Speaker 1: John Mortensen's funeral by Ambrose Bierce. The body rested in
a fine mahogany coffin fitted with a plate of glass.
All arrangements for the funeral had been so well attended
to that had the deceased known, he would doubtless have approved.
The face, as it showed under the glass, was not
disagreeable to look upon. It bore a faint smile, and
as the death had been painless, had not been distorted
beyond the repairing power of the undertaker. At two o'clock
in the afternoon, the friends were to assemble to pay
their last tribute of respect to one who had no
further need of friends and respect. The surviving members of
the family came severally each few minutes to the casket
and wept upon the placid features beneath the glass. This
did them no good. It did no good to John
Morton's but in the presence of death, reason and philosophy
are silent. As the hour of two approached, the friends
began to arrive, and, after offering such condolences to the
strickened relatives as the proprieties of the occasion required, solemnly
seated themselves about the room with an augmented consciousness of
their importance in the scheme funereal. Then the Minister came,
and in that overshadowing presence, the lesser lights went into eclipse.
His entrance was followed by that of the widow, whose
lamentations filled the room. She approached the casket, and, after
leaning her face against the cold glass for a moment,
was gently led to the seat near her daughter. Mournfully
and lo, the Man of God began his eulogy of
the dead, and his doleful voice, mingled with the sobbing
which it was its purpose to stimulate and sustain, rose
and fell, seemed to come and go like the sound
of a sullen sea. The gloomy day grew darker as
he spoke. A curtain of cloud underspread the sky, and
a few drops of rain fell audibly. It seemed as
if all nature were weeping for John Mortensen. When the
Minister had finished his eulogy with a prayer, a hymn
was sung, and the pallbearers took their places beside the bier.
As the last notes of the hymn died away, the
widow ran to the coffin, cast herself upon it, and
sobbed hysterically. Gradually, however, she yielded to dissuasion, becoming more composed,
and as the minister was in the act of leading
her away, her eyes sought the face of the dead
beneath the glass, threw up her arms, and with a shriek,
fell backward, insensible. The mourners sprang forward to the coffin,
and friends followed, And as the clock on the mantle
solemnly struck three, all were staring down upon the face
of John Mortensen deceased. They turned away, sick and faint.
One man, trying in his terror to escape the awful sight,
stumbled against the coffin so heavily as to knock away
one of its frail supports. The coffin fell to the floor,
the glass was shattered to bits by the concussion. From
the opening. Crawled John Mortensen's cat, which lazily leaped to
the floor, sat down tranquility, wiped its crimson muzzle with
a forepaw, then walked away with dignity from the room.
The End of John Mortenson's Funeral by Ambrose Bierce