And I wuz fearful rousted up about it; I felt like death to hear on't; and to think that I never had a chance to tell him what I thought on him. I was fearful agitated, and almost by the side of myself; but jest at that juncture—jest as I sez to Josiah, "I shouldn't felt so bad if I had had a chance to tell him what I thought on him, and encourage him in his noble doin's, and warn him in one or two things"—jest at that minit, sez Josiah, "I've lost my bandanny handkerchief;" and he told me, "To wait there for him, that he thought that he remembered where he had dropped it—back in a antick room in the back part of the house."
And I thought more'n like as not that wuz the last I should see of him for hours and hours, the crowd wuz so immense and the search wuz so oncertain.
But it wuz a good new handkerchief—red and yeller, with a palm-tree pattern on it—and I couldn't discourage him from huntin' for it.
And jest as he turned to go back, he sez—
"Why, if there hain't Deacon Rogers of Loontown!"
And he advanced onto a good-lookin' man, who wuz a-standin' some distance off.