The next day we broke camp and was gone from that place, and I took away
with me the half of a ring me and Martha had chopped in two. We kept on
going, and by the time punkins and county fairs was getting ripe we was
into the upper left-hand corner of Ohio. And there Looey left us.
One day Doctor Kirby and me was walking along the main street of a
little town and we seen a bang-up funeral percession coming. It must of
been one of the Grand Army of the Republicans, fur they was some of the
old soldiers in buggies riding along behind, and a big string of people
follering in more buggies and some on foot. Everybody was looking mighty
sollum. But they was one man setting beside the undertaker on the seat
of the hearse that was looking sollumer than them all. It was Looey, and
I'll bet the corpse himself would of felt proud and happy and contented
if he could of knowed the style Looey was giving that funeral.
It wasn't nothing Looey done, fur he didn't do nothing but jest set
there with his arms folded onto his bosom and look sad. But he done THAT
better than any one else. He done it so well that you forgot the corpse
was the chief party to that funeral. Looey took all the glory from him.
He had jest natcherally stole that funeral away from its rightful owner
with his enjoyment of it. He seen the doctor and me as the hearse went
by our corner, but he never let on. A couple of hours later Looey comes
into camp and says he is going to quit.
The doctor asts him if he has inherited money.
"No," says Looey, "but my aunt has given me a chancet to go into
business."
Looey says he was born nigh there, and was prowling around town the day
before and run acrost an old aunt of his'n he had forgot all about.
She is awful respectable and religious and ashamed of him being into
a travelling show. And she has offered to lend him enough to buy a
half-share in a business.
"Well," says the doctor, "I hope it will be something you are fitted
for and will enjoy. But I've noticed that after a man gets the habit of
roaming around this terrestial ball it's mighty hard to settle down and
watch his vine and fig tree grow."
Looey smiles in a sad sort of a way, which he seldom smiled fur
anything, and says he guesses he'll like the business. He says they
ain't many businesses he could take to. Most of them makes you forget
this world is but a fleeting show. But he has found a business which
keeps you reminded all the time that dust is dust and ash to ashes shalt
return. When he first went into the medicine business, he said, he was
drawed to it by the diseases and the sudden dyings-off it always kept
him in mind of. He thought they wasn't no other business could lay over
it fur that kind of comfort. But he has found out his mistake.
"What kind of business are you going into?" asts the doctor.
"I am going to be an undertaker," says Looey. "My aunt says this town
needs the right kind of an undertaker bad."
Mr. Wilcox, the undertaker that town has, is getting purty old and
shaky, Looey says, and young Mr. Wilcox, his son, is too light-minded
and goes at things too brisk and airy to give it the right kind of a
send-off. People don't want him joking around their corpses and he is
a fat young man and can't help making puns even in the presence of the
departed. Old Mr. Wilcox's eyesight is getting so poor he made a scandal
in that town only the week before. He was composing a departed's face
into a last smile, but he went too fur with it, and give the departed
one of them awful mean, devilish kind of grins, like he had died with
a bad temper on. By the time the departed's fambly had found it out,
things had went too fur, and the face had set that-a-way, so it wasn't
safe to try to change it any.
Old Mr. Wilcox had several brands of last looks. One was called:
"Bear Up, for We Will Meet Again." The one that had went wrong was his
favourite look, named: "O Death, Where is Thy Victory?"
Looey's aunt says she will buy him a partnership if she is satisfied he
can fill the town's needs. They have a talk with the Wilcoxes, and he
rides on the hearse that day fur a try-out. His aunt peeks out behind
her bedroom curtains as the percession goes by her house, and when she
sees the style Looey is giving to that funeral, and how easy it comes
to him, that settles it with her on the spot. And it seems the hull dern
town liked it, too, including the departed's fambly.
Looey says they is a lot of chancet fur improvements in the undertaking
game by one whose heart is in his work, and he is going into that
business to make a success of it, and try and get all the funeral trade
fur miles around. He reads us an advertisement of the new firm he has
been figgering out fur that town's weekly paper. I cut a copy out when
it was printed, and it is about the genteelest thing like that I even
seen, as follers:
WILCOX AND SIMMS Invite Your Patronage
This earth is but a fleeting show, and the blank-winged angels wait for
all. It is always a satisfaction to remember that all possible has been
done for the deceased.
