A SPANISH FUNERAL AND A JONESVILLE ONE.
While we wuz in Madrid we felt that we ort to anyway visit the Escuriel, that immense palace and monastery built by Philip II. He got skairt, so I wuz told, and made a vow to St. Lawrence (it wuz on that saint’s day) that if Lawrence would help him git the victory, he would build a monastery and name it after him. So havin’ won the victory, he did as he agreed. He built this immense structure; it took him twenty-one years to do it. Out of compliment to Lawrence, who perished on a gridiron, it wuz built in that form.
I hearn Josiah a-explainin’ it that day. Sez he, “It wuz built in the form of a gridiron because that is the best way of cookin’ beef.” Sez he, “After their bull-fights they have immense quantities of beef, so this takes its shape from that national characterestick.”
But it hain’t no sech thing—he gits things wrong.
Wall, it wouldn’t took us but a little while to git to the Escuriel if the train had sprunted up and gone as fast as an American hand-car.
But we crept along so slow that it took us three hours. Before we got there we see the buildin’ loomin’ up so vast, so gloomy, that it looked like a mountain itself—a low, big mountain without much of a peak to it.
We had to approach it with some dignity, it bein’ a royal palace, so we got into a big covered omnibus, drawed by four mules and two horses. Though what peticular dignity there is in a mule I never see before, unless it is in their ears. But we got there all right, the driver a-yellin’ and whippin’ the mules as if he wuz crazy. If you want beauty, you won’t git it in the Escuriel, but if you want size, there you are suited. It takes up as much room as one of the pyramids; it has two thousand rooms in it and five thousand winders, and the winders wuzn’t very thick together, neither.
There is a big meetin’-house in it, a palace and a monastery and a Pantheon, where the dead kings and mothers of kings sleep and forgit the troublesome days when they sot on thrones, and worried about their children who wuz settin’.
This meetin’-house is grand and imposin’; you can look down inside a long, clear space of four hundred feet. Then there is a library, one of the finest in Spain, and picters that are dretful impressive in number and beauty. We wanted to see the private room of Philip II., and so we wuz led up grand staircases and through apartment after apartment hung with the costliest tapestry.
And havin’ seen sech glory on the outside, what did we imagine must be the splendor of the inner room, sacred to his majesty, where he sat alone and sent out orders that ruled half or three quarters of the world.
Wall, I d’no as you’ll believe me when I say the floor wuz brick—not even a strip of rag carpet on’t, sech as I spread down often in my back kitchen.
Poor creeter! I’d gin him a breadth of my best hit-or-miss carpet in welcome if I’d lived in his day, and known how cold his feet must have been as he stepped out of bed cold mornin’s onto that hard brick floor.
HOW COLD HIS FEET MUST HAVE BEEN COLD MORNIN’S.
And there wuzn’t a picter on the walls—not one, only a picter of the Virgin.
I’d a-gin him one of my chromos in welcome. I had two throwed in at Jonesville with the last chocolate calico dress I bought.
He should have had one on ’em, and I’d a-gin ’em both to him if it would a-made that gloomy, mysterious creeter any happier; and most probble they would have had their influence—they wuz very bright colored.
One hard wood chair and two stools wuz the only settin’ accommodations he had. I’d made him a barrell chair, if I’d been there; if he’d wanted to go in for cheapness, that would have suited him. Saw a seat out of an old salt barrell and cushion it with a old bed-quilt and cover it with cretonne.
He could a-sot easy in it. Poor creeter! it made me feel bad to think he always sot on that hard board chair—not a sign of a cushion in it. I could have made a good cushion for it anyway out of hens’ feathers. And mebby he wouldn’t been so hard on the nations if he’d sot easier—it makes a sight of difference. Josiah wuz as hard agin on Ury when he had a bile on his back, and couldn’t set easy. I didn’t know but Ury would leave.
Wall, Philip lived here fourteen years, and when he come to die, he died hard, so they say. Mebby the oceans of blood he had caused to be shed kinder swashed up aginst his conscience; if it did, I hope the prayers he had knelt on the hard floor and prayed all night long sort o’ lifted him up some.
Queer creeter! strange and mysterious doin’s! A-prayin’ and a-fastin’ and a-killin’, a-prayin’ and a-killin’ and a-fastin’! I am glad I hain’t got to straighten out the dark and tangled skein of his life and git the threads a-runnin’ even, and sort out the black threads and the lighter ones and count ’em.
No, it takes a bigger hand than mine to hold ’em, and a eye that looks deeper into the soul of things.
Wall, when he wuz dead at last they laid him in the Pantheon. We visited the spot. We went down first into the big, eight-sided room, a sort of annex, where princes and princesses lay, and then we went down a long flight of steps with walls of jasper, into the room where kings and queens lay asleep.
This is a smaller room, but eight-sided, like the other. The dead lay in black marble coffins, piled up on top of the other, the kings to the right, the queens to the left. Wimmen have to take the second-best place even down there in the grave, but then they wuz in a condition where they couldn’t argy about it, and where it wouldn’t hurt their feelin’s.
It must have been a sight to see a king buried. No funeral in Jonesville ever approached it in solemnity or mystery.
You know they don’t give up that a king is dead till they go through with certain performances, but they treat the dead body with all the honor that they would give the livin’ monarch. When the procession gits up to the door, the new-comer has to be announced.
