we say?" "No. Coaches and pair." "You 'll
excuse my mentioning it, Sir, but pairs to the
coaches, and four to the hearse, would have a
singular appearance to the neighbours. When
we put four to anything, we always carry four
right through." "Well! say four!" "Thank
you, Sir. Feathers of course?" "No. No
feathers. They 're absurd." "Very good,
Sir. No feathers?" "No." "Very good,
Sir. We can do fours without feathers, Sir,
but it's what we never do. When we buried
Mr. Grundy, there was feathers, and—I only
throw it out, Sir—Mrs. Grundy might think
it strange." "Very well! Feathers!" "Thank
you, Sir,"—and so on.

Is it and so on, or not, through the whole
black job of jobs, because of Mrs. Grundy and
the gen-teel party?

I suppose you 've thought about this? I
suppose you 've reflected on what you 're
doing, and what you 've done? When you
read about those poisonings for the burial
society money, you consider how it is that
burial societies ever came to be, at all? You
perfectly understand—you who are not the
poor, and ought to set 'em an example—that,
besides making the whole thing costly, you 've
confused their minds about this burying, and
have taught 'em to confound expence and show,
with respect and affection. You know all
you' ve got to answer for, you gen-teel parties?
I 'm glad of it.

I believe it's only the monkeys who are
servile imitators, is it? You reflect! To be
sure you do. So does Mrs. Grundy—and
she casts reflections—don't she?

What animals are those who scratch
shallow holes in the ground in crowded
places, scarcely hide their dead in 'em, and
become unnaturally infected by their dead,
and die by thousands? Vultures, I suppose.
I think you call the Vulture an obscene bird?
I don't consider him agreeable, but I never
caught him misconducting himself in that way.

My honourable friend, the dog—I call him
my honourable friend in your Parliamentary
sense, because I hate him—turns round three
times before he goes to sleep. I ask him
why? He says he don't know; but he always
does it. Do you know how you ever came to
have that board of feathers carried on a
fellow's head? Come. You 're a boastful
race. Show yourselves superior to the dog,
and tell me!

Now, I don't love many people; but I do
love the undertakers. I except them from the
censure I pass upon you in general. They
know you so well, that I look upon 'em as a
sort of Ravens. They are so certain of your
being gen-teel parties, that they stick at nothing.
They are sure they 've got the upper
hand of you. Our proprietor was reading
the paper, only last night, and there was an
advertisement in it from a sensitive and
libelled undertaker, to wit, that the allegation
"that funerals were unnecessarily expensive,
was an insult to his professional brethren."

Ha! ha! Why he knows he has you on the
hip. It's nothing to him that their being
unnecessarily expensive is a fact within the
experience of all of you as glaring as the sun
when there's not a cloud. He is certain that
when you want a funeral "performed," he has
only to be down upon you with Mrs. Grundy,
to do what he likes with you—and then he 'll
go home, and laugh like a Hyæna.

I declare (supposing I wasn't detained
against my will by our proprietor) that, if I
had any arms, I 'd take the undertakers to
'em! There's another, in the same paper,
who says they 're libelled, in the accusation of
having disgracefully disturbed the meeting in
favour of what you call your General Interment
Bill. Our establishment was in the
Strand, that night. There was no crowd of
undertakers' men there, with circulars in
their pockets, calling on 'em to come in
coloured clothes to make an uproar; it wasn't
undertakers' men who got in with forged
orders to yell and screech; it wasn't
undertakers' men who made a brutal charge at
the platform, and overturned the ladies like a
troop of horse. Of course not. I know
all about it.

But—and lay this well to heart, you Lords
of the creation, as you call yourselves!—it is
these undertakers' men to whom, in the last
trying, bitter grief of life, you confide the
loved and honoured forms of your sisters,
mothers, daughters, wives. It is to these
delicate gentry, and to their solemn remarks,
and decorous behaviour, that you entrust the
sacred ashes of all that has been the purest to
you, and the dearest to you, in this world.
Don't improve the breed! Don't change the
custom! Be true to my opinion of you, and to
Mrs. Grundy!

I nail the black flag of the black Jobmaster
to our cage—figuratively speaking—and I
stand up for the gen-teel parties. So (but from
different motives) does the Owl. You 've got
a chance, by means of that bill I 've mentioned
—by the bye, I call my own a General Interment
Bill, for it buries everything it gets hold
of—to alter the whole system; to avail yourselves
of the results of all improved European
experience; to separate death from life; to
surround it with everything that is sacred and
solemn, and to dissever it from everything
that is shocking and sordid. You won't read
the bill? You won't dream of helping it? You
won't think of looking at the evidence on which
it's founded—Will you? No. That's right!

Gen-teel parties, step forward, if you please,
to the rescue of the black Jobmaster! The
rats are with you. I am informed that they
have unanimously passed a resolution that the
closing of the London churchyards will be an
insult to their professional brethren, and will
oblige 'em "to fight for it." The Parrots are
with you. The Owl is with you. The Raven
is with you. No General Interments. Carrion
for ever!

Ha, ha! Halloa!