ertaker wears
gaiters, and the other straps. We trot behind them, betting with each
other, you on Gaiters, I on Straps. I win; a _Deus ex machina_ saves me,
or I should have lost. An over-goaded ox rushes bewildered round a corner,
charges and overthrows the foremost coffin; it is broken, and the body is
exposed--its white shroud flaps upon the mud. This has occurred once, I
know; and how much oftener, I know not. So Gaiters pioneers his party to
the nearest undertaker for repairs, and we follow the triumphant
procession to the church-yard. The minister there meets it, holding his
white handkerchief most closely to his nose: the mourners imitate him,
sick and sorrowful. Your toe sticks in a bit of carrion, as we pass near
the grave and seek the sexton. He is a pimpled man, who moralizes much;
but his morality is maudlin. He is drunk. He is accustomed to antagonize
the "spirits" of the dead with spirits from the "Pig and Whistle." Here
let the _seance_ end.

At home again, let us remark upon a striking fact. Those poor creatures
whom we saw in sorrow by the grave, believed that they were sowing flesh
to immortality--and so they were. They did not know that they were also
sowing coffee. By a trustworthy informant, I am taught that of the old
coffin-wood dug up out of the crowded church-yards, a large quantity that
is not burned, is dried and ground; and that ground coffee is therewith
adulterated in a wholesale manner. It communicates to cheap coffee a good
color; and puts Body into it, there can be no doubt of that. It will be a
severe blow to the trade in British coffees if intramural interment be
forbidden. We shall be driven to depend upon distant planters for what now
can be produced in any quantity at home.

Remember the largeness of the interests involved. Within the last thirty
years, a million and a half of corpses have been hidden under ground, in
patches, here and there, among the streets of London. This pasturage we
have enjoyed from our youth up, and it is threatened now to put us off our
feed.

I say no more, for better arguments than these can not be urged on behalf
of the maintenance of City grave-yards. Possibly these may not prevail.
Yet never droop. Nevertheless, without despairing, take a house in the
vicinity of such a garden of the dead. If our lawgivers should fear the
becoming neighborly with Dante's Cordelier, and therefore absolutely
interdict more burials in London, still you are safe. They sh