"Undertaker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... weather For rattling syllables together; Rhym'd you to death, like "rats in Ireland," Except that he was born in High'r Land. His chimes, not crampt like thine, and rung ill, Had made Job split his sides on dunghill. There was no limit to his merryings At christ'nings, weddings, nay at buryings. No undertaker would live near him, Those grave practitioners did fear him; Mutes, at his merry mops, turned "vocal." And fellows, hired for silence, "spoke all." No body could be laid in cavity, Long as he lived, with proper gravity. His mirth-fraught eye had but to glitter, And every mourner round must ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... talk, judge, commend, or find fault with any speech, action, or behaviour of the living. In which case it shall be lawful to seize their persons at any place or hour whatsoever, and to convey their bodies to the next undertaker's; anything in this advertisement to ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... of fingerless second-story men than go through that again," the Agent-in-Charge said. He looked as if his stomach trouble had suddenly gotten a great deal worse. Malone thought that the A-in-C was considering calling a doctor, and would probably decide to make it the undertaker instead, and save ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Martin's Lane Statuary, out of one entire block of white marble, which is to be placed in a grand nich, erected on purpose, in the great grove of Vauxhall Gardens (The great grove at Vauxhall Gardens!—Sic transit gloria mundi), at the sole expense of Mr. Tyers, undertaker of the entertainment there, who, in consideration of the real merit of that inimitable master, thought it proper that his effigy should preside there, where his harmony has so often charmed even the greatest crowds into the profoundest calm and ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... if I am to be ruined by expense, let it come in the shape of the washerwoman's and linen-draper's bills, not in those of the apothecary and undertaker." ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... during Gottesdienst (Divine service) he used to stand sentinel at the church door, wearing a white armlet with black stripes and a silver tassel, leaning on a cane with a curved handle. By trade he was an undertaker. His name was Sami Witschi. He was very tall and thin, with a slight stoop, and he had the clean-shaven solemn face of an old peasant. He was very pious and knew better than any one all the tittle-tattle ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... on excursions, serve as jurors in justice courts, sit around on drygoods boxes, and beg tobacco, chew gum, and swap lies. A few sporadic cases of measles have existed, but they were treated mostly by old women, and no deaths occurred. There was an undertaker in the village, but he is now in the State prison. It is hoped and expected when green truck gets around, melons plenty, and cucumbers in abundance, that something may revive business. If it does, I will ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... much of a reader, and if she had been, there were no books within her reach but the Bible and a cookery book, on the former of which, for private reading, Jenny looked as a mere precursor of the undertaker. ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... MUTE. An undertaker's servant, who stands at the door of a person lying in state: so named from being supposed ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... at her words, and lay absolutely still while the undertaker came and measured him for his coffin; and his wife gave orders to the gravedigger about his grave. That evening the coffin was sent home, and in the morning at nine o'clock the woman put him on a long flannel garment, and called to the undertaker's men to fasten ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... grief, the remorse, that will seize upon the hearts of this hitherto-inexorable family, on the receiving of the posthumous letters, and that of the Colonel apprizing them of what has happened? I have given requisite orders to an undertaker, on the supposition that the body will be permitted to be carried down; and the women intend to fill the ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... by the market folk. There was ample time and space to inspect the fierce but sleepy-headed town. In the main street I observed six grog-shops, side by side, actually shoulder to shoulder, cheek by jowl. Another street appeared to be all grog-shops but for the ominous exception of an undertaker. About nine o'clock a few people came out of chapel, and shortly afterwards the butchers' shops gave signs of life, one opening on each side of the main street, and blinking like a bloodshot eye upon the slumbering groceries ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... funeral services are held at the house the relatives and intimate friends are invited into the back parlor, dining room, or upstairs, and make their appearance only when the services begin. The undertaker attends to seating ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... several of us boarders, one day, that "Sis had got a beau," I was pleased at the prospect of her becoming a minister's wife. On inquiry, however, I found that the somewhat solemn look which I had noticed was indeed a professional one, but not clerical. He was a young undertaker, who had just succeeded to a thriving business. Things, I believe, are going on well at this time of writing, and I am glad for the landlady's daughter and her mother. Sextons and undertakers are the cheerfullest people in the world at home, as comedians and circus-clowns ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... very large scorpions came crawling about us as we sat round the fire; we managed to bottle the scorpions, but though we wounded the snake it escaped; I was very anxious to methylate him also, but it appeared he had other ideas, and I should not be at all surprised if a pressing interview with his undertaker was one of them. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... would respect one bearing the Stars and Stripes. The urgency of the matter being explained to him, however, he reluctantly issued the necessary laisser-passer, though intimating quite plainly that our mission would probably end in providing "more work for the undertaker, another little job for the casket-maker," and that he washed his hands of all responsibility for our fate. But by two American flags mounted on the windshield, and the explanatory legends "Service Consulaire des Etats-Unis d'Amerique" and "Amerikanischer Consular dienst" ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... house they finally secured was in an unfashionable locality; there was a tailor shop next door and an undertaker across the street, and a clanging trolley car screeched on the curve at the end of the block; but the dignity of the pillared doorway, and the carved window casings, had appealed to Maurice; and also the discovery in the parlor, behind a monstrous ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... tem physician. I could look forward with pleasure, and even joy, to the moment when my physician would come for the last time