"Undertaker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and her mother entered. She was bristling with curiosity. "Say, Emarine!" She lowered her voice, although there was no one to hear. "Where d' you s'pose the undertaker's a-goin' up by here? Have you hear ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... dispensed with. In some instances only the undertaker and his assistants are present, and in others only one or two members of the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... information of the death to the Mayor's officer. 2. See the doctor who had attended her. 3. Order the coffin. 4. Give notice at the church. 5. Go to the undertaker. 6. Order the notices of her death at the printer's. 7. Go to the lawyer. 8. Telegraph the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... touch and taste. The 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 hats off and held rigidly vertical with right ears as the coffin ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... Michael.) Westcott James, cabinet-maker, St. Michael (fr. St. Michael.) Wood William, twine-spinner, St. Philip. Whittington Thomas, carpenter and joiner, Temple. Williams Isaac, carpenter, Mangotsfield. Weetch Robert, undertaker, St. Paul (fr. St. Paul.) White John, mariner, Temple. Welsh John, butcher, St. Philip. Williams Robert, cordwainer, St. Augustine. Watts William, cordwainer, St. Paul. Watts Thomas, cordwainer, St. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... colonies! The conjunction is euphoniously alliterative at least, if not a consistent consequence; yet who more fit to perform at the funeral as the undertaker who alone has got the hearse and mules all ready for the job? Cobden, who has denounced—more still, has passed sentence upon—the colonies, should be the executioner. All hail, therefore, to the Right Hon. Alderman Richard Cobden, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... at that Time could dive into the Reason of, and mistaken Accounts of it have pass'd for authentick, I will mention somewhat more particularly: The Undertaking was bold; and, as many thought, bolder than was consistent with the Character of the wise Undertaker. Nevertheless, the French having taken Namure; and, as the Malecontents alledg'd, in the very Sight of a superior Army; and nothing having been done by Land of any moment, Things were blown into such a dangerous Fermentation, by ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... last persons expected; and soon after their arrival the funeral procession formed. This part was entirely arranged by the undertaker. The monstrous custom of forbidding ladies to follow their dead had not yet occurred even to the idiots of the nation, and Mr. Peyton and his daughter were placed in the second carriage. The first contained Griffith Gaunt alone, as head mourner. But the Peytons were not alone: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... reserve, a mind in armour, they never say what they mean, seldom speak from the heart. One is in the dust, and another on the throne, and they all die in like manner, to be buried most probably by a man they would not have dared address without an introduction, measured by an undertaker they could not have been seen walking with in the street, and to mix with thousands of spirits whose ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... Nawby—the medical attendant of the deceased, and the solicitor who is her sole executor," said the voice near Mat, in tones which had ceased to be gently inquisitive, and had become complacently explanatory instead. "That's Millbury the undertaker, and the other is Gutteridge of the White Hart Inn, his brother-in-law, who supplies the refreshments, which in my opinion makes a regular job of it," continued the voice, as two red-faced gentlemen followed the doctor and the lawyer. "Something like a funeral, this! Not a halfpenny less ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the miseries of the people. It seemed to her he was never satisfied unless there was some sordid tale being poured out to him, which he drank in with a sort of mournful, sympathetic satisfaction. He would have no RAISON D'ETRE if there were no lugubrious miseries in the world, as an undertaker would have no meaning if there ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Taylor was in treaty for the chapel, he was 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 ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... 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 hundreds ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... man who was shot last week at the Gulch will be buried next Thursday. He is not yet dead, but his physician wishes to visit a mother-in-law at Lard Springs, and is therefore very anxious to get the case off his hands. The undertaker describes the patient as "the longest cuss ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... was. But we had a good deal of them, waiting in the inn parlour. People make incongruities when they will have such things done in state. It could not be helped here, to be sure; but I always feel, at a grand undertaker's display like this, that, except the service itself, there is little to give peace or soothing. I hate what makes a talk! ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... sit in his little bank and watch the world go by. And I guess he's got a nice bunch of brothers-in-law on his hands. Poor old Amzi! There was always something amusing about the cuss, even when he was a smug little roly-poly as a boy. But I passed his bank this morning and it looked like an undertaker's office. The contrast between that old tomb and your plant pleases me, Will; it soothes my family pride. You are an able man and I congratulate you on your success. Sam liked to cut didoes on thin ice a ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... is not deficient in spirit: the hero was one Roome, a man only celebrated in the Dunciad for his "funereal frown." But it is uncertain whether this fellow had really so dismal a countenance; for the epithet was borrowed from his profession, being the son of an undertaker! Such is the nature of some satire! Dr. Warton is astonished, or mortified, for he knew not which, to see the pains and patience of Pope and his friends in compiling the Notes to the Dunciad, to trace out the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... undertaker proposes the erecting a bank on parliamentary security, and such security as no revolution or change of times ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... cigars in my pocket now, but that doesn't matter. I had to send him after somethin'! Say, Serena, is it real necessary to