We were now come to the place the old man told me of, where I found all according to my expectation, and took the higher ground, that I might have the better prospect of what passed. The first remarkable thing I saw was a long funeral train of kindred and guests, following the corpse of a deceased lady, in company with the disconsolate widower, who marched with his chin upon his breast, a sad and a heavy pace, muffled up in a mourning hood, enough to have stifled him, with at least ten yards of cloth upon his body, and no less in his train. “Alack, alack!” cried I, “that ever I should live to see so dismal a spectacle! Oh blessed woman! How did this husband love thee in thy lifetime, that follows thee with this infinite faith and affection, even to thy grave! And happy the husband, doubtless, in a wife that deserved this kindness! and in so many tender friends and relations, to take part with him in his sorrows. My good father, let me entreat you to observe this doleful encounter.” With that (shaking his head and smiling) “My son,” quoth he, “thou shalt by and by perceive that all is nothing in the world but vanity, imposture, and constraint; and I will shew thee the difference between things themselves, and their appearances. To see this abundance of torches, with the magnificence of the ceremony and attendance, one would think there should be some mighty matter in the business; but let me assure thee that all this pudder comes to no more than much ado about nothing. The woman was nothing (effectually) even while she lived: the body now in the coffin is somewhat a less nothing: and the funeral honours, which are now paid her come to just nothing too. But the dead it seems must have their vanities, and their holidays as well as the living. Alas! what’s a carcass but the most odious sort of putrefaction? A corrupted earth, fit neither for fruit nor tillage. And then for the sad looks of the mourners: they are only troubled at the invitation; and would not care a pin, if the inviter and body too were both at the devil. And that you might see by their behaviour, and discourses; for when they should have been praying for the dead, they were prating of her pedigree, and her last will and testament. ‘I’m not so near akin,’ says one, ‘but I might have been spared; and I had twenty other things to do.’ Another should have met company at a tavern; a third, at a play. A fourth mutters that he is not placed according to his quality. Another cries out, ‘A pox o’ your meetings where there is nothing stirring but worms’ meat.’ Let me tell ye further, that the widower himself is not grieved as you imagine for the dead wife; but for the damned expense in blacks, and scutcheons, tapers, and mourners; and that she was not fairly laid to rest, without all this ado: for he persuades himself, that she might have found the way to her grave without a candle. And since she was to die, ’tis his opinion, that she should have made quicker work on’t: for a good wife is (like a good Christian) to put her conscience in order betimes, and get her gone; without lingering in the hands of doctors, ’pothecaries, and surgeons, to murder her husband too. Or (to save charges) she might have had the discretion to have died of the plague, which would have staved off company. This is the second wife he has already turned over, and (to give the man his due) he has had the wit to secure himself of a third, while this lay on her deathbed. So that his case is no more than chopping of a cold wife for a warm one, and he’ll recover this affliction, I warrant ye.”