"Maw!" said Miss Patsy Butts--"I wish you'd look after Archie B."
Everybody looked at Archie B., who looked up from a New Testament in which he was deeply interested, surprised and grieved.
But it grew irksome to Miss Samantha Carewe seated on the third bench.
"Ma," she whispered, "I've heard o' fun'rals in Irelan' where they passed around refreshments--d'ye reckin this is goin' to be that kind? I'm gittin' pow'ful hungry."
"Let us trust that the Lord will have it so," said her mother devoutly.
Amid great solemnity the Bishop had gone into the pulpit and was preaching:
"It may be a little onusual," he said, "to preach a man's fun'ral whilst he's alive, but it will certn'ly do him mo' good than to preach it after he's dead. If we're goin' to do any good to our feller man, let's do it while he's alive.
"Kind words to the livin' are more than monuments to the dead.
"Come to think about it, but ain't we foolish an' hypocritical the way we go on over the dead that we have forgot an' neglected whilst they lived?
"If we'd reverse the thing how many a po' creature that had given up the fight, an' shuffled off this mortal coil fur lack of a helpin' han' would be alive to-day!
"How many another that had laid down an' quit in the back stretch of life would be up an' fightin'! Why, the money spent for flowers an' fun'rals an' monuments for the pulseless dead of the world would mighty nigh feed the living dead that are always with us.
"What fools we mortals be! Why, we're not a bit better than the heathen Chinee that we love to send missionaries to and call all kinds of hard names. The Chinee put sweet cakes an' wine an' sech on the graves of their departed, an' once one of our missionaries asked his servant, Ching Lu, who had just lost his brother an' had put all them things on his grave, when he thought the corpse 'ud rise up an' eat them; an' Ching Lu told him he thought the Chinee corpse 'ud rise up an' eat his sweetmeats about the same time that the Melican man's corpse 'ud rise up an' smell all the bouquets of sweet flowers spread over him.
"An' there we are, right on the same footin' as the heathen an' don't know it.
"David Dickey, the subject of this here fun'ral discourse, was born on the fourth day of July, 1810, of pious, godly parents. Dave as a child was always a good boy, who loved his parents, worked diligently and never needed a lickin' in his life"--