See Our New Line of Coffins
Lined Caskets a Specialty
Lodge Work Solicited
Time and tide wait for no man, and his days are few and full of
troubles. The paths of glory lead but to the grave, and none can tell
when mortal feet may stumble.
When in Town Drop in and Inspect Our New Embalming Outfit. It is a
Pleasure to Show Goods and Tools Even if Your Family Needs no Work Done
Just Yet
Outfits for mourners who have been bereaved on short notice a specialty.
We take orders for tombstones. Look at our line of shrouds, robes, and
black suits for either sex and any age. Give us just one call, and you
will entrust future embalmings and obsequies in your family to no other
firm.
WILCOX AND SIMMS Main Street, Near Depot
The doctor, he reads it over careful and says she orter drum up trade,
all right. Looey tells us that mebby, if he can get that town educated
up to it, he will put in a creamatory, where he will burn them, too, but
will go slow, fur that there sollum and beautiful way of returning ash
to ashes might make some prejudice in such a religious town.
The last we seen of Looey was a couple of days later when we told him
good-bye in his shop. Old Mr. Wilcox was explaining to him the science
of them last looks he was so famous at when he was a younger man. Young
Mr. Wilcox was laying on a table fur Looey to practise on, and Looey was
learning fast. But he nearly broke down when he said good-bye, fur he
liked the doctor.
"Doc," he says, "you've been a good friend, and I won't never forget
you. They ain't much I can do, and in this deceitful world words is less
than actions. But if you ever was to die within a hundred miles of me,
I'd go," he says, "and no other hands but mine should lay you out. And
it wouldn't cost you a cent, either. Nor you neither, Danny."
We thanked him kindly fur the offer, and went.
The next town we come to there was a county fair, and the doctor run
acrost an old pal of his'n who had a show on the grounds and wanted to
hire him fur what he called a ballyhoo man. Which was the first I ever
hearn them called that, but I got better acquainted with them since.
They are the fellers that stands out in front and gets you all excited
about the Siamese twins or the bearded lady or the snake-charmer or the
Circassian beauties or whatever it is inside the tent, as represented
upon the canvas. The doctor says he will do it fur a week, jest fur fun,
and mebby pick up another feller to take Looey's place out there.
This feller's name is Watty Sanders, and his wife is a fat lady in his
own show and very good-natured when not intoxicated nor mad at Watty. She
was billed on the curtains outside fur five hundred and fifty pounds,
and Watty says she really does weigh nigh on to four hundred. But being
a fat lady's husband ain't no bed of rosy ease at that, Watty tells
the doctor. It's like every other trade--it has its own pertic'ler
responsibilities and troubles. She is a turrible expense to Watty on
account of eating so much. The tales that feller told of how hard he
has to hustle showing her off in order to support her appetite would of
drawed tears from a pawnbroker's sign, as Doctor Kirby says. Which he
found it cheaper fur his hull show to board and sleep in the tent, and
we done likewise.
Well, I got a job with that show myself. Watty had a wild man canvas
but no wild man, so he made me an offer and I took him up. I was from
Borneo, where they're all supposed to be captured. Jest as Doctor Kirby
would get to his talk about how the wild man had been ketched after
great struggle and expense, with four men killed and another crippled,
there would be an awful rumpus on the inside of the tent, with wild
howlings and the sound of revolvers shot off and a woman screaming. Then
I would come busting out all blacked up from head to heel with no more
clothes on than the law pervided fur, yipping loud and shaking a big
spear and rolling my eyes, and Watty would come rushing after me firing
his revolver. I would make fur the doctor and draw my spear back to jab
it clean through him, and Watty would grab my arm. And the doctor would
whirl round and they would wrastle me to the ground and I would be
handcuffed and dragged back into the tent, still howling and struggling
to break loose. On the inside my part of the show was to be wild in a
cage. I would be chained to the floor, and every now and then I would
get wilder and rattle my chains and shake the bars and make jumps at the
crowd and carry on, and make believe I was too mad to eat the pieces of
raw meat Watty throwed into the cage.
Watty had a snake-charmer woman, with an awful long, bony kind of neck,
working fur him, and another feller that was her husband and eat glass.
The show opened up with them two doing what they said was a comic turn.
Then the fat lady come on. Whilst everybody was admiring her size, and
looking at the number of pounds on them big cheat scales Watty weighed
her on, the long-necked one would be changing to her snake clothes.