have that undertaker hangin' over us ALL the time? Every time he looks at me I feel as if he was takin' my measure. Has EVERY meal got ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... coffins! It seemed like the realisation of the story I had just heard. There were not fewer than thirty of them on the floor and ranged round the walls. Happily, however, they were not tenanted. In fact the fire had occurred in an undertaker's workshop, and, in looking through the premises, I came upon several coffins laid out ready for immediate use. Two of these impressed me much. They lay side by side. One was of plain black wood—a pauper's coffin evidently. The ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... their own; not to see how you are, but to show how they are: it is not a ceremony to do honour to you, but to themselves,—not due to your position, but to theirs. If one of a friend's children die, the formal couple are as sure and punctual in sending to the house as the undertaker; if a friend's family be increased, the monthly nurse is not more attentive than they. The formal couple, in fact, joyfully seize all occasions of testifying their good-breeding and precise observance of the little usages of society; and for you, who are the means ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... 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
... 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 ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... full of albacore. He was going to give everybody a chance if they "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
... would be, the 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
... seen anything more complete than that turn-out," said Mr. Barker. "The impression of mourning is perfect; it could not have been better if it had been planned by a New York undertaker." ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... are indisputable. I confess besides that so far short does the yield come of the amount on paper, that it would pay me to give them away. But it's the funerals, sir, that make it worth my while. I'm an undertaker, as you may judge from my costume. I count back-rent in the burying. People may cheat their landlord, but they can't cheat the undertaker. They must be buried. That's ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... 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 M.D. Because the burnt-cork minstrel ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... said he would like to bury Mary Duff, and arranged for the funeral with an undertaker in the close. Little seemed to be known of the poor outcast, except that she was a "licht," or, as Solomon would have said, a "strange ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... children were found a little time after, when an undertaker came by orders of the Chief of Police to prepare the dead for honorable burial. Following his example, a few noble fellows about his office had contributed out of their pay, and thus poor Chester was saved ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... carry us back to the 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 ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... for decoration; and I delivered the funeral oration in praise of the little sufferer, while placing her in the tomb improvised of chairs. I hardly ever joined the other children in their plays, except upon occasions like these, when I appeared in the characters of doctor, priest, and undertaker; generally improving the opportunity to moralize; informing my audience, that Ann (the doll) had died in consequence of disobeying her mother by going out before she had recovered from the measles, &c. Once I remember moving my audience to tears by telling them that little Ann had been ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... best to start a famine in the fruit market, and Dr. Blatt was waving a banana and cheering us with a yarn about an old lady that his Burdock Bitters had h'isted bodily out of the tomb. He was at the most exciting part, the bitters and the undertaker coming down the last lap neck and neck, and an even bet who'd win the patient, when the kitchen door opens and in marches the waiter with the tray full of dishes of "cereal." Seems to me 'twas chopped hay we had that ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his ills in lively society. Do not go for relief among those who feel as badly as you do. Let not toothache, and rheumatism, and hypochondria go to see toothache, rheumatism and hypochondria. On one block in Brooklyn live a doctor, an undertaker and a clergyman. That is not the row for a nervous man to walk on, lest he soon need all three. Throw back all the shutters of your soul and let the sunlight of ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... 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
... Briscoe bungalow, 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 ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... 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
... had just one idea: to find some pretext to get away. Those who went as far as the cemetery were 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, I'll stop; ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... 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
... native country. The last portion of the advice, however, Khalid can not follow at present. For he will either return home on his own account or die in New York. "If I can not in time save enough money for the Steamship Company," he said to Shakib, "I can at least leave enough to settle the undertaker's bill. And in either case, I shall have paid my own passage out of this New World. And I shall stand before my Maker in a shroud, at least, which I ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... down in the blood-red distance. He also saw that the hand motioning was really black, and not merely in shadow; and, coming nearer, found the doctor's dress was really funereal, down to the detail of the dark gloves. It gave the American a small but queer shock, as if this were actually an undertaker come up to bury the corpse ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... his name was on the wane. Yet this is human nature. So trifling, in fact, is the gap caused by our absence in society, that there needs no patriotic Curtius to leap into it; it closes without a miracle the instant it is made, and none but a disinterested Undertaker knows or cares for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... 