Not alone the chamber itself, but the anterooms and staircase were hung from cornice to skirting with black. The undertaker's men were ever in the house: they ate and drank whole mountains of beef and bread, whole seas of ale and punch (thus to qualify their voracity) in the servants' hall. They say my Grandmother's funeral cost a thousand pounds, which Cadwallader and Mrs. Talmash would really have grudged, but that it was the will of the executors, who were persons of condition, and more powerful than a steward and a waiting-woman. In her own testament my Grandmother said nothing about the ordering of her obsequies; but her executors took upon them to provide her with such rites as beseemed her degree. In those days the Quality were very rich in their deaths; and, for my part, I dissent from the starveling and nipcheese performances of modern funerals. It is most true that a hole in the sand, or a coral-reef, full fathom five, has been at many times my likeliest Grave; but I have left it nevertheless in my Will--which let those who come after me dispute if they dare--that I may be buried as a Gentleman of long descent, with all due Blacks, and Plumes, and Lights, and a supper for my friends, and mourning cloaks for six poor men. Why the doctors should have remained in the house jangling and glozing in the very lobby of Death, and eating of cold meats and drinking of sweet wine in the parlour, after the breath was out of the body of their patient and patroness, it passes me to say; as well should a player tarry upon the Stage long after the epilogue has been spoken, the curtain lowered, and the lights all put out. Yet were Pall Mall and Warwick Lane faithful, not only unto the death, but beyond it, to Hanover Square. A coachful of these grave gentlemen were bidden to the burial, although it was probable that words would run so high among them as for wigs to be tossed out of the windows. And although it is but ill fighting and base fence to draw upon a foe in a coach, I think (so bitter are our Physicians against one another) that they would make but little ado in breaking their blades in halves and stabbing at one another crosswise as they sat, with their handkerchiefs for hilts.