Wanted It Just Right.
[Brooklyn Eagle.]
“How much will this cost in your paper?” asked a quiet-looking man, as he handed in the following advertisement at the ___ counting-room:
“Smith–Busted a trace, in this city, just after dinner, Mary Smith, wife of the undersigned, and daughter of old Sim Pratt, the leading blacksmith of Denver, Col. The corpse was highly respected by the high-tonedest families, but death got the drop on her, and she took the up-bucket with perfect confidence that she would have a square show the other side of the divide. The plant transpires this afternoon at her boarding-house on Willow street. Come one, come all.
“Dearest Mary, thou hast left us,
For you on earth there wasn’t room;
But ’tis heaven that has bereft us,
Snatched our darling up the flume.
“Denver papers please copy and send bill, or draw at sight.
By her late husband, P. Smith.”
“I don’t believe you want it in just that way, do you?” asked the clerk, rubbing his chin dubiously.
“Why, not, stranger?” asked the quiet man.
“It don’t read quite right, does it?” asked the clerk.
“Was you acquainted with the corpse, stranger?” demanded the quiet man. “Was you aware of the lamented while she was bustling around in society at that boarding-house?”
“I don’t know that I ever met her,” responded the clerk.
“So I reckoned, Jedge. You wasn’t up to the deceased when she was in the living business. Now, Jedge, the deceased wrote that oration herself afore she died, and I want it in. Do you hook on, partner?”
“But it isn’t our style of notice,” objected the clerk.
“Nor mine, neither,” acquiesced the quiet man. “I was for having a picture of her and a lot more talk, but she said she wanted it quiet and modest, so she whooped that up. Say, stranger, is it going into your valuable space without difficulty?”
“I don’t know,” said the clerk, dolefully.
“I know, partner. This celebration comes off to-morrow afternoon, and that is going in in the morning, if it goes in out of a cannon. I got grief enough on my hands now, stranger, without erecting a fort on the sidewalk, but if you want war, I got the implements right in the back part of these mourning clothes. What d’ye think, Jedge?”
“Does it make any difference where it goes?” asked the clerk.
“I want it in the paper,” said the mourner, “and it’s going in if it taken a spile-driver. Think you twig my racket, stranger?”
“All right,” replied the clerk, “I’ll put it in the ‘Salad’ among other mournful remarks. Four dollars, please.”
“That’s business,” and the quiet man paid the money. “If you ain’t busy come around to-morrow. I’m going to give the old woman a good send-off, and if that gospeller don’t work up a pretty good programme before he gets to the doxology, his folks will think he’s been doing considerable business with a saw-mill. She was a good one, Jedge, and she was pious from the back of her neck to the bunion on her heel; you can tell that from the notice;” and the mourning widower wiped his eyes on the sly, and, later in the day, was fined ten dollars for thrashing the undertaker who had put silver handles on the casket instead of gold ones.
The Osage City [KS] Free Press 23 February 1882: p. 3
Chris Woodyard is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog, The Victorian Book of the Dead.
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