"_Fourth,_ That we will attend his funeral in a body; that we will wear
crape upon the left arm for thirty days; and that a copy of these
resolutions, signed by the officers of the Committee, shall be presented
to his family."
"I think that'll do," said Mr. Condor, resuming his cigar, and laying the
paper upon the table.
"Just the thing," said General Belch. "Just the thing. You know the Grant
has passed and been approved?"
"Yes, so Ele wrote me," returned Mr. Condor.
"Condor," continued the General, "I've had enough of it. I'm going to
back out. I'd rather sweep the streets."
General Belch spoke emphatically, and his friend turned toward him with a
pleasant smile.
"Can you make so much in any other way?"
"Perhaps not. But I'd rather make less, and more comfortably."
"I find it perfectly comfortable," replied William Condor. "You take it
too hard. You ought to manage it with less friction. The point is, to
avoid friction. If you undertake to deal with men, you ought to
understand just what they are."
Mr. Condor smoked serenely, and General Belch looked at his slim, clean
figure, and his calm face, with curious admiration.
"By-the-by," said Condor, "when you introduce the resolutions, I shall
second them with a few remarks."
And he did so. At the meeting of the Committee he rose and enforced them
with a few impressive and pertinent words.
"Gratitude," he said, "is instinctive in the human breast. When a man
does well, or promises well, it is natural to regard him with interest
and affection. The fidelity of our departed brother is worthy of our most
affectionate admiration and imitation. If you ask me whether he had
faults, I answer that he was a man. Who so is without sin, let him cast
the first stone."
On the same day the Honorable B. Jawley Ele rose in his place in Congress
to announce the calamity in which the whole country shared, and to move
an adjournment in respect for the memory of his late colleague--"a man
endeared to us all by the urbanity of his deportment and his social
graces; but to me especially, by the kindness of his heart and the
readiness of his sympathy."
Abel Newt was buried from his father's house. There were not many
gathered at the service in the small, plain rooms. Fanny Dinks was there,
sobered and saddened--the friend now of Hope Wayne, and of Amy, her Uncle
Lawrence's wife. Alfred was there, solemnized and frightened. The office
of Lawrence Newt & Co. was closed, and the partners and the clerks all
stood together around the coffin. Abel's mother, shrouded in black, sat
in a dim corner of the room, nervously sobbing. Abel's father, sitting in
his chair, his white hair hanging upon his shoulders, looked curiously at
all the people, while his bony fingers played upon his knees, and he said
nothing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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