Aunt Sally and Tilly pulled Uncle Dave down while they conversed with him earnestly. Then he arose and said:
"Hillard, I beg yo' pardon. You've spoken the truth--Sally and Tilly both say so. I tell yo', bretherin," he said turning to the congregation--"it'd be a good thing if we c'ud all have our fun'ral sermon now and then correctly told. There would be so many points brought out as seen by our neighbors that we never saw ourselves."
"The subject of this sermon"--went on the Bishop--"the lamented corpse-to-be, was never married but once--to his present loving widow-to-be, and he never had any love affair with any other woman--she bein' his fust an' only love--"
"Hillard," said Uncle Dave rising, "I hate to--"
"Set down, David Dickey," whispered Aunt Sally, hotly, as she hastily jerked him back in his seat with a snap that rattled the teeth in his head:
"If you get up at this time of life to make any post-mortem an' dyin' declaration on that subject in my presence, ye'll be takin' out a corpse sho' 'nuff!"
"An' the only child he's had is the present beautiful daughter that sits beside him."
"David, I am very sorry to say, had some very serious personal faults. He always slept with his mouth open. I've knowed him to snore so loud after dinner that the folks on the adjoining farm thought it was the dinner horn."
"Now Hillard," said Uncle Dave, rising--"do you think it necessary to bring in all that?"
"A man's fun'ral," said the Bishop, "ain't intended to do him any good--it's fur the coming generation. Boys and girls, beware of sleepin' with yo' mouth open an' eatin' with yo' fingers an' drinkin' yo' coffee out of the saucer, an' sayin' _them molasses_ an' _I wouldn't choose any_ when you're axed to have somethin' at the table.
"Brother Dave Dickey had his faults as we all have. He was a sprinklin' of good an' evil, a mixture of diligence an' laziness, a brave man mostly with a few yaller crosses in him, truthful nearly always, an' lyin' mostly fur fun an' from habit; good at times an' bad at others, spiritual at times when it looked like he cu'd see right into heaven's gate, an' then again racked with great passions of the flesh that swept over him in waves of hot desires, until it seemed that God had forgotten to make him anything but an animal.
