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Show ILL 0,EH COIIPSET The Eevolting and Disgraceful Fight Between Be-tween Rival Undertakers at the Brink of a Grave- COUNTERFEIT MASKS OF WOE. The Fublio Obtain a View of Things Behind Be-hind the Ourtains of the "Undertaking "Un-dertaking Parlor." If nothing else the typical undertaker is a small continent of eccentricity. Perhaps tho ghastly channel in which his fate is launched makes him so. Today To-day he is an animated obituary or a rhymed satire upon woo. He is directing: direct-ing: a funeral. Tomorrow he is sullen as a vanquished warrior. He is in his workshop. Business is panicky. The lat bill has not been settled. Some people see a great deal of life aud sunshine; sun-shine; ho goes arm in arm with death aud darkness. In tho former he reads the legend of bankruptcy; in the latter ho sees tho smiling face of profit and prosperity. ( Yes, he exults like other mercenary folks when business is good and sulks when its bad. No, not before an audience. And, competition is sometimes fierce; sometimes blood-thirsty. For example tho fight that has just taken place between Evans & Koss on the one side and Undertaker Skewes on the other. It was all over a corpse. A dead, pulseless tiling. It is difficult to conceive of a more ghastly bone of contention. The public has been shocked; humanity has been disgusted nauseated. Once more icy avarice was stripped of its counterfeit frock of woe. Jt was not a battle for honor or the laurels there was in it. It was a struggle for cold cash. The few paltry dollars that were to secure se-cure christian burial. This is not the lirst time the undertakers have locked horns upon tho issues of the grave. The city and county were both dragged into it and the public were invited to look upon the disgraceful spectacle. It is a long time since Undertaker Skewes has had an opportunity to poso before lha nnlilir. 1'iani frntia ntut tliM pileut partner have been there perpetually. perpet-ually. The tragic death of Con.otta poor, demented wretch, whose sorrows were intensified by the hoots and jeers of his prison mates enabled them to strike another attitude. It come right on the heels of tho Johnson episode. Nothing could have been more hideous than that, thrown as he was into the plain wooden shell with neither shirt nor shroud, carted without cortege to an obscure hole in the ground and thrown iu without service, without a syllable of prayer, nnd shut out from the God-given rays of sunshine, to be seen no more on this earth forever aud forever. What an awful travesty upon modern humanity! This was the philanthropic phil-anthropic tribute that Evans & Ross had paid to the dead. True, Johnson was a pauper and does pity stop and receive re-ceive from the threshold of poverty? Its this, the generous spirit, that pervades per-vades those weeping precincts of death and woe. Now the fight is over the speechless corpse. There must be money in death even where the departing spirit fails to make i's will. Zanzotta died a pauper, so did Johnson. The latter had no ifrendly hands to raise a pine board above hisgrave that is, the undertaker was not awaro that he had. Neither was the coroner. Zanzotta had brethren. breth-ren. He was a member of a society that buries its dead. There was money to be derived from these ohsequies and a profit in Johnson's affair tho county has provided, pro-vided, however charily, for these cases. The boards in the latter's coffin may have cost as much as 75 cents the farmer farm-er was provided with a more aristocratic aristo-cratic box. There was no disgraceful struggle for possession of tho Johnson corpse there was not profit enough iu it. It is the denomination upon the bank note that deforming its value and so it is with the corpse. The public in the meantime has been treated to an exhibition and while it has shuddered it knows more about undertaking un-dertaking and undertaking parlors than it did a few weeks ugo. |