) So, although no one in all Bumsteadville was in the least
afraid of the pauper burial-ground at any hour, it was not invariably
selected by the great mass of the populace as a peerless place to go
home by at midnight; and the two intellectual explorers find no
sentimental young couples rambling arm in arm among the ghastly
head-boards, nor so much as one loiterer smoking his segar on a
suicide's tomb.
"JOHN McLAUGHLIN, you're getting nervous again," says Mr. BUMSTEAD,
catching him in the coat collar with the handle of his umbrella and
drawing the other toward him hand-over-hand. "It's about time that you
should revert again to the hoary JAMES AKER'S excellent preparation for
the human family.--I'll try it first, myself, to see if it tastes at all
of the cork.
"Ah-h," sighs OLD MORTARITY, after his turn has come and been enjoyed at
last, "that's the kind of Spirits I don't mind being a wrapper to. I
could wrap _them_ up all right."
Reflectively chewing a clove, the Ritualistic organist reclines on the
pauper grave of a former writer for the daily press, and cogitates upon
his companion's leaning to Spiritualism; while the other produces
matches and lights their lanterns.
"Mr. McLAUGHLIN," he solemnly remarks, waving his umbrella at the graves
around, "in this scene you behold the very last of man's individual
being.
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