A CURIOUS DREAM [Written about 1870.]
CONTAINING A MORAL
Night before last I had a singular dream. I seemed to be sitting on adoorstep (in no particular city perhaps) ruminating, and the time ofnight appeared to be about twelve or one o'clock. The weather was balmyand delicious. There was no human sound in the air, not even a footstep.There was no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead stillness, exceptthe occasional hollow barking of a dog in the distance and the fainteranswer of a further dog. Presently up the street I heard a bonyclack-clacking, and guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party.In a minute more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered andmoldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework ofits person, swung by me with a stately stride and disappeared in the graygloom of the starlight. It had a broken and worm-eaten coffin on itsshoulder and a bundle of something in its hand. I knew what theclack-clacking was then; it was this party's joints working together,and his elbows knocking against his sides as he walked. I may say I wassurprised. Before I could collect my thoughts and enter upon anyspeculations as to what this apparition might portend, I heard anotherone coming for I recognized his clack-clack. He had two-thirds of acoffin on his shoulder, and some foot and head boards under his arm.I mightily wanted to peer under his hood and speak to him, but when heturned and smiled upon me with his cavernous sockets and his projectinggrin as he went by, I thought I would not detain him. He was hardly gonewhen I heard the clacking again, and another one issued from the shadowyhalf-light. This one was bending under a heavy gravestone, and dragginga shabby coffin after him by a string. When he got to me he gave me asteady look for a moment or two, and then rounded to and backed up to me,saying:
"Ease this down for a fellow, will you?"
I eased the gravestone down till it rested on the ground, and in doing sonoticed that it bore the name of "John Baxter Copmanhurst," with "May,1839," as the date of his death. Deceased sat wearily down by me, andwiped his os frontis with his major maxillary--chiefly from former habitI judged, for I could not see that he brought away any perspiration.
"It is too bad, too bad," said he, drawing the remnant of the shroudabout him and leaning his jaw pensively on his hand. Then he put hisleft foot up on his knee and fell to scratching his anklebone absentlywith a rusty nail which he got out of his coffin.
"What is too bad, friend?"
"Oh, everything, everything. I almost wish I never had died."
"You surprise me. Why do you say this? Has anything gone wrong? Whatis the matter?"
"Matter! Look at this shroud-rags. Look at this gravestone, allbattered up. Look at that disgraceful old coffin. All a man's propertygoing to ruin and destruction before his eyes, and ask him if anything iswrong? Fire and brimstone!"
"Calm yourself, calm yourself," I said. "It is too bad--it is certainlytoo bad, but then I had not supposed that you would much mind suchmatters, situated as you are."
"Well, my dear sir, I DO mind them. My pride is hurt, and my comfort isimpaired--destroyed, I might say. I will state my case--I will put it toyou in such a way that you can comprehend it, if you will let me," saidthe poor skeleton, tilting the hood of his shroud back, as if he wereclearing for action, and thus unconsciously giving himself a jaunty andfestive air very much at variance with the grave character of hisposition in life--so to speak--and in prominent contrast with hisdistressful mood.
"Proceed," said I.
"I reside in the shameful old graveyard a block or two above you here,in this street--there, now, I just expected that cartilage would let go!--third rib from the bottom, friend, hitch the end of it to my spine witha string, if you have got such a thing about you, though a bit of silverwire is a deal pleasanter, and more durable and becoming, if one keeps itpolished--to think of shredding out and going to pieces in this way, juston account of the indifference and neglect of one's posterity!"--and thepoor ghost grated his teeth in a way that gave me a wrench and a shiver--for the effect is mightily increased by the absence of muffling fleshand cuticle. "I reside in that old graveyard, and have for these thirtyyears; and I tell you things are changed since I first laid this oldtired frame there, and turned over, and stretched out for a long sleep,with a delicious sense upon me of being DONE with bother, and grief,and anxiety, and doubt, and fear, forever and ever, and listening withcomfortable and increasing satisfaction to the sexton's work, from thestartling clatter of his first spadeful on my coffin till it dulled awayto the faint patting that shaped the roof of my new home--delicious! My!I wish you could try it to-night!" and out of my reverie deceased fetchedme a rattling slap with a bony hand.
