to heaven in the twin to it, if it takes the last
rap the O'Flaherties can raise; and moind you, stick on some extras,
too, and I'll give ye another dollar."

'And as I lay-in with the livery stables, of course I don't forget to
mention that Mrs. O'Shaughnessy hired fifty-four dollars' worth of hacks
and flung as much style into Dennis's funeral as if he had been a duke
or an assassin. And of course she sails in and goes the O'Shaughnessy
about four hacks and an omnibus better. That used to be, but that's all
played now; that is, in this particular town. The Irish got to piling up
hacks so, on their funerals, that a funeral left them ragged and hungry
for two years afterward; so the priest pitched in and broke it all up.
He don't allow them to have but two hacks now, and sometimes only one.'

'Well,' said I, 'if you are so light-hearted and jolly in ordinary
times, what must you be in an epidemic?'

He shook his head.

'No, you're off, there. We don't like to see an epidemic. An epidemic
don't pay. Well, of course I don't mean that, exactly; but it don't pay
in proportion to the regular thing. Don't it occur to you, why?'

No.

'Think.'

'I can't imagine. What is it?'

'It's just two things.'

'Well, what are they?'

'One's Embamming.'

'And what's the other?'

'Ice.'

'How is that?'

'Well, in ordinary times, a person dies, and we lay him up in ice; one
day two days, maybe three, to wait for friends to come. Takes a lot of
it--melts fast. We charge jewelry rates for that ice, and war-prices for
attendance. Well, don't you know, when there's an epidemic, they rush
'em to the cemetery the minute the breath's out. No market for ice in an
epidemic. Same with Embamming. You take a family that's able to embam,
and you've got a soft thing. You can mention sixteen different ways to
do it--though there AIN'T only one or two ways, when you come down to
the bottom facts of it--and they'll take the highest-priced way, every
time. It's human nature--human nature in grief. It don't reason,
you see. Time being, it don't care a dam. All it wants is physical
immortality for deceased, and they're willing to pay for it. All you've
got to do is to just be ca'm and stack it up--they'll stand the racket.
Why, man, you can take a defunct that you couldn't GIVE away; and get
your embamming traps around you and go to work; and in a couple of hours
he is worth a cool six hundred--that's what HE'S worth. There ain't
anything