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 are the most melancholy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... was a huntsman, you know, and a great breaker of hosses. And now one's broke him. Dead and buried, and nought for me but his watch and chain and a bill from his undertaker. It happened in Ireland three weeks ago; and I've only heard tell to-day; and I thought if Mary Tuckett knowed, 'twould soon have turned her laughter into tears, for she was cruel fond of him, and wept an ocean when he went. In fact, they was tokened on the quiet unknown to her father, ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... that life is a Permanent 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 we do not love life in the sense that we are greatly preoccupied about ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shut; and the fat form 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 off one of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... by patriotic nobles, who gave the commissions, and stipulated that although they were to be employed only in suppressing the rising, the officers should have permanent rank.[16] So, as was shown in Mrs. Clarke's case, a patent for raising a regiment might be a source of profit to the undertaker, who again might get it by bribing the mistress of a royal duke. The officers had, according to the generally prevalent system, a modified property in their commissions; and the system of sale was not abolished till our own days. We may therefore say that the ruling ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... 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 ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... appearance of a primeval forest, with a kind of small ecclesiastical wash-house on one side, and a turnpike gate on the other. Mr. Wopsle in a comprehensive black cloak, being descried entering at the turnpike, the gravedigger was admonished in a friendly way, "Look out! Here's the undertaker a coming, to see how you're a getting on with your work!" I believe it is well known in a constitutional country that Mr. Wopsle could not possibly have returned the skull, after moralizing over it, without dusting his fingers on a white napkin taken from his breast; but ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... pro 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
... it from me to say the final word on this theme—I would not, if I could, deprive men of a problem they can never solve. When all questions are answered, it will be time to telephone the undertaker. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... nor the Archbishop of Canterbury is ever so familiarly known by name and person to the public, as the first tragedian and comedian of the day; and the theatrical belles and heroines are either elevated to the peerage by matrimony, or lowered by the undertaker into Westminster Abbey. As some French Vaudevillist observed, "Moliere was denied in France the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... bell-ringer in the steeple of St. 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, (craving your honour's pardon for swearing,) she fairly made me give ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... grocer's boy, a young girl, a soldier, a gentleman with gold-rimmed spectacles and a big silk hat, two ladies with a self-satisfied and crabbed look, which seemed to say: "We are riding in this thing, but we don't have to," two sisters of charity and an undertaker. They looked like ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... State Theatre at 220 N. Washington St. Occupants from about 1915 to 1919 were Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon S. Cline, Sr. He was the Managing Editor of old The Washington Star. Several of their children have remained in the Falls Church area. Eli Northrup, an undertaker, was ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... John Mayrant; and after the man had come from the kitchen: "You may put the punch-bowl and things on the table, and clear away and go to bed. My Great-uncle Marston Chartain," he continued to me, "was of eccentric taste, and for the last twenty years of his life never had anybody to dinner but the undertaker." He paused at this point to mix the punch, and then resumed: "But for all that, he appears to have been a lively old gentleman to the end, and left us his version of a saying which is considered by some people ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... and wont still ruled the world, and save for the talk of idle moments and the splendour of the night, nine human beings out of ten were still busy at their common occupations. In all the cities the shops, save one here and there, opened and closed at their proper hours, the doctor and the undertaker plied their trades, the workers gathered in the factories, soldiers drilled, scholars studied, lovers sought one another, thieves lurked and fled, politicians planned their schemes. The presses of the newspapers roared through the night, and many a priest of this church and that would not open ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... funeral was 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 ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Jennifer. There 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
... men were very much excited as the time approached for their ball. The skating rink was swept and garnished and decorated with bunting and flags, and wreaths of immortelles rented from the undertaker. Extra chairs were also furnished by that accommodating person. The caterer from Louisville came in a truck, bringing with him stylish negro waiters and many freezers and hampers. The musicians arrived on the seven o'clock trolley, ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... deal of gin that the Mullhollands had a liking for. I was continually going for it, and the Mullhollands were continually drinking it; and the whole neighborhood liked it, and in 'Nightmare's Alley' the undertaker found a ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... he was called because his real name was Anderson Hawberry Sandringham. That name had been a great aid to him when he was an undertaker in Kansas City; but Anderson Hawberry Sandringham had fallen from the straight and narrow path of good undertakers some years before and he had sought refuge in the mountain-desert, where most things prosper except sheriffs and grass. He was fully six inches more ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... talk 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 for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... 