"Yes, sir, thirty years ago I laid me down there, and was happy. For itwas out in the country then--out in the breezy, flowery, grand old woods,and the lazy winds gossiped with the leaves, and the squirrels caperedover us and around us, and the creeping things visited us, and the birdsfilled the tranquil solitude with music. Ah, it was worth ten years of aman's life to be dead then! Everything was pleasant. I was in a goodneighborhood, for all the dead people that lived near me belonged to thebest families in the city. Our posterity appeared to think the world ofus. They kept our graves in the very best condition; the fences werealways in faultless repair, head-boards were kept painted or whitewashed,and were replaced with new ones as soon as they began to look rusty ordecayed; monuments were kept upright, railings intact and bright, therose-bushes and shrubbery trimmed, trained, and free from blemish, thewalks clean and smooth and graveled. But that day is gone by. Ourdescendants have forgotten us. My grandson lives in a stately housebuilt with money made by these old hands of mine, and I sleep in aneglected grave with invading vermin that gnaw my shroud to build themnests withal! I and friends that lie with me founded and secured theprosperity of this fine city, and the stately bantling of our lovesleaves us to rot in a dilapidated cemetery which neighbors curse andstrangers scoff at. See the difference between the old time and this--for instance: Our graves are all caved in now; our head-boards haverotted away and tumbled down; our railings reel this way and that, withone foot in the air, after a fashion of unseemly levity; our monumentslean wearily, and our gravestones bow their heads discouraged; there beno adornments any more--no roses, nor shrubs, nor graveled walks, noranything that is a comfort to the eye; and even the paintless old boardfence that did make a show of holding us sacred from companionship withbeasts and the defilement of heedless feet, has tottered till itoverhangs the street, and only advertises the presence of our dismalresting-place and invites yet more derision to it. And now we cannothide our poverty and tatters in the friendly woods, for the city hasstretched its withering arms abroad and taken us in, and all that remainsof the cheer of our old home is the cluster of lugubrious forest treesthat stand, bored and weary of a city life, with their feet in ourcoffins, looking into the hazy distance and wishing they were there.I tell you it is disgraceful!
"You begin to comprehend--you begin to see how it is. While ourdescendants are living sumptuously on our money, right around us in thecity, we have to fight hard to keep skull and bones together. Bless you,there isn't a grave in our cemetery that doesn't leak--not one. Everytime it rains in the night we have to climb out and roost in the trees---and sometimes we are wakened suddenly by the chilly water trickling downthe back of our necks. Then I tell you there is a general heaving up ofold graves and kicking over of old monuments, and scampering of oldskeletons for the trees! Bless me, if you had gone along there some suchnights after twelve you might have seen as many as fifteen of us roostingon one limb, with our joints rattling drearily and the wind wheezingthrough our ribs! Many a time we have perched there for three or fourdreary hours, and then come down, stiff and chilled through and drowsy,and borrowed each other's skulls to bail out our graves with--if you willglance up in my mouth now as I tilt my head back, you can see that myhead-piece is half full of old dry sediment--how top-heavy and stupid itmakes me sometimes! Yes, sir, many a time if you had happen
ed to comealong just before the dawn you'd have caught us bailing out the gravesand hanging our shrouds on the fence to dry. Why, I had an elegantshroud stolen from there one morning--think a party by the name of Smithtook it, that resides in a plebeian graveyard over yonder--I think sobecause the first time I ever saw him he hadn't anything on but a checkshirt, and the last time I saw him, which was at a social gathering inthe new cemetery, he was the best-dressed corpse in the company--and itis a significant fact that he left when he saw me; and presently an oldwoman from here missed her coffin--she generally took it with her whenshe went anywhere, because she was liable to take cold and bring on thespasmodic rheumatism that originally killed her if she exposed herself tothe night air much. She was named Hotchkiss--Anna Matilda Hotchkiss--youmight know her? She has two upper front teeth, is tall, but a good dealinclined to stoop, one rib on the left side gone, has one shred of rustyhair hanging from the left side of her head, and one little tuft justabove and a little forward of her right ear, has her underjaw wired onone side where it had worked loose, small bone of left forearm gone--lostin a fight--has a kind of swagger in her gait and a 'gallus' way of goingwith her arms akimbo and her nostrils in the air--has been pretty freeand easy, and is all damaged and battered up till she looks like aqueensware crate in ruins--maybe you have met her?"
