“Poor William, afflicted as he is, his heart’s aluz right. Asks me to invite everybody to come to the funeral—wants me to make ’em all welcome. But he needn’t a worried—it was jest what I was at.”
Then he weaves along again, perfectly ca’m, and goes to dropping in his funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he done before. And when he done it the third time he says:
“I say orgies, not because it’s the common term, because it ain’t—obsequies bein’ the common term—but because orgies is the right term. Obsequies ain’t used in England no more now—it’s gone out. We say orgies now in England. Orgies is better, because it means the thing you’re after more exact. It’s a word that’s made up out’n the Greek orgo , outside, open, abroad; and the Hebrew jeesum , to plant, cover up; hence in ter . So, you see, funeral orgies is an open er public funeral.”
He was the worst I ever struck. Well, the iron-jawed man he laughed right in his face. Everybody was shocked. Everybody says, “Why, doctor !” and Abner Shackleford says:
“Why, Robinson, hain’t you heard the news? This is Harvey Wilks.”
The king he smiled eager, and shoved out his flapper, and says:
“Is it my poor brother’s dear good friend and physician? I—”
“Keep your hands off of me!” says the doctor. “ You talk like an Englishman, don’t you? It’s the worst imitation I ever heard. You Peter Wilks’s brother! You’re a fraud, that’s what you are!”
Well, how they all took on! They crowded around the doctor and tried to quiet him down, and tried to explain to him and tell him how Harvey ’d