I have only put down the heads of the old darkey’s remarks, jest the bald heads—he flowered off the subject with various metafors and many big words, not always in the right place, nor pronounced as the world’s people pronounce them, but with deep earnestness. And then I asked him about Eden Centre and how affairs had gone there. And he told me with more flourishes and elocution all the hard trials they had gone through, with perils from foes and perils from false friends, from ignorance, from avarice, and etc., etc., etc. It wuz deeply interestin’ to me and to him too, but finally he glanced up at the sun, and straightened up in the buggy-seat, and told the old mule and me at the same time. “That they must hurry or they would be too late for the funeral.” And I asked him where the funeral wuz to be, and he stood up in the rickety buggy and pinted with his whip to a little cluster of houses only a short distance away. And I made up my mind then and there that I would jest go acrost lots and attend to that funeral myself. So I made my way through a broken place in the fence and sot out for the funeral. I got there after a short walk through the ruther sandy path, though some flower-besprinkled. I knew which wuz the mournin’ cabin by the mules and old horses hitched along the fence in front of it. I went in and obtained a seat near the door. It seemed that it wuz the funeral of a young man taken sick at the place where he worked and come home to die. He had been waiter in a hotel at Wyandotte. The mournin’ was evidently sincere; certainly it wuz loud and powerful. The minister seemed to want to administer consolation to the mournin’ group; his text wuz choze with distinct reference to it, and his words wuz meant to cheer. But he got his metafors mixed up and his consolation twisted. But mebby they took it all straight and right, and if they did it wuz all the same to them. His text wuz choze from the story of the child’s death in the Old Testament, and the words wuz these: “We shall go to him, but he shall not return to us.” The minister wuz a short, thickset negro, with a high standing collar, seemin’ to prop up his head, and a benevolent look in his eyes and his good-natured mouth. [Illustration: “GAWGE PERKINS AM DAID.”] He fixed his eyes upon the congregation after he had repeated the text, and sez: “Gawge Perkins am daid; he wuz a waitah at Wyandotte, an’ of cose he died.” It seemed that to him this wuz a clear case of cause and effect, which he did not explain to his audience. “Of cose he died. Now, dar am in dis audnance many no doubt dat tink dey have got riches, an’ honoh, an’ fame; but Gawge Perkins am daid, an’ you have to go and see Gawge Perkins. “An’ you may tink you are gay, an’ happy, an’ in high sperits; but dis fac’ remains, an’ you can’t get round dis fac’, Gawge Perkins am daid, an’ you have got to go and see Gawge Perkins. “But dar am one consolation, Gawge Perkins can’t come back to us.”