he grave. The living have such a tremendous advantage
over the dead, that they can neither help feeling it nor avoid a
display of the feeling. When the lion is buried the dogs crack jokes
at the funeral. They do it in a subdued manner, no doubt, and with a
sense of proprieties, but nevertheless they do it. Their immense
superiority is never so apparent as at just this moment.

This humor, which one notes in Hardy, is akin to the humor of the
grave-diggers in _Hamlet_, but not so grim. I have heard a country
undertaker describe the details of the least attractive branch of his
uncomfortable business with a pride and self-satisfaction that would
have been farcical had not the subject been so depressing. This would
have been matter for Hardy's pen. There are few scenes in his books
more telling than that which shows the operations in the family vault
of the Luxellians, when John Smith, Martin Cannister, and old Simeon
prepare the place for Lady Luxellian's coffin. It seems hardly wise to
pronounce this episode as good as the grave-diggers' scene in
_Hamlet_; that would shock some one and gain for the writer the
reputation of being enthusiastic rather than critical. But I profess
that I enjoy the talk of old Simeon and Martin Cannister quite as much
as the talk of the first and second grave-diggers.

Simeon, the shriveled mason, was 'a marvelously old man, whose skin
seemed so much too large for his body that it would not stay in
position.' He talked of the various great dead whose coffins filled
the family vault. Here was the stately and irascible Lord George:--

'Ah, poor Lord George,' said the mason, looking contemplatively at the
huge coffin; 'he and I were as bitter enemies once as any could be
when one is a lord and t'other only a mortal man. Poor fellow! He'd
clap his hand upon my shoulder and cuss me as familiar and neighborly
as if he'd been a common chap. Ay, 'a cussed me up hill and 'a cussed
me down; and then 'a would rave out again and the goold clamps of his
fine new teeth would glisten in the sun like fetters of brass, while
I, being a small man and poor, was fain to say nothing at all. Such a
strappen fine gentleman as he was too! Yes, I rather liken en
sometimes. But once now and then, when I looked at his towering
height, I'd think in my inside, "What a weight you'll be, my lord, for
our arms to lower under the inside of Endelstow church some day!"'

'And was he?' inquired a young laborer.

'He was. H