in his professional capacity and go to work on me officially. Then the county would be obliged to pay him, and the undertaker could take charge of the fragments ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... in the handwriting of Rale, meant as a fling at the English invaders: "It [the church] is ill built, because the English don't work well. It is not finished, although five or six Englishmen have wrought here during four years, and the Undertaker [contractor], who is a great Cheat, hath been paid in advance for to finish it." The money came from the ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... the more he can confine his attention to a particular part of any work, his productions are the more perfect, and grow under his hands in the greater quantities. Every undertaker in manufacture finds, that the more he can subdivide the tasks of his workmen, and the more hands he can employ on separate articles, the more are his expenses diminished, and his profits increased. The consumer too requires, in every kind of ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... been a treasure to an undertaker. He would have been celebrated as a mute; he looked as if he had been born in a shroud, and rocked in a coffin. The gravity with which he could answer a ridiculous or impertinent question completely disarmed and turned the shafts of malice back upon his opponent. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... undertaker proposes the erecting a bank on parliamentary security, and such security as no revolution or change ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... address, and displayed a set of teeth that rivalled crimped skate in their whiteness—a month afterwards they became man and wife. For some years they toiled on together—he, like a caterpillar, getting a living out of cabbages, and she, like an undertaker, out of departed soles! Latterly, however, Jack discovered that his spouse was rather addicted to 'summut short,' in fact, that she drank like a fish, although the beverage she affected was a leetle stronger than water. Their profit (unlike Mahomet) permitted them the same baneful indulgence—and ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... handbill continued to recur to his mind. The thing was so manifestly absurd, he told himself with conviction, that it was not worth a second thought, but this did not prevent him from thinking of it again and again. What manner of undertaker could hope to obtain business by giving away foolish handbills in the street? Really, the whole thing had the air of a brainless practical joke, yet his intellectual fairness forced him to admit that as far as the ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... understood that I could not attend the puppy's funeral in my proper person, because I wished to be the undertaker; but the happy thought struck me of putting my wheelbarrow alongside of the brick wall with a note inside it to the effect that I had "sent my carriage as ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... revolving almost visibly beneath his short-haired scalp. At last the priests left the high altar and came down to the coffin, to sprinkle it and do whatever was now possible for its occupant; and in a few minutes the church was empty save for the undertaker's men, myself, and the Bellini. It is truly a lovely picture, although perhaps a thought too mild, and one should ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... see you," she said simply, "I have seen nobody except the doctor once, and the undertaker twice. It is dreadful to sit alone hour after hour face to face with the irretrievable. If I had not been so foolish as to enter into that agreement with Messrs. Meeson, I could have got the money by selling my new book easily enough; and I ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... F. Smith, chief clerk at Colonel Smith's headquarters, a paroled prisoner, member of Co. F., 6th Pa. Cav., the company of Captain Furness, son or brother of my Shakespearian friend, Dr. Horace Howard Furness, and from Mr. Strickland, undertaker, who furnished the coffins and buried the dead of the Danville prisons, both of whom I talked with when I was on parole in February, '65, I obtained statistics mutually corroborative of the number of deaths in the Danville prisons. In November there were 130; in December, 140; from ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... must have his joke. He is a professional lawyer, and I have frequently observed that lawyers' jokes are like an undertaker's griefs—strictly professional. You begin now to sympathize with everybody that ever went to sea. You think of the Pilgrim Fathers during the tempestuous voyage in the Mayflower. You reflect how fully their throats must have been occupied, and you can ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... tiger; they point out every step of its course; they call on the citizens to rise and fight the enemy, to save their lives. Do the citizens do it? Not they. Individually they suffer and die. Individually they grieve and mourn, bury,their dead (when they should cremate them), and pay the doctor and the undertaker. Hundreds of dollars they pay as individuals to nurses, doctors, graveyard men, and monument makers. If, collectively they would put up a tenth of the sum to ensure a pure water and milk supply, they would save not only ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... other way. These old patriarchs and prophets have got ages the start of you; they know more in two minutes than you know in a year. Did you ever try to have a sociable improving-time discussing winds, and currents and variations of compass with an undertaker?" ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... third showed him the "shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us." He saw himself dead, uncared for, unwept, unwatched, his effects plundered by the charwoman, laundress, and undertaker's man and realized the end to which he must come unless he led an altered life. Holding up his hands he prayed to have his fate reversed and saw the Ghost shrink and dwindle ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... upon the dead with awe and wonder and terror. Constantly meeting it and seeing it and procuring it will doubtless make it more commonplace. To the seasoned soldier in the army it means less than it did before he became a soldier. Probably the undertaker thinks less of death than almost any other man. He is so accustomed to it that his mind must involuntarily turn from its horror to a contemplation of how much he makes out of the burial. If the civilized ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... head in nights. Long's Sol was alive and could do his cobblin' we managed to get along somehow. What I could earn sewin' helped, and we lived simple. But when he was taken down and died, the doctor's bills and the undertaker's used up what little money I had put by, and the sewin' alone wouldn't keep a healthy canary in bird seed. Dear land knows I hate to leave the old house I've lived in for fourteen years and the town I was born in, but I've got to, for all I see. Thank mercy, ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... preaching twice on Lord's day in English, on Wednesday evening in Bengali, and