These hard old cynics were to me a new kind of people. They rejoiced in death--in the destruction of hopes, in the slaughter of reputations. Their rough word-play gave my young soul a shock that I have not yet forgotten. It went on day after day, while I wore away the cold marble and my tender youth. The whole place and its people reminded me of those lines which I had heard the minister quote in a sermon:= ```"The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave, ```The deep, dank vault, the darkness, and the worm."= But I made no complaint, for my first undertaking had come to naught, and if I failed again what would they think of me--especially Jo and my mother. My employer pecked away at the epitaphs with his chisel and amended them with his conversation. Every morning Mr. Boggs and his three companions sat in a corner playing old sledge and boarding their cards with appalling thumps in trying stages of the game, and, after each hand', loudly confessing their calculations. “If we don't win this game I'll bury you for nothing,” was one of the cheering and familiar promises of Mr. Boggs. The undertaker had a wise and threatening air about him. He often bullied people, using loud words and a pouncing manner. Sometimes he gave advice with a wearied look of toleration, and oh, the sadness of Mr. Boggs at a funeral! The three friends went away soon after eleven o'clock, whereupon, if there were “nothing doing”--an oft-repeated phrase of the undertaker--he used to sit talking with the Judge or reading a newspaper. One day he fell asleep in his chair. Mr. Crocket printed this inscription on a sheet of cardboard and leaned it against the knees of the undertaker:= ````_Sacred to the Memory of B. Boggs_= The Judge surveyed him with a playful eye, and added, “He is certainly the flower o' the village.” It was an apt symbol, for he was, indeed, one of the most perfect flowers of rustic commercialism that ever bloomed. The village boys relieved the monotony of my life with sundry insults. Having travelled far, as I thought, and endured many perils, and having, moreover, a proud spirit, I was, for my age and size, a bit nearer the goal of manhood than most of them, and my dignity was natural enough. They resented it with jeers and epithets and stickings out of the tongue. Mr. Crocket and his son went home at five, while I and the red-headed boy continued our labor until six o'clock. Swipes himself was a melancholy youth who had once swallowed a shingle-nail and who cherished a great fear of it. For poor Swipes that shingle-nail was like the sword of Damocles. The first evening that we were alone together in the shop he confided his worst fears to me, and asked if I knew of any medicine that would be likely to do him good. He complained of pain in the pit of his stomach. “I've took half a bottle of horse liniment that I found here in the shop,” said he. “It may help some.”