I particularly enjoyed being the corpse in a Gentile funeral.

I was laid across two chairs, and my playmates, in borrowed shawls and long calicoes, with their hair loose and with candlesticks in their hands, marched around me, singing unearthly songs, and groaning till they scared themselves.

As I lay there, covered over with a black cloth, I felt as dead as dead could be; and my playmates were the unholy priests in gorgeous robes of velvet and silk and gold.

Their candlesticks were the crosiers that were carried in Christian funeral processions, and their chantings were hideous incantations to the arch enemy, the Christian God of horrible images.
As I imagined the bareheaded crowds making way for my funeral to pass, my flesh crept, not because I was about to be buried, but because the people _crossed themselves_.

But our procession stopped outside the church, because we did not dare to carry even our make-believe across that accursed threshold.