on Thursday evening in English." He took all the work during the week and the Sunday service in rotation with his brethren. The first church was the hall of a well-known undertaker, approached through lines of coffins and the trappings of woe. In time most of the evangelical Christians in the city promised to relieve the missionaries of the expense if they would build an unsectarian chapel more worthy of the object. This was done in Lall Bazaar, a little withdrawn ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... two, and the host at once led the way to the dining-room. Platzoff in his suit of black and white cravat, with his cadaverous face, blue-black hair and chin-tuft, and the elaborate curl on the top of his forehead, looked, at the first glance, more like a ghastly undertaker's man than the host of an ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... counsel, no writs of error, by which even a miserable miser, or voluptuous millionaire, can gain a moment's delay when death issues his summons. The miser was called for, and he knew his time had come. He sent for the undertaker, he bargained ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Vernon Perkins, who never did a stroke of honest work in his life till he began to dig for this box; monkey-faced Lucretia and the four thieving little Riley children, who are likely to get into prison when they grow up; that human undertaker's waggon, Betsey Skiles, and her two impudent nieces; that grand old perambulating drug store, Israel Skiles; that Holmes fool with the three reprints of her ugliness—eight cents apiece, and may you get all possible good ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... irdische Glueck; we also have gelebt and—und so weiter. Warble your death-song, sweet Thekla! Perish off the face of the earth, poor pulmonary victim, if so minded! Had you survived to a later period of life, my dear, you would have thought of a sentimental disappointment without any reference to the undertaker. Let us trust there is no present need of a sexton for Miss Hetty. But meanwhile, the very instant she wakes, there, tearing at her little heart, will that Care be, which has given her a few hours' respite, melted, no doubt, by her youth and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the chamber itself, but the anterooms and staircase were hung from cornice to skirting with black. The undertaker's men were ever in the house: they ate and drank whole mountains of beef and bread, whole seas of ale and punch (thus to qualify their voracity) in the servants' hall. They say my Grandmother's funeral cost a thousand pounds, which Cadwallader and Mrs. Talmash would ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... was being made ready for burial. George Prince was still in his stateroom. Glutz, effeminate little hairdresser, who waxed rich acting as beauty doctor for the women passengers, and who in his youth had been an undertaker, had gone with Dr. Frank to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... Penfield too late to see Parson Dorrance alive. A strange certainty that he had died in the night settled upon her mind as soon as she waked from her troubled sleep; and when she reached Lizzy's door, and saw standing before it the undertaker's wagon, which she so well remembered, there was no shock of surprise to her in the sight. At the first sound of Mercy's voice, Lizzy came swiftly forward, and fell upon her neck ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... as plain as a professor. Look! You frightened me at first with your doubts and your impossibilities. You have only to make Kranich's aunt agree with Francine's guardian, and at the same time forgive Francine's husband for having assumed the undertaker's bill ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... it was possible, in provincial places, for an undertaker to assume the dimensions of a personage. There was a sexton in Portsmouth—his name escapes me, but his attributes do not—whose impressiveness made him own brother to the massive architecture ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... occasion referred to, the funeral procession having entered the churchyard, and my informant and the officiating clergyman having taken their places at the head of the grave, the undertaker and his assistants having removed the coffin from the hearse, and the mourners, of whom there was a large crowd, having gathered into a circular audience, the Reverend Doctor —— began ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... well-to-do as before. As Blackstable became a more important health resort, a regular undertaker opened a shop there; and his window, with two little model coffins and an arrangement of black Prince of Wales's feathers surrounded by a white wreath, took the fancy of the natives, so that Mr Griffith almost completely ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... the coroner, after a pause, during which he had made a memorandum of certain details which he considered of special importance; "the undertaker can now be summoned as I believe he is waiting below, and we seem to have ascertained all the facts possible in this direction; and, Mr. Whitney, I will next see the valet, whom you say was the one to discover the situation ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... stay his stomach, rather than you should be interrupted.—And, sir, if you can find room in your enterprise for a poor gentleman that has followed Lunsford and Goring, you have but to name day, time, and place of rendezvous; for truly, sir, I am tired of the scald hat, cropped hair, and undertaker's cloak, with which my friend has bedizened me, and would willingly ruffle it out once more in the King's cause, when whether I be banged ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... and hearse with the coffin under the driver's box, and John Storm (as the only discoverable mourner) with the undertaker on the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... UNDERTAKER, "one who undertook by his influence in the House of Commons to carry things agreeably to his Majesty's wishes" (Whalley); ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... comfort, the most important part of the house. There should be no attempt to save expense by limiting its proper size, materials for walls, windows for ventilation, drainage, etc., for money so saved will inevitably be paid out many times over in coal bills, doctor's fees, and, perhaps, undertaker's bills. A dry cellar must be secured at all costs, for the air from it permeates the whole house. Where this is damp, it leads not alone to disease among the inmates, but to the disintegration of the house itself, through what is called "dry ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... better.' Irons, the clerk, replied, 'he had brought two prayer-books.' Bob averred 'he could not be mistaken; the old lady was buried in the near-vault; though it was forty years before, he remembered it like last night. They changed her into her lead coffin in the vault—he and the undertaker together—her own servants would not put a hand to her. She was buried in white satin, and with her rings on her fingers. It was her fancy, and so ordered in her will. They said she was mad. He'd know her face again if he saw her. She had a ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Cliff House, that shabby innocent-looking little building whose evil fame had run round the world, she stared at it fascinated. Its restaurant overhung the sea. On this side the blinds were down. It looked as if awaiting the undertaker. She pictured Howard's horror when she told him of her close contact with vice, and anticipated with a pleasurable thrill the scolding he would give her. They had never quarrelled and it would ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... on her return she met Samuel Barmby, who was just leaving after a visit to the sick man. Samuel bore himself with portentous gravity, but spoke only a few commonplaces, affecting hope; he bestowed upon Nancy's hand a fervent pressure, and strode away with the air of an undertaker who ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... Samanon in a bookseller's shop, or calling on a paper-merchant or a printer, you may know that it is all over with that man," said the artist. "Samanon is the undertaker come to take the measurements ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... the astonished Mrs. Ellis. "Why, I declare his grandfather laid her grandfather out! Old Whiston was an undertaker, and used to make the handsomest coffins of his time. And he is going to marry Miss Morton! What next, I'd like to know! He walks exactly like the old man. I used to mock him when I was a little girl. He had just that ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Council of Munster, and also with the leading men among the Undertakers as they were called, among whom more than half a million of acres of the escheated and desolate lands of the fallen Desmond were to be divided, on condition of each Undertaker settling on his estate a proportionate number of English gentlemen, yeomen, artisans and labourers with their families, who were to bring the ruined province into order and cultivation. The President and Vice-President of the Council were the two Norreys, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... suppose, though, that the mountains hereabouts break and churn up the thunder, so that it is far more glorious here than on the plain. Hark!—someone at the door. Who is this that chooses a time of thunder for making calls? And why don't he, man-fashion, use the knocker, instead of making that doleful undertaker's clatter with his fist against the hollow panel? But let him in. Ah, here he comes. "Good day, sir:" an entire stranger. "Pray be seated." What is that strange-looking walking-stick he carries: "A ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... looked up to find a queer little old man, jerking and twitching in the doorway. He was dressed in rusty black, with a very broad brimmed top-hat and a loose white necktie—the whole effect being that of a very rustic parson or of an undertaker's mute. Yet, in spite of his shabby and even absurd appearance, his voice had a sharp crackle, and his manner a quick intensity ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... possible simplicity. "Let me," said she, with an impressive though almost inarticulate voice, "be buried in Old Windsor churchyard." For the selection of that spot she gave a particular reason. She also mentioned an undertaker, whose name she recollected having seen on his door, and whom she appointed from his vicinity to the probable place of her decease. A few trifling memorials, as tributes of her affection, were all the property she had to bequeath. She also earnestly ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... after the undertaker squad carried me to the operating room or "pictures," as we called them because of the funny films we see under ether, and the operation was performed. It was a wonderful piece of surgery, and a marvelous success. From now on that doctor can ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... you take a fall to it that I'm joshin'? You sure are the melancholiest stretch of bones and hide I ever seen. Somehow you always make a fella come down to cases every time, with that sad-lookin' mug of yourn. You sure would 'a' made a good undertaker. I'll ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... almost hard now. It was as if it had become so from the spurring that was necessary to enable him to make his confession. "I shrank from myself as soon as the last piece of tinder had vanished from the candlestick. I could not bear to stay in the house. I hurried off to the undertaker's, and then stopped at Dr. Martin's to tell him that the ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... late for his appointment at the stables; he came in a suit of black, imperfectly fitting, and a chimney-pot hat some years old, looking very much like an undertaker's man. His appearance seemed to prove that he really had attended a funeral, which renewed Gammon's wonder. As a matter of course they repaired to the nearest eating-house to have a meal together—an eating-house of the old fashion, known also as a coffee-shop, which Gammon greatly preferred ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... telling the story of Herr Schwillmun, the famous pianist who was found crazy with wine in a Fourth Avenue undertaker's shop trying to play the Dvo[vr]ak Concerto on the lid of a highly polished coffin. The Finnish virtuoso thought he was in a piano wareroom. Another lie, I knew, for Schwillmun was most poetic in appearance and surely not ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... establishment was simply one huge infirmary. The children fell sick as soon as they arrived, languished and finally died unless their parents speedily removed them to the safe shelter of their homes. The cure of Nanterre went so often to Bethlehem with his black vestments and his silver crucifix, the undertaker had so many orders for coffins for the house, that it was talked about in the neighborhood, and indignant mothers shook their fists at the model nursery, but only at a safe distance if they happened to have in their arms a ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... can the gamekeeper arrange in tempting order the carcasses of the birds he has shot, strew them with flowers, and garnish them with piquant sauces? It would be as reasonable to expect a gallant soldier to act as undertaker, and conduct the funeral of the enemy ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... unctuously; "setting up with the sick, and laying out the dead. Faith, sometimes, I have to be nurse and undertaker, all in one." ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... eighteen, fell into a consumption, and, being ordered to ride, her father drew a map of the by-lanes about London, which he made the footman carry in his pocket and observe, that she might ride without paying a turnpike. When the poor girl was past recovery, Sir Robert sent for an undertaker, to cheapen her funeral, as she was not dead, and there was a possibility of her living. He went farther; he called his other daughters, and bade them curtsy to the undertaker, and promise to be his friends; and so they proved, for both died ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... been perusing the city directory to find out how many and what vocations there are, that I may plan my course of study accordingly when I discover what the life-work of each of my pupils is to be. If I find that one boy expects to be an undertaker he ought to take the dead languages, of course. If another boy expects to be a jockey he might take these same languages with the aid of a "pony." If a girl decides upon marriage as her vocation, I'll have her take home economics, of course, but shall have difficulty ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... "Alfonzo Garcio, undertaker, deposes that he resides in the Rue Morgue. Is a native of Spain. Was one of the party who entered the house. Did not proceed up stairs. Is nervous, and was apprehensive of the consequences of agitation. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... than all his sermons were like to accomplish in the other direction." In fact, he might have pleased his father by becoming a minister if a certain preacher that he knew had not, to use his own words, "looked and talked so like an undertaker." ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the year, four of us sat in the small parlour of the George at Debenham—the undertaker, and the landlord, and Fettes, and myself. Sometimes there would be more; but blow high, blow low, come rain or snow or frost, we four would be each planted in his own particular armchair. Fettes was an old drunken ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I have even thought I have detected a ray of sunset upon a milkman's window-blind in London, and once upon an undertaker's, but it was too faint a ray to read by. The best thing of the kind that I have seen in London is the picture of the lady who is cleaning knives with Mr. Spong's patent knife-cleaner, in his shop window nearly opposite Day & Martin's in Holborn. It falls a long way short, ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... down there and then have to send the remains back. She had to promise him she would send them back, though it did seem a pity with the beautiful "semetary" they had there, and full of Northern folks as it would hold and the undertaker a perfect gentleman, if she ever saw one. But the widow hoped she knew her duty, and she would not wish to be thought ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... the strangest character present was Mr. Deputy Bedford—"Robert" in the pages of Punch—an undertaker in the City, and one of the most humorous men within its boundary. I recollect introducing my wife to him at some function at the Mansion House—not as Robert, but as Mr. Deputy Bedford. She expressed her pleasure at meeting one of the City dignitaries, and he offered ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... is one thing that this impressionistic school of medicine has in common with the other kind. Both types are faithful to the funereal type of waiting-room which is one of the signs of the trade. It is a room in which all the arts of the undertaker have seemingly been called upon to bring out the full possibilities of the average New York brownstone "front-parlour." I have often tried to decide whether, in a doctor's waiting-room, night or day was more conducive to thoughts of the grave. At night a lamp flickers dimly in one corner of the long ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... plainest and least clerical-looking of the party; yet, strange to say, there is the true parish priest, the pastor beloved, consulted, relied on by his flock; a clergyman who is not associated with the undertaker, but thought of as the surest helper under a difficulty, as a monitor who is encouraging rather than severe. Mr. Cleves has the wonderful art of preaching sermons which the wheelwright and the blacksmith can understand; not because he talks condescending twaddle, but because he can call a spade ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... are lots of things you dont understand that every woman in the street understands; but you can understand that and do it as nobody else can. Promise me that immortality. Promise me you will not make a little hell of crape and crying and undertaker's horrors and withering flowers and all ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... in this newspaper, a hotel in Venice advertises that its situation enables it to avoid the odors of the Grand Canal; and an undertaker in Nice advertises that he will forward the corpses of tourists to all parts of Europe and America. I think there is a chance of our getting back, either dead or alive, and so I also say, let ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... every attention was paid to him. The gaoler's wife sent him tea, and the turnkey's daughter begged him to write his name in her album, where a many gentlemen had written it on like occasions! 'Bother your album!' says Bulbo. The Undertaker came and measured him for the handsomest coffin which money could buy—even this didn't console Bulbo. The Cook brought him dishes which he once used to like; but he wouldn't touch them: he sat down and began writing ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... covered the body with a winding-sheet and sent for the undertaker to make preparations for the funeral. Cassim was buried with all due solemnity the same day. Ali Baba now removed his few goods, and all the gold coin that he had brought home from the cavern, to the house of his ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... those who did not find an excuse. I see the gray walls and the cypresses, those trees of sun and shade, so beautiful in the country of southern France against the low purple hills. I see the horrible undertaker's men in greasy jackets and shiny top hats. I see.... No, ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... the direction of the funeral to a good economical undertaker, by name Peebles. I have not seen him, and am not like; for he is in too large a way to attend himself, and he sends his man for orders, and to see ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... Also there was that undertaker-faced secretary standin' by with his ear out. The prospect of sittin' around watchin' him for the rest of the day wasn't fascinatin'. No; I'd had about all of Barnes I could stand. A few more of his cheerin' observations, and I'd want to jam his head ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... commemorate the dead—who does not know them, with their ill-digested masses of material, their slipshod style, their tone of tedious panegyric, their lamentable lack of selection, of detachment, of design? They are as familiar as the cortege of the undertaker, and bear the same ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... fact, been driven to retire from business by those two failings. So far from reforming, the incorrigible offender had found scope in his new occupation for the indulgence of both cravings; he did nothing, and he drank with drivers of wedding-coaches, with the undertaker's men at funerals, with poor folk relieved by the vicar, till his morning's occupation was set forth in rubric on his countenance ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... taken back to his dungeon, where every attention was paid to him. The gaoler's wife sent him tea, and the turnkey's daughter begged him to write his name in her album, where a many gentlemen had written it on like occasions! "Bother your album!" says