astly superior. We hold--that is to say, embalm--our dead. So!"
Whereupon he produced the horrible weapons of his trade, and most
practically showed me how you "held" a man back from that corruption
which is his birthright. "And I wish I could live a few generations just
to see how my people keep. But I'm sure it's all right. Nothing can
touch 'em after _I_'ve embalmed 'em." Then he displayed one of those
ghastly dress-suits, and when I laid a shuddering hand upon it, behold
it crumpled to nothing, for the white linen was sewn on to the black
cloth and--there was no back to it! That was the horror. The garment was
a shell. "We dress a man in that," said Gring, laying it out tastily on
the counter. "As you see here, our caskets have a plate-glass window in
front" (Oh me, but that window in the coffin was fitted with plush like
a brougham-window!), "and you don't see anything below the level of the
man's waistcoat. Consequently ..." He unrolled the terrible cheap black
cloth that falls down over the stark feet, and I jumped back. "Of course
a man can be dressed in his own clothes if he likes, but these are the
regular things: and for women look at this!" He took up the body of a
high-necked dinner-dress in subdued lilac, slashed and puffed and
bedeviled with black, but, like the dress-suit, backless, and below the
waist turning to shroud. "That's for an old maid. But for young girls we
give white with imitation pearls round the neck. That looks very pretty
through the window of the casket--you see there's a cushion for the
head--with flowers banked all round." Can you imagine anything more
awful than to take your last rest as much of a dead fraud as ever you
were a living lie--to go into the darkness one half of you shaved,
trimmed and dressed for an evening party, while the other half--the
half that your friends cannot see--is enwrapped in a flapping black
sheet?

I know a little about burial customs in various places in the world, and
I tried hard to make Mr. Gring comprehend dimly the awful heathendom
that he was responsible for--the grotesquerie--the giggling horror of it
all. But he couldn't see it. Even when he showed me a little boy's last
suit, he couldn't see it. He said it was quite right to embalm and trick
out and hypocritically bedizen the poor innocent dead in their superior
cushioned and pillowed caskets with the window in front.

Bury me cased in canvas like a fishing-rod, in the deep sea; burn me on
a ba