ENTERPRISING UNDERTAKERS.
Ophelia, in her madness, exclaims, "They say the owl was a baker's daughter." This was a delirious mistake. What they do say, or ought to say, is, that the owl is an undertaker's son. For truly the son of a certain sort of undertaker has an owl for his father: is an owl and the son of an owl, that ominous bird which
"Puts the wretch that lies in woe,
In remembrance of a shroud."
Witness the subjoined statement by a correspondent of the Daily News:—
"A member of my family is just recovering from an illness which, for a time, kept all about her in daily apprehension. The fact of the illness becoming known in the neighbourhood, I am forthwith inundated with undertakers' circulars, in which all the horrid paraphernalia of the tomb are set forth, together with the various merits, "readiness," "dispatch," &c., of the applicant, expectant of his job, and all this is shamelessly, indecently, wantonly, thrust before the very eyes of afflicted relatives, watching the sick bed with feelings racked between the alternations of hope and despair."
Precisely as the light in the sick chamber elicits the shriek of the screech-owl, so does the muffled knocker attract the puffs of the advertising undertaker. With the attributes of the owl, however, these death-hunters combine the propensities of the crow and the vulture, which repair to the spot whereon a creature is dying, and hover impatiently about their prey that still breathes. Occasionally, no doubt, the vultures and crows, by a premature bite or dig of the beak, expedite the process of dissolution, and very likely the other birds of prey not unfrequently do the same thing: for one of these undertakers' circulars getting, by the folly of an old nurse, or any other misfortune, into the hands of a person dangerously ill, would be extremely likely to occasion a fatal shock, and convert the expected corpse into an actual one.
The writer in the Daily News says that he called on one of the senders of these disgusting handbills, and informed the sordid and unfeeling snob that in case the services proffered by him were ever, unhappily, required, he would undoubtedly not be employed to render them. It is to be hoped that the determination expressed by this gentleman will be strenuously acted on by everybody else; and that when any one gets hold of a communication of this sort under similar circumstances, he will, instead of flinging it in a rage behind the fire, carefully preserve it, for the purpose of showing it to all his acquaintance, in order that they may make a note of the advertiser's name, lest they should ever forget it, and be induced to give any custom to such an odious brute.
Mind, however, that if you will associate sepulture with upholstery, you must expect to have upholsterers looking to sepulture with mere upholsterers' feelings. You ought not to be surprised that undertakers speculate on the prospect of a job at your house. It should not astonish you if one of these gentry were to propose to measure your wife or child for a coffin. If your funerals must needs be "furnished," your funeral furniture will involve competition, and its incidental snobbisms. Put away the soul's old clothes in a plain box, with decent rites and no other ceremony. Deposit them where they may most conveniently decompose, and deposit as little as possible of any value to decompose with them. Why should it cost a considerable sum to put a small piece of organic framework into earth? Whilst that operation continues to be expensive, we shall be sure to be pestered by candidates for its performance, invading the very chamber of sickness with tenders of cheap coffins, reduced shrouds, moderate palls, ridiculously low hearses, economical mourning coaches, and highly reasonable feathers.