"Undertaker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little less than an Art invented. The Works of the former Artists remain indeed; but the Manner in which they were done, is entirely lost: the inventing then the Manner is really due to this latter Undertaker, since no Writings, or other Remains, are to be found by which the Method of former Artists can be discover'd, or in what Manner they executed their works; nor, in Truth, has the Italian Method since the Beginning of the 16th Century ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... seemed to have forgotten that they had any reason to expect a letter from Frederick that morning. He was absorbed in one idea—that the last visible token of the presence of his wife was to be carried away from him, and hidden from his sight. He trembled pitifully as the undertaker's man was arranging his crape draperies around him. He looked wistfully at Margaret; and, when released, he tottered towards her, murmuring, 'Pray for me, Margaret. I have no strength left in me. I cannot ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... down, and a hard pavement below that window. I'd advise you, Agnew, not to pitch yourself out of that on your head. It would probably give the undertaker a job." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... 113) and measures taken to entice customers away from other competitors. Again, scientific experiments, means of communication etc., may be entirely unproductive in the individual economy of the undertaker, and yet be of more profit to mankind in general, than they have cost the former.(333) In this respect the nation's economy holds a middle place between individual economy and the world's economy.(334) Strictly speaking, only those employments should ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... the verge of a white apoplexy, though he did not move from his seat. The cadaverous maid lifted an embroidered bodice from one of the chairs and laid it in one of the black trunks; she looked like a female undertaker laying a dead baby in its coffin. The fat maid showed all her teeth and laughed at Schreiermeyer and cleared the other chair, and brought up both ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... but, Maecenas, yon would have me live, And, were I sick, my absence you'd forgive; So let me crave indulgence for the fear Of falling ill at this bad time of year, When, thanks to early figs and sultry heat, The undertaker figures with his suite, When fathers all and fond mammas grow pale At what may happen to their young heirs male, And courts and levees, town-bred mortals' ills, Bring fevers on, and break the seals of wills. When winter strews the Alban fields ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... 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 off one of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... assuredly suffer more 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 the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... how unscrupulous they are in their business methods. A man like that could persuade a fishmonger or an undertaker to stock it. But he'll do them in the end. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... 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 Scotchman, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... regular course of business; and regarding the perpetrators in the 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 custody with ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... to a well-known undertaker's, and, stepping in, felt more than ever the borderland-sense. In this silent house of sadness men stepped quietly, gravely, decorously, and served you with courteous sympathy. What was the name of the man who rowed his boat on the River ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... befits the economy of a discreet hebdomadal journal. We can but allude, and hint, and suggest, and illustrate our position in an 'off-at-a-tangent' sort of way. Look, for instance, at his ingenious quaintness in the matter of onomatology. What a name, he would say, is Lamb for a soldier, Joy for an undertaker, Rich for a pauper, or Noble for a tailor; Big for a lean or little person, and Small for one who is broad in the rear and abdominous in the van; Short for a fellow six feet without his shoes, or Long for him whose high heels barely elevate him to the height of five; Sweet ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... to my word, I am absent the whole of August. But, if you would have me live sound and in perfect health, the indulgence which you grant me, Maecenas, when I am ill, you will grant me [also] when I am afraid of being ill: while [the time of] the first figs, and the [autumnal] heat graces the undertaker with his black attendants; while every father and mother turn pale with fear for their children; and while over-acted diligence, and attendance at the forum, bring on fevers and unseal wills. But, if ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... multitude are skeleton-like in shape and dwarfish in proportion, indicating to a pitiful degree the lack of blood to supply and brain to conduct the enterprise, it matters little whether it be of the professional or business type. The medical practitioner and undertaker are striking exceptions to the non-prosperous and unsuccessful class, although the good fortune of both is due chiefly to giant causes which account for the business and professional dearth of the race in other directions. While the physicians and funeral directors of the dominant ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... the several severe articles he wrote criticizing officials and institutions seems to have appeared—an attack on an undertaker whose establishment formed