A voice sez, “Who would enter here?”
They reply, “King Philip.”
Then the door is thrown open, and all the long, illustrious procession of the noblest in the land enter, and they lay the body of the king on a table, for he has got to give his own consent, as it were, before they will admit that he is dead—silence gives consent, they say.
So after all are gone the Lord Chamberlain lifts the heavey, gold-embroidered pall, and kneelin’ down by the side of his royal master, looks long in his face to see if he recognizes him. But he don’t. He lays cold and still as marble.
Then he cries, “Señor! Señor! Señor!” and waits for a reply. But as no answer comes, he sez—
“His Majesty does not answer! then indeed the king is dead!”
So he takes the wand of office—the septer, I spoze—and breaks it over the coffin in token of a power that has ceased to be. Then he locks the marble coffin, hands the key to the Prior of the Monastery, and they go up the long steps and leave the king to sleep with his own folks.
It must have been a sight to see it go on.
Why, a mourner who undertook sech doin’s in Jonesville or Loontown would find himself lugged off to the loonatick asylum, or have threats on’t. But the ways of countries differ—I didn’t make any moves to break it up. I am very liberal minded, and then I meditated that it wuzn’t my funeral.
What made me say that a mourner in Jonesville couldn’t do sech a thing wuz owin’ to a incident that came under my own observation.
A man that lived in the outskirts of Jonesville, havin’ moved down there from Zoar, got it into his head that he wuz goin’ to die on a certain day at two o’clock in the afternoon.
So what should that creeter do but write his own funeral sermon, and gin out the word that he would preach it at one o’clock sharp. Because he wuz to die at two precisely.
He got his coffin made, his wife got her mournin’ clothes all done, for he wuz so dead sure of the result that he had converted her to his belief. So at one o’clock exactly the crowd gathered to see the corpse, as you may say, preach its own funeral sermon.
The coffin wuz in the parlor, the mourners come down from upstairs, some on ’em weepin’ bitterly, and headed by the body, dressed in its shroud, bearin’ its own funeral sermon.
The mourners wuz arranged in orderly rows round the room (he wuz wide connected), and the body stood by the head of the coffin and preached a long sermon.
He touched on the sins of his hearers, and of course they couldn’t resent it in him, bein’ a corpse’s last thoughts, as you may say.
He bore down hard on ’em, specially his relations—the more distant ones, cousins and sech, and kinder rubbed up his bretheren and sistern some.
But to his wife he spoke words of tenderness, and in a touchin’ and fervent manner spoke of what she had lost. He praised himself up to the highest notch, and his wife sobbed out loud, and she had to be fanned on both sides by a circuit minister and his wife, who wuz present; and she sed to ’em that she had never mistrusted before what a prize she had in her pardner.
He then warned his children to grow up as nigh like their father as they could conveniently, and he got ’em to sniffin’ and wipin’ their noses. He then addressed the community, tellin’ ’em of their sinful ways, and exhorted ’em to turn round and do better, and sed to ’em a few words of consolation about the great blessin’ they had lost.
And then he folded his shroud around him with one hand, and with quite a lot of dignity he stepped up into a chair, and so into his coffin. Then he laid down, arranged the folds of his shroud and crossed his hands on his bosom and shet his eyes up. As he did so the clock struck two. He laid a minute, while a dumbfoundered look swep’ over his liniment, and anon a sheepish one. And then he lifted up his head and looked round, and sez he—
“There must be some mistake.”
And one of the cousins, one he had rasped down the hardest (they wuz at swords’ pints anyway, caused by line fences), he hollered out—
“Yes, I should think there wuz, you dum fool you! gittin’ us all here right in hayin’ time to hear your dum funeral sermon.”
And another one he had reviled yelled out—
“Why didn’t you do as you agreed, you consarned loonatick, you!”
And still another cried—“We’ll have the law on you for this! You agreed to die, and we all got together for that purpose, and we’ll see if we’re goin’ to be bamboozled and fooled in this way. It is all a contrived plan to abuse us and make fun on us. But I’ll see if I can’t make you sick of sech dum nonsense,” sez he. And he rushed for the live body with sech vengeance in his eyes and a wooden stool in his hand that the body’s wife precipitated herself onto the coffin, and sez she—
“I will perish with this noble man, if die he must” (you see he’d worked her all up about his worth).
Wall, suffice it to say, the cousin wuz overmastered, and etiket prevailed, and decorum wuz established, and the crowd dispersed, leavin’ him still in his coffin, for he sed he wuz tired, and would lay there for a spell.
I believe he wuz ’fraid to git out. It kinder protected his lims and body. But then mebby he told the truth; the sermon wuz a powerful one, and delivered loud—it must have used up considerable wind.
Wall, they talked hard of sendin’ Jake Bilhorn to the asylum. He escaped it jest by the skin of his teeth, as the sayin’ is. His wife testified to the last minute that his mind wuz weak, and he couldn’t help it. But she would watch him, she sed, and take care on him. So it wuz agreed that he should be let off on the Idiot Act, and she promised to let him go to the loonatick asylum if he ever tried to git up any sech performance agin.
But I am a-eppisodin’, and a-eppisodin’ too fur, too fur.