Which she only had one snake, and he had been in the business so long,
and was so kind of worn out and tired with being charmed so much, it
always seemed like a pity to me the way she would take and twist him
around. I guess they never was a snake was worked harder fur the little
bit he got to eat, nor got no sicker of a woman's society than poor old
Reginald did. After Reginald had been charmed a while, it would be the
glass eater's turn. Which he really eat it, and the doctor says that
kind always dies before they is fifty. I never knowed his right name,
but what he went by was The Human Ostrich.
Watty's wife was awful jealous of Mrs. Ostrich, fur she got the idea
she was carrying on with Watty. One night I hearn an argument from the
fenced-off part of the tent Watty and his wife slept in. She was setting
on Watty's chest and he was gasping fur mercy.
"You know it ain't true," says Watty, kind of smothered-like.
"It is," says she, "you own up it is!" And she give him a jounce.
"No, darling," he gets out of him, "you know I never could bear them
thin, scrawny kind of women." And he begins to call her pet names of
all kinds and beg her please, if she won't get off complete, to set
somewheres else a minute, fur his chest he can feel giving way, and his
ribs caving in. He called her his plump little woman three or four
times and she must of softened up some, fur she moved and his voice come
stronger, but not less meek and lowly. And he follers it up:
"Dolly, darling," he says, "I bet I know something my little woman don't
know."
"What is it?" the fat lady asts him.
"You don't know what a cruel, weak stomach your hubby has got," Watty
says, awful coaxing like, "or you wouldn't bear down quite so hard onto
it--please, Dolly!"
She begins to blubber and say he is making fun of her big size, and if
he is mean to her any more or ever looks at another woman agin she will
take anti-fat and fade away to nothing and ruin his show, and it is
awful hard to be made a joke of all her life and not have no steady home
nor nothing like other women does.
"You know I worship every pound of you, little woman," says Watty,
still coaxing. "Why can't you trust me? You know, Dolly, darling, I
wouldn't take your weight in gold for you." And he tells her they never
was but once in all his life he has so much as turned his head to look
at another woman, and that was by way of a plutonic admiration, and no
flirting intended, he says. And even then it was before he had met his
own little woman. And that other woman, he says, was plump too, fur he
wouldn't never look at none but a plump woman.
"What did she weigh?" asts Watty's wife. He tells her a measly little
three hundred pound.
"But she wasn't refined like my little woman," says Watty, "and when I
seen that I passed her up." And inch by inch Watty coaxed her clean off
of him.
But the next day she hearn him and Mrs. Ostrich giggling about
something, and she has a reg'lar tantrum, and jest fur meanness goes out
and falls down on the race track, pertending she has fainted, and they
can't move her no ways, not even roll her. But finally they rousted her
out of that by one of these here sprinkling carts backing up agin her
and turning loose.
But aside from them occasional mean streaks Dolly was real nice, and I
kind of got to liking her. She tells me that because she is so fat no
one won't take her serious like a human being, and she wisht she was
like other women and had a fambly. That woman wanted a baby, too, and I
bet she would of been good to it, fur she was awful good to animals. She
had been big from a little girl, and never got no sympathy when sick,
nor nothing, and even whilst she played with dolls as a kid she knowed
she looked ridiculous, and was laughed at. And by jings!--they was
the funniest thing come to light before we left that crowd. That poor,
derned, old, fat fool HAD a doll yet, all hid away, and when she was
alone she used to take it out and cuddle it. Well, Dolly never had many
friends, and you couldn't blame her much if she did drink a little too
much now and then, or get mad at Watty fur his goings-on and kneel down
on him whilst he was asleep. Them was her only faults and I liked the
old girl. Yet I could see Watty had his troubles too.
That show busted up before the fair closed. Fur one day Watty's wife
gets mad at Mrs. Ostrich and tries to set on her. And then Mrs. Ostrich
gets mad too, and sicks Reginald onto her. Watty's wife is awful scared
of Reginald, who don't really have ambition enough to bite no one, let
alone a lady built so round everywhere he couldn't of got a grip on her.
And as fur as wrapping himself around her and squashing her to death,
Reginald never seen the day he could reach that fur. Reginald's feelings
is plumb friendly toward Dolly when he is turned loose, but she don't
know that, and she has some hysterics and faints in earnest this time.
Well, they was an awful hullaballo when she come to, and fur the sake of
peace in the fambly Watty has to fire Mr. and Mrs. Ostrich and poor old
Reginald out of their jobs, and the show is busted. So Doctor Kirby and
me lit out fur other parts agin.