a branch of the coroner's office. The management of this place one day refused information to a Call reporter, and the next morning its proprietor was terrified by a scathing denunciation of his firm. It began, "Those body-snatchers" ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... that was necessary. He had laid by more than half his earnings for the last eight or nine months. One of his clients, an undertaker, had made all the necessary preparations for the funeral, and in a few hours his father would be borne to his last resting-place. As he stood at the open window he thought sadly over the past, and of his father's wasted life. Had it not been for the war he might have ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... "But the undertaker says he'll do it handsome, and will let the part I haven't money for, run, me paying it off in weekly payments," the man explained, when Peter expressed some surprise at the evident needless expense they ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... questions one could discern 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
... Giles's, Cripplegate; and her grandmother, for long and long, not only head dry-nurse to one of the noblest families in all England, but bona fide twenty-two stone avoirdupois—so that it was once proposed, by the undertaker, to bury her at twice! As to this nonpareil of lovely flesh and blood, her name was Lucy Mainspring, the daughter of a horologer, sir,—a watchmaker—vulgo so called—and though fattish, she was very fair—fair! by Jupiter, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... dead any any other woman come near my coffin de undertaker would have to do his job all over—cause I'd git right up and walk off. Furthermore, Miss Daisy, ma'am, also m'am, which would you ruther be a lark a flying or a dove a ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... us, and Godfrey and I accompanied him to the service over the body of the murdered man. We were the only outsiders there, besides the undertaker and his assistants, and they were not admitted to the ceremony. This was witnessed only by Miss Vaughan, Mahbub and us three. The servants were not there, and neither ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... was inordinately proud. One he had dubbed "Tarantula Juice;" the other he called "Whisper of Death." He told me that the amateur who took three drinks of the latter would have no further need for his services; the only person whose services he would require would be the undertaker. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... as if there had been a death in the house; as if its people shrank and hid themselves in their bereavement. I might have been the undertaker called in to help ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... Litry Guy who would don his Undertaker's Regalia and the White Satin Puff Tie and go out of an Afternoon to read ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... coming, and arrived the next day. The others wired that they could not come, but asked for details, which Jennie wrote. The Lutheran minister was called in to say prayers and fix the time of the burial service. A fat, smug undertaker was commissioned to arrange all the details. Some few neighborhood friends called—those who had remained most faithful—and on the second morning following his death the services were held. Lester accompanied Jennie and Vesta and Bass to the little red brick Lutheran ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... the day when the body still lay in the parlor of the Tollman house and Conscience sat almost as motionless near by, Eben Tollman paced the floor with features set in an expression unpleasantly suggestive of the undertaker's professional solemnity. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... lies; but she reminds him of the necessity for decent burial. Much is to be done before they can begin to enjoy together their new and freer existence. There is the body to be buried; the obituary notices to be written for the papers: the parson and undertaker to be summoned: the formalities of the funeral: the selection of a proper tombstone, with care for the name and accurate carving of the date of death thereupon: and finally a bit of verse in the way of final flourish. So these two spirits look on with impatience at the funeral exercises, at the ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... forward. Lord Kenmure was accompanied by an undertaker, to whom the care of his body was to be entrusted; he was also attended by a surgeon, who directed the executioner how to perform his office, by drawing his finger over that part of the neck where the blow was to be given. Lord Kenmure then kissed the officers and gentlemen ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... the Chilkoot Pass. The Chilkoot Pass, is a high pass about a mile high and steep as a house roof. And is also subject to very heavy snowslides. It was here where a short time before 148 soldiers in the British Army were all burried forever without any Sky-Pilot or Undertaker's assistance. We crossed through Jacobs Ladder where were six-hundred steps cut into the solid ice. There were several Men known as packers who lived at the foot of the ladder, they packed over loads for 45cts per lb. they wore spurs on the bottom ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... the Guard," he repeated slowly. "The undertaker 'oo could guarantee that, mark you, for all his customers—well, 'e'd monopolise the trade, is all I can say. See the ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... came the wife and daughter of the good physician again upon the mission of mercy. They had requested the attendance of an undertaker, and assumed the whole charge of the funeral of Jenny, which was to take place on the third day after ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... poor would take better care of their children's feet half the infantile mortality would disappear. It only costs twopence to put a piece of thick felt or cork into the bottom of a boot or shoe, and the difference is often between that and a doctors bill, with, perhaps, the undertaker's ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... dear, 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