Bulbo. The Undertaker came and measured him for the handsomest coffin which money could buy: even this didn't console Bulbo. The Cook brought him dishes which he once used to like; but he wouldn't touch them: he sat down and began writing ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... been in this brigade a month, and I know more than you do, far, very far more, sorry to say it. He's a reformed clergyman. He's an apostatized minister." The Colonel's voice as he said this was solemn and sad enough to do credit to an undertaker. "It's a bad sort, Wallis," he continued, after another deep sigh, a very highly perfumed one, the sigh of a bar-keeper. "When a clergyman falls, he falls for life and eternity, like a woman or an angel. I never ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... could outlive anything," retorted Charlton. "No, you belong to the old stock. You used to see 'em around when you were a boy. They usually coughed and wheezed, and every time they did it, the family used to get ready to send for the undertaker. But they lived on and on. When did your ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... coffin was in a four-wheeled trap, for the solitary hearse that Mudgee boasted then was to meet them some three miles out of town—at the racecourse, as it happened, by one of those eternal ironies of fate. (Jones, the undertaker, had had another job that morning.) The long string of buggies and carts and horsemen; other buggies and carts and horsemen drawn respectfully back amongst the trees here and there along the route; male ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... ladies debating this point of etiquette, Miss S. showing some deference to Mrs Trumbler's experience in this particular department, but professing to be fortified in her own view by the opinion of an undertaker with a wide connection. She reflected, as she got into her pony carriage, that it is impossible even to die without affording a good deal of pleasure to other people—surely a fortunate ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... be sure! You see, I am the city undertaker, and the people are dying here so fast, that I can hardly supply the demand for coffins. You will have to wait until your turn comes, which will be ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... gave. I am a physician. I've put iodoform on my handkerchief every morning to prove it. I've been listed six times as a commercial traveler, twice as a con man, eight times as a clerk, three times as a policeman, with scattering votes for a reporter, a clergyman, an actor and an undertaker. But you're the first to roll the little ball into the little hole. I am a physician, or was. Better than that, you got it that I specialized on surgery—and I didn't plant that. ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... of himself," laughed the uncle. "Wish I had the four of them here with me! I wanted to bring them along but Dr. Hewitt said it'd be the surest way to the undertaker. They are a good sort but—sometimes, ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... its negation or opposite, for only the meanest of men are called infamous. They are utterly without fame, utterly nameless; but if fame implied only notoriety then infamous would possess no marked significance. Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but who bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals and follows them to ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... inebriate; and the shriek of the steam-whistle five miles away. Solemn and stupendous is this third watch. There are respectable men abroad. The city missionary is going up that court, to take a scuttle of coal to a poor family. The undertaker goes up the steps of that house, from which there comes a bitter cry, as though the destroying angel had smitten the first-born. The minister of Jesus passes along; he has been giving the sacrament to a dying Christian. The physician ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... thing—I really cannot. It is preposterous. How could the chaplain have put my sword into the hands of an undertaker?—Get me a hammer; I will ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... white undertaker, a silent little man with a brisk yet sympathetic air, came and made some measurements. He talked to Peter in undertones about the finishing of the casket, how much the Knights of Tabor would pay, what Peter wanted. Then ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... explain'd, by taking notice of the Beauties and Defects of the Composition peculiar to this Immortal Poet. But This was but occasional, and for the sake only of perfecting the two other Parts, which were the proper Objects of the Editor's Labour. The third lies open for every willing Undertaker: and I shall be pleas'd to see it the Employment of a ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... Where a man can have the choice of a thousand girls who can't even stitch a button on a pillow-case, the feminine expert in domestic economy will go on economising all by herself, until the only man who takes any real interest in her is the undertaker! It is all very strange, and very unaccountable. But I suppose it will forever continue thuswise until the world ceases to lay its laurels at the foot of Mary and to ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... went to live with her married sister, whose large family was always reducing itself by the most surprising feats in infant mortality. She helped in the house. She earned her keep by doing little things for the dying babies, and interviewing the undertaker and bargaining for special terms, seeing what a good customer her sister was, when those poor babies were dead. But that great source of crisis in the households of the poor—the mother-in-law—came to live in the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... under unstable functionaries. The bishop alone has maintained himself intact and erect, a dignitary for life, the conductor, by title and in fact, of a good many persons, the stationary and patient undertaker of a great service, the unique general and undisputed commander of a special militia which, through conscience and professions, gathers close around him and, every morning, awaits his orders. Because in his essence, he is a governor of souls. Revolution and centralization ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... squeezed in next to the door; and she was lost in her own thoughts oblivious of her close packed neighbors till the stage stopped again with a jerk, and the sharp edge of a black cart-wheel-hat decorated with plumes enough for an undertaker's wagon cut a swath that threatened to slice ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... is," he said, "listen: Palmyre Chocareille, born at Paris in 1840, daughter of James Chocareille, undertaker's assistant, and of ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... In those days the mining companies maintained a hospital at the edge of the town. The vehicle made one stop at this institution and unloaded three of its occupants. It made a second stop before the establishment of a local undertaker, where two bodies were removed. And then young Breckenbridge rode on alone to the court-house. Two outlaws and four