[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)]@TWC D-Link book
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

CHAPTER XXVII
5/14

I see the coffin lid was the way it was before, but I dasn't go to look in under it, with folks around.
Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a little.

There warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and blowing noses--because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church.
When the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat.

He never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways, and done it with nods, and signs with his hands.

Then he took his place over against the wall.
He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see; and there warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham.
They had borrowed a melodeum--a sick one; and when everything was ready a young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion.

Then the Reverend Hobson opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard; it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait--you couldn't hear yourself think.


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