... preamble, I was persuaded to go to a ball, on purpose to see Liddy dance a minuet with a young petulant jackanapes, the only son of a wealthy undertaker from London, whose mother lodges in our neighbourhood, and has contracted an acquaintance with Tabby. I sat a couple of long hours, half stifled, in the midst of a noisome crowd; and could not help wondering ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... dispensed with. In some instances only the undertaker and his assistants are present, and in others only one or two members of ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... must be of common occurrence. At all events, I have never known a city in which cemeteries and undertaking establishments were so widely advertised. In the street cars, for instance, I observed the cheerful placards of one Wallace Johns, undertaker, who promises "all the attention you would expect from a friend," and I was informed that Mr. Johns possesses business cards (for restricted use only) bearing the gay ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... interest—that the obsequies of the old Senator Boligand were a distinguished success: a fashionable, proper function, ordered by the young widow with exquisite taste, as all the world said, and conducted without reproach, as the undertaker and the clergy very heartily agreed. At the Church of the Lifted Cross, the incident of the child, the blonde lady and the mysteriously veiled man, who sat in awe and bewildered amazement where the shadows gave deepest seclusion, escaped notice. Not that the late Senator Boligand was ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... 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 voice and finished ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... manufacturer, who in turn wished to secure a contract. An official in one of our large steel companies told me some weeks ago that among others who had called at his company's offices, asking prices on shrapnel, was an undertaker. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... life blood, of that the landlord takes his third for betraying you to him. Nay, more, as soon as ever your blood goes down the stair in that basin there, the landlord will see it or smell it, and send swiftly to his undertaker and get his third out of that job. For if he waited till the doctor got downstairs, the doctor would be beforehand and bespeak his undertaker, and then he would get the black thirds. Say I sooth, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... 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 both by friends ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... conspicuous among the men of the 18th of March. He had been journalist, working printer, a clerk at the Hotel de Ville, editor of a newspaper, pamphleteer, and cafe orator in turn, but always noisy and boastful. Andre Gill, the caricaturist, once drew him as an undertaker's dog, dragging a saucepan behind him, and the caricature told Valles' story well enough. In face he was ugly, but energetic ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... physicians, all of whom have performed remarkable cures. It is a full and complete list of fifty-eight physicians in good professional standing, and I will dispose of it at a moderate compensation to any apothecary or undertaker ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... a hot biscuit and the information that I was "good-looking enough for anybody to eat up alive without all this foolishness," all in a very few seconds. Now I have to beg her to help me and I heard her tell her nephew, who does the gardening, that she felt like an undertaker with such goings-on. At any rate, if it all kills me it won't be my fault if anybody has to lie in saying that ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a Punch-and-Judy show, as interesting as a "fifteen puzzle," and sometimes as pretty as chromos. Quilp munching the eggs, shells and all, to scare his wife, makes one shiver as though a Jack-in-the-box had been popped out at him. Mr. Mould, the undertaker, and Jaggers, the lawyer, are as amusing as Humpty-Dumpty and Pantaloon. I am sure that no live lawyer ever gave me half the enjoyment that Jaggers has, and Doctor Slammers' talk is better medicine than the pills of any living ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... fanatic fervor. As it pleased him he could play Hamlet, tenderly shocked at the sight of his dead father, or Macbeth, retreating in horror before the ghost of Banquo. For the moment his manner was that of the undertaker. ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... was doctoring them, but one of them grew so much worse she sent for Dr. Lewis and he was so busy he didn't get there until five, just as the boy died, and the other one hadn't seemed so bad, but he died at nine, and the youngest girl has the fever. Dr. Lewis sent for the undertaker right away and they put something on the bodies and sealed up the coffin and they were to be buried this morning and the clothes to be burned and the house fumigated. Oh, isn't it horrible! The woman ought to ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... fare-you-well. And this is Percy Perkins"—meaning Pink—"and he's another successful dryfarmer. Goats is his trade. He's got a lot of 'em. And Mr. Jack Bates, he raises peanuts—or he's trying 'em this year—and has contracts to supply the local market. Mr. Happy Jack is our local undertaker. He wants to sell out if he can, because nobody ever dies in this country and that makes business slow. He's thinking some of starting a duck-ranch. This man"—indicating Big Medicine—"has got the finest looking crop of volunteer wild oats in the country. He knows all about 'em. Mr. Emmett, ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... The undertaker regarded the deceased in the coffin with severe disapproval, for the wig persisted in slipping back and revealing a perfectly bald pate. He addressed the widow in that cheerfully melancholy tone which is characteristic of undertakers during ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... was so different from the old-time custom that I marveled. Instinctively I turned to inspect the possible foe that menaced us in the rear. I saw a horseman dressed in black, who might have been a lawyer or a parson or an undertaker, trotting peaceably along the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... sad and sorry when his Ass died. "My Ass served me faithfully," said he, "and it's only fair he should have a good funeral." So he sent for the undertaker, and told him to make a big coffin, and put it on a hearse, and buried the Ass with great splendour. Then he shaved off every scrap of hair from his head, as the custom was in those parts when anybody died, and gave a funeral feast to all his relations, ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... mother's funeral that day so many years ago, and buried his face in the sweet-mary leaves in the old Bible, and blotted its pages with his tears; for it seemed more like her than anything else in the house. He remembered that the undertaker's black mat with its ghastly white border was still in the front window, where the coffin had rested, and that the room smelled ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... opened by Sloane's man, Jarvis, who had in queer combination, Hastings thought, the salient aspects of an undertaker and an experienced pick-pocket. He was dismal of countenance and alert in movement, an efficient ghost, admirably appropriate to the twilit gloom of the room with its heavily ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... qualities, has raised himself to an eminence never reached by any other member of the family. He is a conspicuous exception to the downcast looks of so many of his relations. Undertake is an enterprising fellow, but he is often deceived and fails in his schemes; not so Undertaker, (whose similarity in name would make some folks believe there was some connexion;) no, his affairs are calculated to a wonderful nicety, and every tear is priced. Underwriter is a speculative genius, and—but the less we say of him the better. Underrate is a character I cannot avoid ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... coffin, to 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 to-morrow ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... old trust fund is making more money for me by lying idle than I could accumulate in a century by hard work as a grocer or an undertaker," he was prone to philosophise when his uncles, who were merchants, urged him to settle down and "do something." Not that there were grocers or undertakers among them; it was his way of impressing his sense of ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... Ballad of Jakko Hill The Plea of the Simla Dancers Ballad of Fisher's Boarding-House "As the Bell Clinks" An Old Song Certain Maxims of Hafiz The Grave of the Hundred Head The Moon of Other Days The Overland Mail What the People Said The Undertaker's Horse The Fall of Jock Gillespie Arithmetic on the Frontier One Viceroy Resigns The Betrothed A Tale of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... also to complete the Young America expression. Mother Hubbard's mingled consternation and pride at each successive achievement of her astonishing puppy were inimitable. Each separate illustration made its point. Patriotism, especially, came in when the undertaker, bearing the pall with red-lettered border,—Rebellion,—finds the dog, with upturned, knowing eye, and parted jaws, suggestive as much of a good grip as of laughter, half risen upon fore-paws, as far from "dead" as ever, mounting guard over the ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... paled. Up behind her crowded Tom Gulick, Hiram Hooker, Heine Schultz, and Jim McAllen, and, if looks could have killed, the man with the gun would have been ripe for the undertaker's care. ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... "shot square" and became American citizens. Rock and Blankovitch had been taken with the men from Diablo Island to the jail at the county-seat. The body of Mascola was still in the custody of the local undertaker and Bandrist had been removed to a hospital. But of the men themselves little was said. An era of universal ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... the family belong, and possibly one or two closest friends, whose competence and sympathy can be counted on—as there are many things which must be done for the stricken family as well as for the deceased. (The sexton of nearly every Protestant church is also undertaker. If he is not, then an outside funeral director is ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... behind the door. Dawes was kicking it open with his foot, his arms laden with two rather large feet, still encased in bedroom slippers. Charlie was at the other end of the burden, which appeared to be a middle-aged man in pajamas. The Sheriff followed the trio up with a sad, undertaker expression. Behind him ...