men in the deputy sheriff's party makes six altogether. Out of the six he was the only one left ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... want to die, does it matter much whether you kill yourself with a bludgeon or a pin, take gas from a tap or cyanide of potassium, jump in front of a railway train or use the revolting razor? You are dead neither less nor more, and the shock to the world is the same. It's only the housemaid or the undertaker that notices any difference. I knew a man at Vleifontein who killed himself by jumping into the machinery of a mill. It gave a lot of trouble to all concerned. That was what he wanted—to end his own life and exasperate ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... swimmer, sailor, doctor, undertaker, And he's good at every one of 'em the same: And he risks his life fer others in the quicksand and the breaker, And a thousand wives and mothers bless his name. He's an angel dressed in oilskins, he's ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... assistant on a Peddletonian weekly, who made his little annual joke about the "first egg laid on our table," and who was the menial of every tradesman in the village and under bonds to him for frequent "puffs," except the undertaker, about whose employment he was recklessly facetious. In Washington he was an important man, correspondent, and clerk of two house committees, a "worker" in politics, and a confident critic of every woman and every man in Washington. He would be a consul no doubt by and by, at ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... in Port Agnew, Donald called upon one Sam Carew. In his youth, Mr. Carew had served his time as an undertaker's assistant, but in Port Agnew his shingle proclaimed him to his world as a "mortician." Owing to the low death-rate in that salubrious section, however, Mr. Carew added to his labors those of a carpenter, and when outside jobs of carpentering ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... for his favour to me yesterday, at the Committee of Tangier, in my absence, Mr. Povy having given me advice of it, of the discourse there of doing something as to the putting the payment of the garrison into some undertaker's hand, Alderman Backewell, which the Duke of York would not suffer to go on, without my presence at the debate. And he answered me just thus: that he ought to have a care of him that do the King's business in the manner that I do, and words of more force than that. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... contrary to the French law to be under an assumed name in your hotel. From 3.30 till 5 p.m. we hung about the Maine and the Commissaire de Police offices. I then got angry and insisted on going to Gesling, the undertaker to the English Embassy, to whom Father Cuthbert had recommended me. After settling matters with him I went off to find some nuns to watch the body. I thought that in Paris of all places this would be quite ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... called "Little" Thompson, who was high and narrow in build—shaped something like a lath, with a face something like an undertaker's—sang at length. First a doleful ditty that ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... discerning from the speech of the man, as well as from his familiarity with the deed, that he was a native mountaineer. Lillian had desired to bestow upon him, in return for his intention of aid at the last, a decent burial, but the interpretation of the metropolitan undertaker of this commission was so far in excess of the habit of the rustic region that men who had known old Clenk all their lives did not recognize him as he lay in his coffin, clean, bathed, shaven, clad in a suit of respectable black and with all the dignity of immaculate linen, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... merely because the consequences had been lifted from his shoulders. If he had failed once to provide for his little friend, there should never be any trouble on that score again. So he made it all sure and definite now, by the legal-sounding paper he drew up; and Henry Bloom, the undertaker on the next block, who was also a notary public, came in and certified the signature. And he too declined his fee for his trouble, to the ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... certain kinds of goods for sale, and, {432} indeed, in the small shop of modern times where goods are repaired or manufactured. They represent customs which now are irregular, but which formerly were permanent methods. It was a simple system, requiring no capital, no undertaker or manager, no middleman. Gradually these customs were replaced by many varied methods, such as the establishment of the laborer in his individual shop, who at first only made the raw material, which people brought him, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... interruption, business, and pleasure all take their turns of retardation; and every long work is lengthened by a thousand causes that can, and ten thousand that cannot be recounted. Perhaps no extensive and multifarious performance was ever effected within the term originally fixed in the undertaker's mind. He that runs against time has an antagonist not subject to casualties.' Johnson's Works, viii. 255. In Prior's Goldsmith (i. 238) we have the following extracts from letters written by Grainger (post, March 21, 1776) to Dr. Percy:—'June ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of the conversation Mr. Bolton entered the Lodge for his evening meal. At the father's appearance, the talk between mother and daughter ceased instantly. Mrs. Bolton caressed and cajoled the surly undertaker's aid-de-camp, and said, "Lor, Mr. B., who'd have thought to see you away from the Club of a Saturday night. Fanny, dear, get your pa some supper. What will you have, B.? The poor gurl's got a gathering in her eye, or somethink in it—I was looking at it just now as you came ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could serve her in any way, in the present matter, she simply requested me to send a respectable undertaker, who would perform what was fitting in the last rites due to ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... pauper's funeral was avoided. A labourer's wife, the mother of four or five young children, took upon herself the duty of washing and laying out the corpse, but there remained still the funeral to be managed. An undertaker to conduct it could not be engaged; there was no money to pay him. Then, however, neighbours took the matter up, not as an unwonted thing, I may say—it is usual with them to help bury a "mate"—only, as a rule, there is the undertaker too. In this case ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... the waiter and we left the cafe. On the way to Mary's I stopped at the undertaker's and made arrangements for Jim's burial. The man in charge was the saddest looking person I have ever seen. He had a woebegone look about him that was infectious—made you want to weep for him or with him. He discussed the funeral arrangements in a hushed ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... who never get the credit of their labors. He died at 17 Johnson's-court, Fleet-street, in an upstairs room above the printing office, where his devoted wife had for many weeks