y, thrust
before the very eyes of afflicted relatives, watching the sick bed
with feelings racked between the alternations of hope and despair."

Precisely as the light in the sick chamber elicits the shriek of the
screech-owl, so does the muffled knocker attract the puffs of the
advertising undertaker. With the attributes of the owl, however, these
death-hunters combine the propensities of the crow and the vulture,
which repair to the spot whereon a creature is dying, and hover
impatiently about their prey that still breathes. Occasionally, no
doubt, the vultures and crows, by a premature bite or dig of the beak,
expedite the process of dissolution, and very likely the other birds of
prey not unfrequently do the same thing: for one of these undertakers'
circulars getting, by the folly of an old nurse, or any other
misfortune, into the hands of a person dangerously ill, would be
extremely likely to occasion a fatal shock, and convert the expected
corpse into an actual one.

The writer in the _Daily News_ says that he called on one of the senders
of these disgusting handbills, and informed the sordid and unfeeling
snob that in case the services proffered by him were ever, unhappily,
required, he would undoubtedly not be employed to render them. It is to
be hoped that the determination expressed by this gentleman will be
strenuously acted on by everybody else; and that when any one gets hold
of a communication of this sort under similar circumstances, he will,
instead of flinging it in a rage behind the fire, carefully preserve it,
for the purpose of showing it to all his acquaintance, in order that
they may make a note of the advertiser's name, lest they should ever
forget it, and be induced to give any custom to such an odious brute.

Mind, however, that if you will associate sepulture with upholstery, you
must expect to have upholsterers looking to sepulture with mere
upholsterers' feelings. You ought not to be surprised that undertakers
speculate on the prospect of a job at your house. It should not astonish
you if one of these gentry were to propose to measure your wife or child
for a coffin. If your funerals must needs be "furnished," your funeral
furniture will involve competition, and its incidental snobbisms. Put
away the soul's old clothes in a plain box, with decent rites and no
other ceremony. Deposit them where they may most conveniently decompose,
and deposit as little as possible of any value to d