— Dream Town • Henry Slesar
... would be nurse. She never reproached, never chided 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 ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... 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 commodity, a workmanship more ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... livery-stable where his pack-mule was lodged, handing out cigars in the wooden-fronted hotel, casually interviewing the town officials as to the health of the locality and the death-rate of Toluca, acquainting himself with the local undertaker and the lonely young doctor, and even dropping in on the town officials and making inquiries about main-street building lots and the ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... 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) ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... miserably and said nothing. No one was surprised when the hour for the funeral services arrived to find Jim missing. Messengers had to be sent out. They searched the town but could find no trace of Jim. For an hour Green Valley waited in that still home. Then the undertaker from Elmwood whispered something to the crushed, terrified giant who stood staring at the dead face of his wife like a ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... would far sooner be ornamental—and starve. 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 give ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... her dinner than to take any notice of him. She told him as much in after days with her usual candour. "I took you for one of the little Mayfair dandies," she said to Pen. "You looked as solemn as a little undertaker; and as I disliked, beyond measure, the odious creature who was on the other side of me, I thought it was best to eat my dinner and hold ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... noisy French hairdresser had arrived, demanding electric heat and hand-glasses as casually as if his customer had been the bustling, vain old lady of a week ago. She laughed secretly whenever she recalled the solemn undertaker who had solicited her own aid in filling out a blank. His first melancholy question, "And thud dame of the father——" Norma had momentarily supposed to be the beginning of a prayer, and it had been with an almost hysterical revulsion of feeling that she had said: "Oh, ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... Louise," warned Frederick Augustus in the voice of an undertaker, and I really think he meant it. But I wasn't in the mood to ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... 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 ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... sympathetic and offered to feed him. But the young man was too much upset to eat, and having fasted for three days fell seriously ill. He rapidly grew worse, and the landlord, fearing he would not recover, had him moved straight to the undertaker's shop. In a short time the whole of the undertaker's staff was collected round him, offering sympathy and bringing him food. Gradually he got better and was able to walk ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... accords with the character and nature of the ceremony. The body is preceded by the poor of the charitable institutions, with lighted candles or tapers in their hands; and the clergy follow it, chanting the office for the dead. The undertaker is a personage entirely unknown in Spain. The church takes possession of the body, and keeps it until the time of interment, and the bill of expenses for the offices which the church performs frequently amounts to a sum absolutely ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... Stubbs had kept his intention of stuffing the character a profound secret, fearful lest any technical objections should be made by Mr. Peaess, and desirous also of making the first impression in the green-room. When he entered it, therefore, in the likeness of a chubby undertaker, ready for a funeral, rather than in that of the "unmatched form and feature of blown youth"—in short, the very type and image of poor Tokely in Peter Pastoral,—his eyes and ears were on the alert to catch the look of surprise, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... it was here he was last seen; from this point a keen detective would naturally work up the case. Then might not the undertaker return for the candlestick, probably not left by design? Or, again, might not M. Dorine send fresh wreaths of flowers, to take the place of those which now diffused a pungent, aromatic odor throughout the chamber? Ah! what unlikely chances! But if one of these things did not happen speedily, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... interment, burial, sepulture[obs3]; inhumation|; obsequies, exequies[obs3]; funeral, wake, pyre, funeral pile; cremation. funeral, funeral rite, funeral solemnity; kneel, passing bell, tolling; dirge &c. (lamentation) 839; cypress; orbit, dead march, muffled drum; mortuary, undertaker, mute; elegy; funeral, funeral oration, funeral sermon; epitaph. graveclothes[obs3], shroud, winding sheet, cerecloth; cerement. coffin, shell, sarcophagus, urn, pall, bier, hearse, catafalque, cinerary urn[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the stranger said, "is Day Bly, although I'm commonly called Day, for short. I was dragged up in London, and when I was twelve years of age I was apprenticed to an undertaker. I used to take care of the shop, clean the hearse, and sleep in a coffin, with old pieces of mouldy velvet thrown over me to keep me warm in the ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... son and also the undertaker, so the body can be taken care of. I'll telephone the latter too ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... antennae; his breast is covered with nankeen; and across his wing-cases he wears a double, scalloped scarf of vermilion. An elegant, almost sumptuous costume, very superior to that of the others, but yet lugubrious, as befits your undertaker's man. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... 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
... becomes me, as an honest man, to make passing mention of my father's sister, auntie Mysie, that married a carpenter and undertaker in the town of Jedburgh; and who, in the course of nature and industry, came to be in a prosperous and thriving way; indeed, so much so, as to be raised from the rank of a private head of a family; and at last elected, by a majority of two votes over ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... not only voted an entire success by the villagers, but the seal of professional approval was set upon it by an undertaker from Saco, who declared that Mrs. Tarbox could make a handsome living in the funeral line anywhere. Providence, who always assists those who assist themselves, decreed that the niece Lyddy Ann should not arrive until the aunt was safely buried; so, there being none ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... occasions when Nickie the Kid deliberately undertook to earn his daily bread. For a week he served as waiter in a six penny restaurant. He had been a "super" in drama and a practical crocodile in pantomime and was long in the employ of a fashionable undertaker as second in command on the hearse. In this latter billet he had to keep his hair dyed a presentable black, but otherwise the duties were light, and Nickie might still have been useful mute, only that ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... who had remained with me in the darkness, 'here's a big break in the Croton main.' But a moment later, in an affrighted voice: 'No, it ain't. Its the sewer! I never knew of this opening into it before. Paugh! how it smells. That's nothing up where you are. I'll bet on the undertaker having more jobs in the house ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... 