ear breaking up the funeral. There was an old friend
of mine years ago, a newspaper man, who was the most genial and loving
soul I ever knew, but he stuttered so you couldn't help laughing to hear
him. He could write the most beautiful things without stuttering, but
when he began to talk, and the talk would not come, and he stammered,
and puckered up his dear face, and finally got the words out, chewed up
into little pieces, with hyphens between the syllables, you had to
laugh or die. We were great friends, and used to smoke and tell stories
together, and pass evenings that I can now recall as the sweetest of my
life. There were many things in which we were alike. We smoked the same
kind of tobacco, in clay pipes, and lived on the same street, and, after
an evening of pleasure, whichever of us was the least wearied with the
day's work and night of enjoyment walked home with the other. We used
to talk about the hereafter, and promised each other to see that the
one that died first should not have a funeral sermon that would give us
taffy. It was my friend's idea that, if the minister spread it on too
thick, he would raise up in the coffin and protest. He was not what you
would call a good Christian, as the world goes, but I would trust him
to argue with St. Peter about getting inside the gate, because, if his
stutter ever got St. Peter to laughing, my friend would surely get in.
Well, he died, and I was one of the bearers at the funeral, with seven
others of his old friends; and when the minister was picturing the
virtues of the deceased which he never possessed, one of the bouquets on
the coffin rolled off on the floor, and I thought of what my friend had
said about calling the minister down, and in my imagination I could see
the old fellow raising up in the coffin and stuttering, and puckering
up his face there on that solemn occasion, and for about ten seconds it
seemed as though I would split with laughter; but I held it in, and we
got the good old genius buried all right, but it was a terrible strain
on my vest buttons," and the old smoker lighted another match on his
trousers and started the pipe, which had grown cold as he talked of the
stuttering remains.

"O, say, Uncle Ike," said the boy, as he shuddered a little at the idea
of a stuttering corpse talking back at a minister, "speaking of heaven,
do you think the men that furnished embalmed beef to the soldiers and
made them sick in Cuba will get to heaven when t