“Won’t you--rest,” he then suggested, indicating one of the rocking-chairs; and I realized, with an all but uncontrollable desire to laugh aloud, that the slight hesitation followed by the mortuary word “rest,” was his tribute to my presumable and complete prostration. I took possession of the rocking-chair, but he sat down on an angular piece of “mission” work, with a straight back, and then brought the tips of his fingers together in a fashion that positively murmured, but without the crudity of words: “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.” “Will you have a cigarette?” I brutally inquired, for I was about to smoke one myself. And this, I saw with relief, for the time being, definitely broke the spell. With a cigarette in his mouth, or between his fingers, it was impossible, even for him, to produce any of his effects. He gave up trying to, and we talked. Among other things, I asked him, while I waited for the return of Mr. Murksom, how he had come to choose his occupation. All my life I had wanted to ask an undertaker that, but I never before had been given so good an opening. His reply was interesting, as, indeed, I knew it would be, or I shouldn’t have asked the question. “I didn’t exactly choose it,” he replied. “I don’t think anybody ever does. It isn’t the kind of a job a person really chooses. I just drifted into it, little by little. That’s what they all do, I think. I had a friend who used to drive the wagon, and sometimes when he had to go very far, I’d go along with him to keep him company and hold the horses while he was inside. You get to talking, sometimes, and when you talk about things you kind of get used to them. After awhile they seem natural. Sometimes, when my friend had things to do here at the office, I used to help him; you might just as well, as to sit around doing nothing. And then someone offers you a job, and as you know a good deal about it by that time, and don’t mind, you take it. You kind of get into it by degrees.”