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 ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... the coffin, "What the devil have you there? It has fingers, it has hair; Yet it neither kicks nor squirms At the undertaker's terms." Said the coffin ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... only just, and I tell you there is only one way of treating a man who has robbed you dishonestly of the woman you love, and that is to finish him so completely that the first man called in will be the undertaker—not the surgeon. I am not talking at random—I know a case in point, which always sets me blazing when I think of it. He was at the time attached to our embassy at Berlin. I hear now that he has returned to England and is dying—dying, remember, of a broken heart—won't live the year out. ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... see 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 ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Brents, Dorothy's friends. They had a dinner—very nice, but they all kind o' sat 'round and waited for us to perform. I guess they thought we were mountain lions. But they didn't make much out o' me. They was one chap there with goggles who looked at Mart like an undertaker. He's a scientific doctor—one of these fellers that invent new ways of doing things. His name is Halliday. I liked Dr. Brent pretty well—but Mrs. Brent only so-so. The doctor wants to 'dagnose' Mart's case—says it won't cost a cent. We all went to a show at night and the ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... noticed passed rapidly behind the tomb of Abelard and Heloise, placed itself close to the heads of the horses belonging to the hearse, and following the undertaker's men, arrived with them at the spot appointed for the burial. Each person's attention was occupied. Monte Cristo saw nothing but the shadow, which no one else observed. Twice the count left the ranks to see whether the object of his interest had any concealed weapon beneath his ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... shouldn't say that, but I must say I couldn't fancy a h'undertaker. Just imagine 'im 'andlin' the dead and then ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... here, assures me that those people who never need a doctor until they are well advanced in life are not likely to require a physician's services more than once. The next call is for the undertaker." ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... on the subject in different literatures, and then we should send him on a tour round the great public and private libraries of Great Britain and the Continent. This, of course, applies only where the undertaker is in thorough earnest, and wishes to spare himself a good deal of expense and a good deal of mortification. Illustrated catalogues are of very indifferent value, especially those of auctioneers, which too often offer the result of sophistication ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... credulous Bishop, our readers will regret with us, especially those inventive geniuses, who, like the projector in the reign of George I., published a scheme for manufacturing pine plank from pine saw-dust, or the still more ingenious undertaker of later times, who proposed to make pine plank out of oak saw-dust, by the mere ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... certain types of work or bringing 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 ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... 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 are the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... pleasantly apostrophised, the fruit made its appearance, and with it a fresh supply of the genuine Oporto, which our merry companion, Blackstrap, called "his old particular." One of his stories, relative to a joke played off upon the Bolton trotters, by his friend Sable, the travelling undertaker, is too good to be lost. In Lancashire the custom of hoaxing is called 255trotting, and in many instances, particularly at Bolton, is still continued, and has frequently been played off upon strangers with a ruinous success. Sable had, it would appear, taken ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... 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 ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... asked the undertaker, who was waiting for him beside the hearse, who these people were. He had not invited anybody, and did not expect there would be a crowd of any kind, although the Hamburg papers had devoted ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... as in the following specimen, which mixes up somewhat grotesquely the emblems of death and eternity with the mundane instruments of skill and labour, including therein a coffin lid to shew maybe that the man, besides being a carpenter, was also an undertaker. ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... it in the city!... There, on many a corner, one is confronted with the black, significant sign of the undertaker's "dreadful trade," or comes upon some marble-yard, filled with a ghastly assemblage of anticipatory gravestones and monuments; graceful broken columns, which are to typify the lovely incompleteness of some young life now full of beauty and promise; ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... attire; his face was wan and haggard; his eyes were too bright. As to his age, if one had attempted to guess it, one might have said forty-seven, then corrected himself and said seventy-four. He was really twenty-eight. Emaciated he was; as much, perhaps, as he dared be, with a needy undertaker at Bentley's Flat and a new and enterprising coroner at Sonora. Poverty and zeal are an upper and a nether millstone. It is dangerous to make a third in that kind ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... same Town there was an Undertaker who had Sporting Blood in his Veins, and he sought out the Manager and made a Match in behalf ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... "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. Heard the voices in contention. The gruff voice was that of a Frenchman. Could ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... thing, and actually received, along with an imbecile grin, the answer that donkeys generally go after carrots. But Lady Bullingdon was yet further amazed to find the unhappy girl inclined to accept this monstrous proposal, though she was actually asked in marriage by Garth, the undertaker, a man in a far superior position to her own. Lady Bullingdon could not, of course, countenance such an arrangement for a moment, and the two unhappy persons escaped for a clandestine marriage. Lady