his horse could clean out the others.
I rode in front of the remains with the horse-doctor, and tried to
conduct myself in as solemn a manner as befitted the occasion, and tried
to reason with the horse-doctor against his unseemly jokes, which he was
constantly getting on. He told several stories, better calculated for a
gathering where bacchanalian revelry was the custom, and I told him that
while I respected his calling, he must respect mine. He said something
about calling a man on a full hand, against a flush, but I did not
pretend to know what he meant. We had to go out of town about two
miles, to the cemetery. Unfortunately we were in the watermelon growing
section, and the horse-doctor called my attention to the fact that my
procession was becoming scarce, when I looked around, and every blessed
one of the cooks and servants, and the man with the shovel, had gone on
into the field after melons, and I stopped the cart and yelled to them
to come back to the funeral. Pretty soon they all rode back, each with
a melon under his arm, and every face looked as though there was no
funeral that could prevent a nigger from stealing a watermelon. After
several stops, to round up my mourners, from corn fields and horse
racing, we arrived at the cemetery, and while the grave was being dug
the niggers went for the melons, and if it had been a picnic there
couldn't have been much more enjoyment. The horse-doctor took out a big
knife that he used to bleed horses, and cut a melon, and offered me a
slice, and while I did not feel that it was just the place to indulge
in melon, it looked so good that I ate some, with a mental reservation,
however. It was all a new experience to me. I had never believed that
in the presence of death, or at a funeral, people could be anything but
decorous and solemn. I had never attended a funeral before, except where
all present were friends of the deceased, and sorry, but here all seemed
different. They all seemed to look upon the thing as a good joke. I
had read that in New York and other large cities, those who attended
funerals had a horse race on the way back, and stopped at beer saloons
and filled up, but I never believed that people could be so depraved. I
tried to talk to the coons, and get them to show proper respect for the
occasion, but they laughed and threw melon rinds at each other. Finnally
the colonel and the general, with quite a lot of soldiers, who were
out reconnoitering, rode to wh