nursed his flickering life. The funeral was a notable event. Those of us who could afford it rode in the undertaker's coaches, and the rest walked in procession to Highgate Cemetery. I can still see Mr. Bradlaugh in my mind's eye, bustling about on the ground floor, taking everything as usual on his own shoulders. He sorted us in fours for ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... Possibility of Sensation. Truly a fine result! A man may very well love beef, or hunting, or a woman; but surely, surely, not a Permanent Possibility of Sensation! He may be afraid of a precipice, or a dentist, or a large enemy with a club, or even an undertaker's man; but not certainly of abstract death. We may trick with the word life in its dozen senses until we are weary of tricking; we may argue in terms of all the philosophies on earth, but one fact remains true throughout—that ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... light of so many customers coming to be served at the wholesale and retail shop of criminal law where he stood behind the counter; received Mr Brass's statement of facts with about as much interest and surprise, as an undertaker might evince if required to listen to a circumstantial account of the last illness of a person whom he was called in to wait upon professionally; and took Kit into ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... little purse To help a mate, as shearers will, 'To pay the doctor and the nurse, And if there should be something worse — To pay the undertaker's bill.' ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... bustle of heroism, or the aspirations of ambition, seem only to heighten the absurdity of the scene, and make the humor more poignant. They feel, in short, as little anguish at their own distress, or the complaints of others, as the undertaker, though dressed in black, feels sorrow at a funeral. Of all the men I ever read of, the famous Cardinal de Retz possessed this happiness in the highest degree. When fortune wore her angriest look, and he fell into the power of Cardinal Mazarin, his ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... loneliness and fasting would make her ill; then Mrs. Pennypoker would be sorry. It might be that she would never get over it, but would go into a decline. How they would all mourn for her! She went on to plan the minutest details of her funeral with all the gloomy cheerfulness of an undertaker; but, when she came to fancy the loneliness of Howard and Charlie, the distressing picture overcame her, and she began to sob once more. However, the tears would not flow quite so readily this time; and, under all her pity for herself, ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... it made him laugh, (For the man was a coffin-maker,) To think how the mutes, and men in black suits, Would mourn for an undertaker. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... and begin to strike up at their shrillest, close to the open window. Ellen rises with great dignity. I fancy I can see her, sending out to order them off. And then, oh dear, Jock only hopping more frantically than ever round the poor man the hired waiter, who, you must know, is the undertaker's chief ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Senior, undertaker by profession, and mayor by an immense majority, was already at ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... than ourselves. Many a choice adventure, of which I was the hero, must be suppressed. I should blush myself black in the face to say what he would relate with a very quiet smile of self-satisfaction. However, as regrets are quite unavailing, unless, like the undertaker's, they are paid for, I shall exclaim, with the French soldier, who found his long military queue in the hands of a pursuing English sailor, "Chivalry of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... be. You fellows like to grouse and pretend every fall that the team's shot full of holes and that the world is a dark, dreary, dismal place and that winning from Claflin is only a hectic dream. For the love of lemons, fellows, chuck the undertaker stuff and cheer up. Talk about something interesting, or, if you must talk your everlasting football, cut ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... undertaker. His face had a queer attempt at melancholy, sadly at variance with a smirk of satisfaction which might be read between the lines. Though his calling was not a lively one, it did not depress his spirits, as in the bosom of his family he was the most cheery of men, and to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to another; nothing is suffered to prevail upon its own principle; the whole is so frittered down and disjointed, that scarcely a trace of the original scheme remains. Thus, between the resistance of power, and the unsystematical process of popularity, the undertaker and the undertaking are both exposed, and the poor reformer is hissed off the stags ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... him for his long absence when most needed. Then had followed a few days of sorrow and suspense, and then the gentle, harmless, helpless, purposeless life fluttered away. Jenny paid all the bills, the doctor, the undertaker, everything, and Mart tried vainly to get some work; but he was a marked man. Then, the day after Jenny had settled up everything and made herself some simple mourning garb, she went to resume her duties at the library, and came back in a little while, white and ill, and she had been ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... adopted the system of taking all hope out of a fellow right in the beginning. Then if you 've really got something, it's a joyful surprise. If you ain't, the disappointment don't hurt so much. So trot 'er out and let the old Undertaker have a look at 'er. But I 'm telling you right at the start that ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the Major, from behind the morning paper, "I was in politics, meself. I ran for coroner an' got two whole votes—me own an' the undertaker's. It's because the public's so indiscriminating that I've not run ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... through the Ozark hills at night time with his fiddle under his arm. But in the last eight years he had played the thing only once, and that once had come so near finishing him that he still carried the receipt of the undertaker who came to bury ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... of about fifty, small and prim. Prim with an unconquerable primness that neither storm nor battle nor accident could shake. If she had been killed in the runaway she would have looked prim in death while awaiting the undertaker. She must have been wet almost to those unfractured bones which she had been feeling; her black silk dress, with its white ruching about the neck, was torn and bedraggled; her black hat, with its ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... Lily had learned to be like white ladies,—or so she said. She screamed at him in English, in Piute, and chose words in each that no princess should employ to express her emotions. Her loud denunciations followed Casey to the tepee, where he stopped and offered his services to Hahnaga as undertaker. ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower |
