"Someone has said that in order to know a community , one must observe the style of its funerals and know what manner of men they bury with most ceremony. I cannot say which class we buried with the most éclat in the 'flush times,' the distinguished public benefactor or the distinguished rough--possibly the two chief grades or divisions honored their illustrious dead about equally; and, no doubt the philosopher I have quoted from would have needed to see two representative funerals in Virginia before forming his estimate of the people.
"There was a grand time over Buck Fanshaw when he died. He was a representative citizen. He had 'killed his man'--not in his own quarrel, it is true, but in defense of a stranger unfairly beset by numbers. He had kept a sumptuous saloon. He had been the proprietor of a dashing helpmeet whom he could have discarded without the formality of a divorce. He had held a high position in the fire department and been a very Warwick in politics. When he died there was great lamentation throughout the town, but especially in the vast bottom-stratum of society.
"On the inquest it was shown that Buck Fanshaw, in the delirium of a wasting typhoid fever, had taken arsenic, shot himself through the body, cut his throat, and jumped out of a four-story window and broken his neck--and after due deliberation, the jury, sad and tearful, but with intelligence, unblinded by its sorrow, brought in a verdict of death 'by the visitation of God .' What could the world do without juries?"
P. 773, ROUGHING IT by Mark Twain (1984)
Sunday, April 2, 2017
ROUGHING IT
"Someone has said that in order to know a community , one must observe the style of its funerals and know what manner of men they bury with most ceremony. I cannot say which class we buried with the most éclat in the 'flush times,' the distinguished public benefactor or the distinguished rough--possibly the two chief grades or divisions honored their illustrious dead about equally; and, no doubt the philosopher I have quoted from would have needed to see two representative funerals in Virginia before forming his estimate of the people.
"There was a grand time over Buck Fanshaw when he died. He was a representative citizen. He had 'killed his man'--not in his own quarrel, it is true, but in defense of a stranger unfairly beset by numbers. He had kept a sumptuous saloon. He had been the proprietor of a dashing helpmeet whom he could have discarded without the formality of a divorce. He had held a high position in the fire department and been a very Warwick in politics. When he died there was great lamentation throughout the town, but especially in the vast bottom-stratum of society.
"On the inquest it was shown that Buck Fanshaw, in the delirium of a wasting typhoid fever, had taken arsenic, shot himself through the body, cut his throat, and jumped out of a four-story window and broken his neck--and after due deliberation, the jury, sad and tearful, but with intelligence, unblinded by its sorrow, brought in a verdict of death 'by the visitation of God .' What could the world do without juries?"
P. 773, ROUGHING IT by Mark Twain (1984)