"Hey, Jones!That is old Columbus Jones—shroud cost four hundred dollars entire trousseau, including monument, twenty-seven hundred. This was in the spring of 1926.It was enormous style for those days.Dead people came all the way from the Alleghanies to see his things—the party that occupied the grave next to mine remembers it well.Now do you see that individual going along with a 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 to Columbus Jones he was the most sumptuously outfitted person that ever entered our cemetery."
"We are all leaving. We cannot tolerate the treatment we are receiving at the hands of our descendants.They open new cemeteries, but they leave us to our ignominy.They mend the streets, 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 of furniture that would have attracted attention in any drawing-room in this city.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 lining along the left side, and you'll find her about as comfortable as any receptacle 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 have got before I would seem ungrateful. Now this winding-sheet is a kind of a sweet thing in its way, if you would like to—No?Well, just as you say, 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 tonight—don't know.I only know one thing for certain, and that is that I am on the emigrant trail now, and I'll never sleep in that crazy old cemetery again.I will travel till I fiend respectable quarters, if I have to hoof it to New Jersey.All the boys are going.It was decided in public conclave, last night, to emigrate, and by the time the sun rises there won't be a bone left in our old habitations.Such cemeteries may suit my surviving friends, but they do not suit the remains that have the honor to make these remarks.My opinion is the general opinion.If you doubt it, go and see how the departing ghosts upset things before they started.They were almost riotous in their demonstrations of distaste."