I remember breakfast as a thing apart. Although the table held only what we had for supper, warmed over, although the morning light was grey, and the room the worse for the grey light, the thing I cannot help remembering was the stillness and tenderness of that time. Father and mother spoke in subdued human voices. They had not yet had occasion to shout against the alarums and excursions of the day. And the sensitive faces of the boys, and the half-demon, half-angel light of their eyes stirred me with marvelling and reverence for the curious, protean ways of God. And now I was walking down the steeps of Avernus into Shickshinny, toward the smoke of torment that ascends forever. Underfoot was spread the same dark leprosy that yesterday had stunted flower and fruit and grass-blade. I hated King Coal still, but not so much as of yore. WHAT THE SEXTON SAID YOUR dust will be upon the wind Within some certain years, Though you be sealed in lead to-day Amid the country’s tears. When this idyllic churchyard Becomes the heart of town, The place to build garage or inn, They’ll throw your tombstone down. Your name so dim, so long outworn, Your bones so near to earth, Your sturdy kindred dead and gone, How should men know your worth? So read upon the runic moon Man’s epitaph, deep-writ. It says the world is one great grave. For names it cares no whit. It tells the folk to live in peace, And still, in peace, to die. At least, so speaks the moon to me, The tombstone of the sky. DEATH, THE DEVIL, AND HUMAN KINDNESS THE SHRED OF AN ALLEGORY I THE UNDERTAKER CURIOUS are the agencies that throw the true believer into the occult state. Convalescence may do it. Acts of piety may do it. Self-mortification may do it. After reading my evening sermon in rhyme in the house of the stranger, I had slept on the lounge in the parlor. The lounge had lost some of its excelsior, and the springs wound their way upwards like steel serpents. So strenuous had been the day I could have slumbered peacefully on a Hindu bed of spikes. I awoke refreshed, despite several honorable scars. What is more important I left that house with faculties of discernment. I did not realize at first that I was particularly spiritualized. I was merely walking west, hoping to take in Oil City on my route. Yet I saw straight through the bark of a big maple, and beheld the loveliest ... but I have not time to tell. Then I heard a fluttering in a patch of tall weeds and discovered what the people in fairyland call ... but no matter. We must hurry on. At noon your servant was on the front step of a store near a cross-roads called Cranberry, Pennsylvania. The store was on the south side of the way by which I had come. I sat looking along wagon tracks leading north, little suspecting I should take that route soon. On one side overhead was the sign: “Fred James, Undertaker.” On the other: “Fred James, Grocer.”