Bullingdon cannot exactly recall the man's name, but thinks it was Smith. He was always ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... circumstances of great temptation, but still lapsed from virtue, and who dies in giving him birth. He is brought up as a pauper child in a particularly ill-managed workhouse, and apprenticed to a low undertaker. Thence he escapes, and walks to London, where he falls in with a gang of thieves. His legitimate brother, an unutterable scoundrel, happens to see him in London, and recognizing him by a likeness to their common father, bribes the thieves to recapture him when he has ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... that the physician and undertaker must live; and then the army of nurses and others, too, are to be provided for, quite as the fashionable lady would make reply to any impertinence in matters of her dress, that it kept an army of sewing-girls employed who would otherwise be left ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... call "Silius! Silius! Silius!" The original motive of this cry—which has its modern parallel in the case of a dead Pope—was to make sure that the man was actually dead and beyond reply. This point made certain, the professional undertaker is called in and instructed to take charge of all the proceedings usual in such cases. It is he who will provide the persons who are to wash and anoint the body and lay it in state, and also, on the day of the procession, the musicians, the wailing-women, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... had been resumed under more favorable auspices, word came from the unseen world that the fiasco in the church was ascribable to the very good reason that Knight had caused his wife's coffin to be secretly removed. "I will show them!" cried the desperate man. With clergyman, sexton, and undertaker, he visited the vaults once more and not only identified ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... the Adjutant thereupon—pointing his whip at Trooper Henry Hawker, whose trap-like mouth incontinent fell open with astonishment. "It's got up in an imitation of the uniform of the Queen's Greys, I do believe!... It's not a rag doll either.... It's a God-forsaken undertaker's mute in a red and black shroud with a cake-tin at the back of its turnip head and a pair of chemises on its ugly hands.... ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... much disturbed in his sleep with frightful dreams, and as some say, apparitions; and one, night he dreamt that a large stone, out of one of the windows of the chapel, fell upon him and killed him. The undertaker, though staggered with these intimations, finished his agreement, and soon after fell to work on pulling down the chapel; but he was not far advanced in it, when, endeavouring with a pickax to get out some stones at the bottom of the west ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... 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 of the ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... 'twas no place at all! 'Twas time t' run for harbour, come what might; so we asked the cook t' take charge. The cook says t' me that he'd rather be a cook than a skipper, an' a skipper than a ship's undertaker, but he've no objection t' turn his hand t' anything t' 'blige a party o' friends: which he'll do, says he, by takin' the schooner t' Broad Cove o' the Harbourless Shore, which is a bad shelter in a nor'east gale, says he, but the ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... The medical practitioner shall at the same time sign and deliver to the undertaker or other person having charge of the burial a notice on the printed form to be supplied for that purpose by the Registrar-General to the effect that he has furnished a certificate under the last ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... trifle. He wondered if the minister would have talked in the same way—blatantly and without knowledge—of the virtues of the dead. In a chair at the side of the coffin the bereaved husband, in new black clothes, wept audibly. The baldheaded, officious undertaker kept moving nervously about, intent upon the ritual of ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... confectionary shops; but met with no success and attributed his failure to the hideous goggles and the fact that his customary happy and seductive grin was slightly stiff about the corners as if his face needed oiling. "Hang it all! Nobody but an undertaker could look happy in this town," Jimmy thought after his final effort. "No wonder that old cuss is so solemn. I'd be too, if I ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... despatched by their ruffian relatives, and go to another hotel. A larger parlor, larger rows, but still three deep and solemn. A tall man, with a face in which melancholy seems to be giving way to despair, a man most proper for an undertaker, but palpably out of place in a drawing-room, walks up and down incessantly, but noiselessly, in a persistent endeavor to bring out a dance. Now he fastens upon a newly arrived man. Now he plants himself before a bench of misses. You can hear the low rumble of his exhortation and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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
... gentlemen have been very entertaining this morning. One would think Polly and I had come out for a stroll with a couple of undertaker's-men. There's surely time enough to think of such things yet! None of us ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... had long a sot endur'd, Who all his time in taverns spent, While his affairs in ruin went. Once as insensible he lay, She dress'd him in a corpse's array, And with the undertaker's aid, Into a burying vault convey'd. The fumes dispersed, the man awakes; All for reality he takes. When by the glimmering of a lamp He saw his mansion drear and damp, Reflecting how his life had pass'd, ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... and that is almost as serious an interruption as a fight; because, although a Chinaman does not think much about his soul after he dies, he thinks a vast deal about his dead body, and, in order to be perfectly sure that he will not be cheated by the undertaker, he buys his coffin before he is sick, and sees that he has a good bargain. And so, having a good coffin, he wants a good funeral; and it is said some men spend nearly half of their fortune in having a grand procession when they are carried to their grave. When one of these enormous ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... so! He wrote very respectable verses; lived and died much respected by everybody. T'other, one bad dog, forced to fly from his country—died with not enough to pay his undertaker." ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... liars, every one. Their mere howdy-do was a lie, because they didn't care how you did, except they were undertakers. To the ordinary inquirer you lied in return; for you made no conscientious diagnostic of your case, but answered at random, and usually missed it considerably. You lied to the undertaker, and said your health was failing—a wholly commendable lie, since it cost you nothing and pleased the other man. If a stranger called and interrupted you, you said with your hearty tongue, "I'm glad to see ...
