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Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion 255
" Now, John, we talked it all over amongst ourselves, and this is what we've done. You see, everybody was a-movin' from the old buryin' ground, and our folks was 'most about left to theirselves, as you may say. They was crowded, too, as you know; lot wa'n't big enough in the first place; and last year, when Seth's wife died, we couldn't hardly tuck her in. She sort o' overlaid Deacon Shorb's lot, and he soured on her, so to speak, and on the rest of us, too. So we talked it over, and I was for a lay-out in the new simitery on the hill. They wa'n't unwilling, if it was cheap. Well, the two best and biggest plots was No. 8 and No. 9 — both of a size; nice comfortable room for twenty-six — twenty-six full-growns, that is; but you reckon in children and other shorts, and strike an everage, and I should say you might lay in thirty, or may be thirty-two or three, pretty genteel — no crowd-in' to signify."
"That's a plenty, William. Which one did you buy?"
" Well, I'm a-comin' to that, John. You see, No. 8 was thirteen dollars, No. 9 fourteen—"
" I see. So's't you took No. 8."
" You wait. I took No. 9. And I'll tell you for
why. In the first place, Deacon Shorb wanted it.
Well, after the way he'd gone on about Seth's wife
overlappin' his prem'ses, I'd 'a' beat him out of that
No. 9 if I'd 'a' had to stand two dollars extra, let
alone one. That's the way I felt about it. Says I,
what's a dollar, anyway? Life's on'y a pilgrimage,
says I; we ain't here for good, and we can't take it
with us, says I. So I just dumped it down, knowin'
the Lord don't suffer a good deed to go for nothin',
and cal'latin' to take it out o' somebody in the course
o' trade. Then there was another reason, John. No.
9's a long way the handiest lot in the simitery, and the 17 |
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