hould twitch him by the coat tails.
She had done it more than once. She had also, on one occasion, got up
and straightened his ministerial neckerchief, which he had gradually
"prayed" around his saintly neck until it was behind the right ear.

These plans proved so fascinating to aunt Hitty that she walked quite
half a mile beyond Croft's, and was obliged to retrace her steps.
She conceived bands of black alpaca for the sleeves and hats of the
pallbearers, and a festoon of the same over the front gate, if there
should be any left over. She planned the singing by the choir. There
had been no real choir-singing at any funeral in Edgewood since the Rev.
Joshua Beckwith had died. She would ask them to open with--

Rebel mourner, cease your weepin'.
You too must die.

This was a favorite funeral hymn. The only difficulty would be in
keeping aunt Becky Burnham from pitching it in a key where nobody but a
soprano skylark, accustomed to warble at a great height, could
possibly sing it. It was generally given at the grave, when Elder Weeks
officiated; but it never satisfied aunt Hitty, because the good elder
always looked so unpicturesque when he threw a red bandanna handkerchief
over his head before beginning the twenty-seven verses. After the long
prayer, she would have Almira Berry give for a solo--

This gro-o-oanin' world 's too dark and
dre-e-ar for the saints' e - ter - nal rest,

This hymn, if it did not wholly reconcile one to death, enabled one to
look upon life with sufficient solemnity. It was a thousand pities, she
thought, that the old hearse was so shabby and rickety, and that Gooly
Eldridge, who drove it, would insist on wearing a faded peach-blow
overcoat. It was exasperating to think of the public spirit at Egypt,
and contrast it with the state of things at Pleasant River. In Egypt
they had sold the old hearse house for a sausage shop, and now they were
having hearse sociables every month to raise money for a new one.

All these details flew through aunt Hitty's mind in fascinating
procession. There shouldn't be "a hitch" anywhere. There had been a
hitch at her last funeral, but she had been only an assistant there.
Matt Henderson had been struck by lightning at the foot of Squire Bean's
old nooning tree, and certain circumstances combined to make the funeral
one of unusual interest, so much so that fat old Mrs. Potter from
Deerwander created a sensation at the cemetery. She was so anx