"God forbid!" I involuntarily ejaculated, for somehow I was not lookingfor that form of question, and it caught me a little off my guard. But Ihastened to make amends for my rudeness, and say, "I simply meant I hadnot had the honor--for I would not deliberately speak discourteously of afriend of yours. You were saying that you were robbed--and it was ashame, too--but it appears by what is left of the shroud you have on thatit was a costly one in its day. How did--"
A most ghastly expression began to develop among the decayed features andshriveled integuments of my guest's face, and I was beginning to growuneasy and distressed, when he told me he was only working up a deep,sly smile, with a wink in it, to suggest that about the time he acquiredhis present garment a ghost in a neighboring cemetery missed one. Thisreassured me, but I begged him to confine himself to speech thenceforth,because his facial expression was uncertain. Even with the mostelaborate care it was liable to miss fire. Smiling should especially beavoided. What HE might honestly consider a shining success was likely tostrike me in a very different light. I said I liked to see a skeletoncheerful, even decorously playful, but I did not think smiling was askeleton's best hold.
"Yes, friend," said the poor skeleton, "the facts are just as I havegiven them to you. Two of these old graveyards---the one that I residedin and one further along--- have been deliberately neglected by ourdescendants of to-day until there is no occupying them any longer. Asidefrom the osteological discomfort of it---and that is no light matter thisrainy weather---the present state of things is ruinous to property. Wehave got to move or be content to see our effects wasted away and utterlydestroyed.
"Now, you will hardly believe it, but it is true, nevertheless, that thereisn't a single coffin in good repair among all my acquaintance---now thatis an absolute fact. I do not refer to low people who come in a pine boxmounted on an express-wagon, but I am talking about your high-toned,silver-mounted burial-case, your monumental sort, that travel under blackplumes at the head of a procession and have choice of cemetery lots---I mean folks like the Jarvises, and the Bledsoes and Burlings, and such.They are all about ruined. The most substantial people in our set, theywere. And now look at them--utterly used up and poverty-stricken. Oneof the Bledsoes actually traded his monument to a late barkeeper for somefresh shavings to put under his head. I tell you it speaks volumes, forthere is nothing a corpse takes so much pride in as his monument. Heloves to read the inscription. He comes after a while to believe what itsays himself, and then you may see him sitting on the fence night afternight enjoying it. Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a worldof good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he wasalive. I wish they were used more. Now I don't complain, butconfidentially I DO think it was a little shabby in my descendants togive me nothing but this old slab of a gravestone---and all the more thatthere isn't a compliment on it. It used to have
'GONE TO HIS JUST REWARD'
on it, and I was proud when I first saw it, but by and by I noticed thatwhenever an old friend of mine came along he would hook his chin on therailing and pull a long face and read along down till he came to that,and then he would chuckle to himself and walk off, looking satisfied andcomfortable. So I scratched it off to get rid of those fools. But adead man always takes a deal of pride in his monument. Yonder goes halfa dozen of the Jarvises now, with the family monument along. AndSmithers and some hired specters went by with his awhile ago. Hello,Higgins, good-by, old friend! That's Meredith Higgins--died in '44--belongs to our set in the cemetery--fine old family--great-grandmotherwas an Injun--I am on the most familiar terms with him--he didn't hear mewas the reason he didn't answer me. And I am sorry, too, because I wouldhave liked to introduce you. You would admire him. He is the mostdisjointed, sway-backed, and generally distorted old skeleton you eversaw, but he is full of fun. When he laughs it sounds like rasping twostones together, and he always starts it off with a cheery screech likeraking a nail across a window-pane. Hey, Jones! That is old ColumbusJones--shroud cost four hundred dollars--entire trousseau, includingmonument, twenty-seven hundred. This was in the spring of '26. It wasenormous style for those days. Dead people came all the way from theAlleghanies to see his things--the party that occupied the