— On the Decay of the Art of Lying • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... that 'ar livin' skellington I packed up to yer house," said Bill promptly, "it's a pair of them in size and color, and ready for any first-class undertaker's team in the kintry. Why, you remember that curve on Break Neck hill, where the leaders allus look as if they was alongside o' the coach and faced the other way? Well, that woman sticks her skull outer the window, and sez she, confidential-like to old yaller-belly, sez she, 'William Henry,' ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... "and here, 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 us ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... little wretch, he looks like nothing but destitution! When a poor man dies, leaving a houseful of beggarly orphans, the State ought to require the undertaker who buries him to shoot or hang the whole brood, and lay them all in the Potter's Field out of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... discrimination; the woman looking into the coffin has more beauty than we generally see in the works of this artist. The undertaker's gloating stare, his companion's leer, the internal satisfaction of the parson and his next neighbour, are contrasted by the Irish howl of the woman at the opposite side, and evince Mr. Hogarth's thorough knowledge of the operation of the passions ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... 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 ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... funeral ceremonies fell on Richard, who was obliged to retire for a while to the continent to avoid arrest and await some settlement. These obsequies cost in all the huge sum of L60,000, which there was a great difficulty in paying. The chief undertaker's name was Rolt. See note on The Widow Ranter —'Trusting for Old Oliver's funeral,' Act ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... You will hereafter see how Mr. Hastings behaves to persons against whom he is irritated for their frauds upon him in their joint concerns. In the mean time Gunga Govind Sing rests with you as a person with whom Mr. Hastings is displeased on account of infidelity in the honorable trust of bribe undertaker and manager. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... old Snatchum the undertaker. 'E's smellin' round after a job; but 'e's out of it this time, smart as ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... the next morning at eight, and was 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 an adieu to Angelica, as the clock kept ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all day, dreading to see the undertaker's wagon drive up. But it did not come—not that day, nor the next, nor ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... meeting people. Their hard, matter-of-fact faces showed him only too plainly what they thought of him. At first he had been fool enough to scan them eagerly, in the hope of finding one saving touch of sympathy or comprehension. But he might as well have looked for grief in the eyes of an undertaker's mute. And so he had shrunk back into himself, wearing his stiffest air as a shield and leaving it to Mary to parry ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... 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 ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... twilight of the world, with the poor savage in his bewildered misery, pretending that his dead still lived. Our funeral with its black trappings and its elaborate ceremonies is the lineal descendant of a merry-making. Our undertaker is, by evolution, a genial master of ceremonies, keeping things lively at the death-dance. Thus have the ceremonies and the trappings of death been transformed in the course of ages till the forced gaiety is gone, and the black hearse and the gloomy ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... chuckle, "he is a proof of our initiative. I thought as you do three days ago. For it is just three days since he took his stand there. But he is not watching this flat. He is not concerned with us at all. He is an undertaker's tout. In the house opposite to us a woman is lying very ill. Our young friend is waiting for her to die, so that he may rush into the house, offer his condolences and present ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... covetous undertaker in town, who carted away the corpse, and then told the widow that she must spend much money on the funeral, in order to have her husband buried properly; or else, the tongues of the neighbors would wag. So the poor woman had ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... suggests the hysterical condition of Paris just before the Reign of Terror, while I, like Benjamin Franklin, in 'undertaker's clothes' in the midst of barbaric splendour, ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... upon her, and noted, as one of the many ways in which popular hatred was manifested, the withdrawal from her of the privileges of the Boston Athenaeum. Her pallbearers were elderly, plain farmers in the neighborhood; and, led by the old white-haired undertaker, the procession wound its way to the not distant burial- ground, over the red and gold of fallen leaves, and tinder the half- clouded October sky. A lover of all beautiful things, she was, as her intimate friends ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier |
