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CHAPTER XLVII.
Somebody 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 most eclat in our
"flush times," the distinguished public benefactor or the distinguished
rough--possibly the two chief grades or grand divisions of society
honored their illustrious dead about equally; and hence, 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 defence 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.
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