grave next tomine remembers it well. Now do you see that individual going along witha piece of a head-board under his arm, one leg-bone below his knee gone,and not a thing in the world on? That is Barstow Dalhousie, and next toColumbus Jones he was the most sumptuously outfitted person that everentered our cemetery. We are all leaving. We cannot tolerate thetreatment we are receiving at the hands of our descendants. They opennew cemeteries, but they leave us to our ignominy. They mend thestreets, but they never mend anything that is about us or belongs to us.Look at that coffin of mine--yet I tell you in its day it was a piece offurniture that would have attracted attention in any drawing-room in thiscity. You may have it if you want it--I can't afford to repair it.Put a new bottom in her, and part of a new top, and a bit of fresh liningalong the left side, and you'll find her about as comfortable as anyreceptacle of her species you ever tried. No thanks--no, don't mention it--you have been civil to me, and I would give you all the property I havegot before I would seem ungrateful. Now this winding-sheet is a kind ofa sweet thing in its way, if you would like to--No? Well, just as yousay, but I wished to be fair and liberal--there's nothing mean about ME.Good-by, friend, I must be going. I may have a good way to go to-night--don't know. I only know one thing for certain, and that is that I amon the emigrant trail now, and I'll never sleep in that crazy oldcemetery again. I will travel till I find respectable quarters, if Ihave to hoof it to New Jersey. All the boys are going. It was decidedin public conclave, last night, to emigrate, and by the time the sunrises there won't be a bone left in our old habitations. Such cemeteriesmay suit my surviving friends, but they do not suit the remains that havethe honor to make these remarks. My opinion is the general opinion.If you doubt it, go and see how the departing ghosts upset things beforethey started. They were almost riotous in their demonstrations ofdistaste. Hello, here are some of the Bledsoes, and if you will give mea lift with this tombstone I guess I will join company and jog along withthem--mighty respectable old family, the Bledsoes, and used to alwayscome out in six-horse hearses and all that sort of thing fifty years agowhen I walked these streets in daylight. Good-by, friend."
And with his gravestone on his shoulder he joined the grisly procession,dragging his damaged coffin after him, for notwithstanding he pressed itupon me so earnestly, I utterly refused his hospitality. I suppose thatfor as much as two hours these sad outcasts went clacking by, laden withtheir dismal effects, and a
ll that time I sat pitying them. One or twoof the youngest and least dilapidated among them inquired about midnighttrains on the railways, but the rest seemed unacquainted with that modeof travel, and merely asked about common public roads to various townsand cities, some of which are not on the map now, and vanished from itand from the earth as much as thirty years ago, and some few of themnever HAD existed anywhere but on maps, and private ones in real-estateagencies at that. And they asked about the condition of the cemeteriesin these towns and cities, and about the reputation the citizens bore asto reverence for the dead.
This whole matter interested me deeply, and likewise compelled mysympathy for these homeless ones. And it all seeming real, and I notknowing it was a dream, I mentioned to one shrouded wanderer an idea thathad entered my head to publish an account of this curious and verysorrowful exodus, but said also that I could not describe it truthfully,and just as it occurred, without seeming to trifle with a grave subjectand exhibit an irreverence for the dead that would shock and distresstheir surviving friends. But this bland and stately remnant of a formercitizen leaned him far over my gate and whispered in my ear, and said:
"Do not let that disturb you. The community that can stand suchgraveyards as those we are emigrating from can stand anything a body cansay about the neglected and forsaken dead that lie in them."
At that very moment a cock crowed, and the weird procession vanished andleft not a shred or a bone behind. I awoke, and found myself lying withmy head out of the bed and "sagging" downward considerably--a positionfavorable to dreaming dreams with morals in them, maybe, but not poetry.
NOTE.--The reader is assured that if the cemeteries in his town are keptin good order, this Dream is not leveled at his town at all, but isleveled particularly and venomously at the NEXT town.