So much for foot funerals. Now for coach work. The extravagant charges of the jobbers at last induced me to set up a Hearse and Mourning Coaches of my own, with sleek ebony long-tailed horses to match. One of these--the finest of the set--had been sold to me under warranty of being sound and free from vice; and so he was, but the dealer never told me that he had been a charger at Astley’s. Accordingly on his very first performance, in passing through Bow,--at that time a kind of Fairy Land,--he thought proper, on hearing a showman’s trumpet, to dance a cotillion in his feathers! There was nothing to be done but to travel on with three to the next stage, where I sold the caperer at a heavy loss, and to the infinite regret of my merry mourners, with whom this exhibition had made him a great favourite. From this period my business rapidly declined, till instead of five or six demises, on an average, I put in only two defuncts and a half per week. In this extremity a “black job” was brought to me that promised to make amends for the rest. One fine morning a brace of executors walked into the shop, and handing to me the following extract of a will, politely requested that I would perform accordingly--and with the pleasing addition that I was to be regardless of the expense. The document ran thus: “Item, I will and desire that after death, my body be placed in a strong leaden coffin, the same to be afterwards enclosed in one of oak, and therein my remains to be conveyed handsomely to the village of *** in Norfolk, my birth-place; there to lie, being duly watched, during one night, in the Family mansion now unoccupied, and on the morrow to be carried thence to the church, the coffin being borne by the six oldest resident and decayed parishioners, male or female, and for the same they shall receive severally the sum of five pounds, to be paid on or before the day of interment.”