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 most ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... saddest thing about the life of a Denver minister," writes Rev. Samuel A. Eliot, "is the number of lonely funerals that he is called upon to attend. Often I have been hastily summoned to say a prayer over some poor body at the undertaker's {106} shop, where there would be present just the undertaker and the minister, with perhaps the keeper of the boarding-house where the lad died or an officer of the Charity Organization Society. I look at the youthful victim of ignorant good-will borne ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... at the regimental dress he wore: 'Ay, and if some that I could name possessed the hearts of mice, ye should have had me long ago. Mark me, my lad—and you about him do the same. There are a score among ye whom I see now and know, who are dead men from this hour. Begone! and rob an undertaker's while you can! You'll want some ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... interment, which she desired might be performed with all 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 desired that a part ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... both hands to Simon of Cyrene as he lightens the Cross from the shoulder of the sufferer, and to Nicodemus who voted an emphatic "No" at the condemnation, and to Joseph of Arimathea who asks the honour of being undertaker ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... 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
... time, sir. I'm a steamboat mate, not a grave digger or a coroner's assistant, or an undertaker, an' I can't stand to ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... one month; but we presume the gallant colonel is not afraid of ghosts." It is but just to Mrs. Tretherick to state that the colonel's victory was by no means an easy one. To a natural degree of coyness on the part of the lady was added the impediment of a rival,—a prosperous undertaker from Sacramento, who had first seen and loved Mrs. Tretherick at the theatre and church; his professional habits debarring him from ordinary social intercourse, and indeed any other than the most formal public contact with the sex. As this gentleman had made a snug fortune during ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... man who's walled up in green cardboard boxes, and sometimes has the blinds down, and sometimes sits so solemn staring like a sphinx, and always there's a look of the sepulchral, something of the undertaker, the coffin, and the dusk about horse and driver? Do tell me—but the doors slammed. We shall never ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... 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 for ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... handy to the vault. Sir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does. Art not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy shop? I believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir? Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker? Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg; but they've set me now to turning it into something else. Then tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, inter-meddling, monopolizing, heathenish old scamp, to ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... 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
... my neighbourhood one Dung-beetle and one alone who also works among carrion. This is Onthophagus ovatus, LIN., a constant frequenter of dead Moles and Rabbits. But the dwarf undertaker does not on that account scorn stercoraceous fare: he feasts upon it like the other Onthophagi. Perhaps there is a twofold diet here: the bun for the adult; the highly-spiced, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... alas, alas, is pure Moonshine. Never had I, in late years, the least shadow of intention to undertake that adventure; and I am quite at a loss to understand how the rumor originated. One Boston Gentleman (a kind of universal Undertaker, or Lion's Provider of Lecturers I think) informed me that "the Cable" had told him; and I had to remark, "And who the devil told the Cable?" Alas, no, I fear I shall never dare to undertake that big Voyage; which has so much ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... life. He heard the decision placing the responsibility on the men from Denver, saw the sheriff and his deputies step forward and lay firm hands on their arms and lead them away; and then was aroused by the heavy entrance of the camp undertaker to make ready, for the quiet sleep, the body ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... Though the commencement often varies, and sometimes the apothecary and sometimes the physician opens the scene; but, be that as it will, they always appear in a string, like a flight of wild geese, and each confederacy maintains a correspondence with one particular undertaker. Fathom, upon these considerations, set up his rest in the first floor of an apothecary in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross, to whom he was introduced by a letter from a friend at Tunbridge, and who being made acquainted with his ability and scheme, promised to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... shock today that was felt when men first gazed 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 savages have their way and make hangings common, we shall probably recover from some ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... Ercole, smiling. "If you do this thing you must act a part. You must manage to conceal your occupation entirely. You must look as solemn as an undertaker and be a real professor. They will ultimately find you out, and throw you out of the window, and dismiss me for recommending you. But that ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... Cristo had 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 ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... low, matter-of-fact orders of a directing voice: "Easy now, boys—all together, lift. Watch out; pull that sheet back up over him," and a brawny, work-stooped man saying to her awkwardly: "I wouldn't look at him if I was you, Mrs. Wade, till the undertaker fixes him up," and she ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... the last hours of the great were not in the way of friendly sympathy, or unfriendly intrusion, here. The back door stood wide open, and people came and went, while the children's sobs mingled with the curt, outspoken directions of the undertaker and the clatter of dishes, which some obliging neighbor was washing at the kitchen sink. The body of the murdered man lay on the bed in a small room off the little sitting-room—an apartment so tiny that the door had to be left open, so that ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... the greatest possible hurry as though they never could go quick enough; and then the coachmen would drive very fast also, though they did not know why, for a fast pace of movement is another of those contagious diseases. And then again the sportsmen would move at an undertaker's pace, when the fox had traversed and the hounds would be at a loss to know which was the hunt and which was the heel; and then the carriage also would go slowly, and the ladies would stand up and talk. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... 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 Herodian ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... forward. The undertaker's man, on seeing them look for the inscription, civilly turned it round towards them, and each read, almost at one moment, by the ruddy ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... cried. "Isn't that undertaker Green's wagon in front of the house? Mr. Tyler must ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... sepulchral murmur, the echo of an empty canteen. "I have only 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 barkeeper. "When a clergyman falls, he falls for life and eternity, like a woman or an angel. I never knew a backslidden shepherd to come ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... but I must say I couldn't fancy a h'undertaker. Just imagine 'im 'andlin' the dead ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... you mean 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 ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... crossed his legs and was beginning to speak, but the first selectman broke in savagely: "Now look here, mister, this ain't either a morgue, a receivin'-tomb, nor an undertaker's parlor. If you want to get buried and ain't got the price I'll lend it to you. If you want to start over again in life I'll pay for havin' your birth-notice put into the newspaper. But you want to say ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... black coat with the flower! That mournful smile! That perfect grief! And yet, I am told, undertakers, after hours, go singing home to supper, and spend their evenings at the movies like us rougher folk. It was David Copperfield, you recall, who dined with an undertaker and his family—in the room, no doubt, next to the coffin storage—and he remarked at the time how cheerfully the joint went round. One of this sober cloth, moreover, has confided to me that they let themselves loose, above all professions, ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... of the front step. A servant threw open the door of the breakfast room, and Delme mechanically entered it. It was filled with strangers; on some of these the spruce undertaker was fitting silk scarfs; while others were busy at the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... it's the monsters that get into the Cheese Hall of Fame and come down to us in song and story. For example, that four-ton Toronto affair inspired a cheese poet, James McIntyre, who doubled as the local undertaker. ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... thought of all this as he looked through his disguises, selecting one suitable for the work he had in hand. He had just decided that the most appropriate disguise would be "Number 13, Undertaker," and had picked up the close black wig, and long, drooping mustache, when he had another thought. Given a bag sufficiently loose to permit free motion of the hands and arms, and a man, even in hot anger, might sew himself in. A man, intent on suicidally bagging himself, would sew the mouth ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... 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 ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... stood with his back to the empty dining-room fireplace: on one side stood Mr. Pritchett, and on the other the Barnet doctor. Very few words passed between them, but they were not in their nature peculiarly lugubrious. And then there was a scuffling heard on the stairs—a subdued, decent undertaker's scuffling—as some hour or two before had been heard the muffled click of a hammer. Feet scuffled down the stairs, outside the dining-room door, and along the passage. And then the door was opened, and in low, decent undertaker's voice, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... of which he 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
... 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
... included Detective and Mrs. George O. Miller and family and friends, who had gathered to witness the burial of the former's bright little son Harry. As the casket rested upon the trestles there was a painful pause, broken only by the mother's sobs, until the undertaker advanced toward a stout, florid-complexioned gentleman in the party and whispered to him, the words being inaudible to the lookers-on. This gentleman was Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, a friend of the Millers, who had attended the funeral—at their request. He shook his head ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... point. Oliver is the illegitimate son of a young lady who has lapsed from virtue under 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 escaped ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... of motion. She wore a quantity of white drapery swathed round her in a manner that perplexed me sorely, until I suddenly realised with a creeping of my flesh that it must be a winding-sheet, that burial accessary so often minutely described to me by the son of the village undertaker. Though interesting, I did not think it at all becoming, and would have preferred to see any other style of garment. Streaming over her neck and shoulders were thick masses of long, wavy, golden hair, which was ruffled, but ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... too, with the undertaker creeping around in his black, sneaking way, and I found when it was all over that she had secretly incorporated a face-bleach company and sold all she owned to it, complexion mask and all, and lost the whole of what she got on that year's Derby. I've understood ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... their devotion to their lady loves. In the rear of the theater were the first and second balconies, occupied by voluble men and women of all ages and nationalities. Ahead, hung the stage curtain, decorated with staring advertisements, "Lamson, the neighborhood undertaker," "Trade at the corner grocery. Vegetables always at the lowest market prices," "Snider's drug store, prescriptions, choice candies, and camera supplies," and the like. From somewhere in the heights came a sharp ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely |
