a conductor the absolute folly of a midnight inspection of
tickets, and had been treated by him as an escaped lunatic. No, there
was no relief from this suffocating and insupportable loneliness to be
gained then. I raised the window-blind and looked out. We were
passing a farm-house. A light, evidently the lantern of a farm-hand,
was swung beside a barn. Yes, the faintest tinge of rose in the far
horizon. Morning, surely, at last.

We had stopped at a station. Two men had got into the car, and had
taken seats in the one vacant section, yawning occasionally and
conversing in a languid, perfunctory sort of way. They sat opposite
each other, occasionally looking out of the window, but always giving
the strong impression that they were tired of each other's company. As
I looked out of my curtains at them, the One Man said, with a feebly
concealed yawn:--

"Yes, well, I reckon he was at one time as poplar an ondertaker ez I
knew."

The Other Man (inventing a question rather than giving an answer, out
of some languid, social impulse): "But was he--this yer ondertaker--a
Christian--hed he jined the church?"

The One Man (reflectively): "Well, I don't know ez you might call him a
purfessin' Christian; but he hed--yes, he hed conviction. I think Dr.
Wylie hed him under conviction. Et least that was the way I got it
from HIM."

A long, dreary pause. The Other Man (feeling it was incumbent upon him
to say something): "But why was he poplar ez an ondertaker?"

The One Man (lazily): "Well, he was kinder poplar with widders and
widderers--sorter soothen 'em a kinder, keerless way; slung 'em suthin'
here and there, sometimes outer the Book, sometimes outer hisself, ez a
man of experience as hed hed sorror. Hed, they say (VERY CAUTIOUSLY),
lost three wives hisself, and five children by this yer new
disease--dipthery--out in Wisconsin. I don't know the facts, but
that's what's got round."

The Other Man: "But how did he lose his poplarity?"

The One Man: "Well, that's the question. You see he interduced some
things into ondertaking that waz new. He hed, for instance, a way, as
he called it, of manniperlating the features of the deceased."

The Other Man (quietly): "How manniperlating?"

The One Man (struck with a bright and aggressive thought): "Look yer,
did ye ever notiss how, generally speakin', onhandsome a corpse is?"

The Other Man had noticed this fact.

The One Man (returning to his fact): "Why th