Bonus Story from Strider Nolan Media

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Ohio native Ambrose Bierce wrote a great amount of supernatural fiction. He was also a very satirical writer, and his stories are typically short, to the point, and darkly humorous. In the following story, Bierce expresses his views on the importance of funerals, comparing their value to those who leave us and to those who are left behind.

JOHN MORTONSON'S FUNERAL

By Ambrose Bierce

John Mortonson was dead. If all the world's a stage, his lines in the tragedy of Man had all been spoken and he had exited stage left.

His body rested in a fine mahogany coffin, covered with a plate of glass. All of the funeral arrangements had been handled so well that had the deceased been aware he would doubtlessly have approved. The face, as seen under the glass, bore a faint smile; and as his death had been painless, it had not been distorted beyond the undertaker's ability to make it look normal.

At two o'clock of the afternoon, Mortonson's friends were scheduled to assemble, to pay their last respects to one who had no further need of friends or respect. But before that appointed hour, the surviving family members had a private viewing. They approached the casket every few minutes and wept as they looked down upon the peaceful countenance beneath the glass. This did them no good; it did John Mortonson no good; but when it comes to death, reason and philosophy are silent.

As two o’clock approached, the friends began to arrive; and after offering the requisite consolation to the grief-stricken relatives, overestimating their own importance in the scheme of things, they solemnly seated themselves around the room.

Then the minister came, and in his overshadowing presence the lesser lights were eclipsed.

His entrance was followed by that of the widow, whose weeping filled the room. She approached the casket and, after she leaned her face against the cold glass for a moment, someone gently led her to a seat near her daughter.
In a low, mournful voice, the minister began his eulogy, and his solemn voice rose and fell like the sound of a sullen sea. His eulogy mingled with the mourners' sobbing (which, of course, the eulogy was intended to stimulate and sustain). The gloomy day grew darker as he spoke; a curtain of clouds spread across the sky and a few drops of rain began to fall. It seemed as if Nature itself was weeping for John Mortonson.

When the minister had ended his eulogy with a prayer, a hymn was sung and the pallbearers took their places beside the casket. As the last notes of the hymn died away, the widow ran to the coffin, threw herself on top of it, and sobbed hysterically.

Gradually, however, she yielded to persuasion and regained her composure; and as the minister was leading her away, her eyes sought out her husband's face beneath the glass.

She threw up her arms and, with a shriek, fell backward unconscious.
The mourners sprang forward to the coffin, the friends followed, and as the clock on the mantel solemnly struck three, all of them stared down at the face of John Mortonson, deceased. They turned away, sick and faint. One man, terrified and trying to escape the awful sight, tripped over another person, and fell back against the coffin so heavily that he knocked away one of the coffin's frail supports. The coffin fell to the floor, and the glass cover was shattered to bits by the impact.

Out of this opening crawled John Mortonson's cat, which lazily leapt to the floor, sat up, wiped a paw across its crimson-covered muzzle, then walked with dignity out of the room.

©copyright 2006 Strider Nolan Media

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Horror's Classic Masters: Remastered
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