Sir, the grave-digger of St.Timothy's in the Fields would speak with you.
"UNDERTAKER.

Let him come in.
"_Enter_ GRAVE-DIGGER.
"GRAVE-DIGGER.

I carried home to your house the shroud the gentleman was buried in last night; I could not get his ring off very easilly, therefore I brought you the finger and all; and, sir, the sexton gives his service to you, and desires to know whether you'd have any bodies removed or not: if not, he'll let them be in their graves a week longer.
"UNDERTAKER.

Give him my service; I can't tell readilly: but our friend, Dr.Passeport, with the powder, has promised me six or seven funerals this week." * * * * * These extracts are not from the manuscript of a modern farce-comedy,[A] but belong to Steele's play of "The Funeral, or Grief a la Mode." If they have about them all the air of _fin-de-siecle_ wit, so much the more eloquently do they testify to the freshness of Dick's satire.

Freshness, satire, and death! Surely the three ingredients seem unmixable; yet when poured into the crucible of Steele's genius they resulted in a crystal that sparkled delightfully amid the lights of a theatre--a crystal which might still shed brilliancy if some enterprising manager would exhibit it to a jaded public.
[Footnote A: In "A Milk White Flag," a good specimen of "up-to-date" farce, Mr.Hoyt dallies entertainingly and discreetly with the blithesome topics of undertakers, corpses, and widows.] In "The Funeral" the author impaled, with many a merciless slash of the pen, the hypocrisy and vulgar flummery that characterised the whole gruesome ceremony of conducting to its earthly resting-place the body of a well-to-do sinner.