Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 01.djvu/403

Rh mouth all they knew how, these hardy and impenitent offenders set about writing "appropriate epitaphs." Thank Heaven, all but one of these have escaped my memory, one that I wrote myself. At the close of the rites, several hours later, I resumed my movement against the bank. Too late—the old, old story of the hare and the tortoise was told again. The "heavy news" had overtaken and passed me as I loitered by the wayside.

All attended the funeral—Sala, Sampson, Hood, Reid, and the undistinguished others, including this present Sole Survivor of the group. As each cast his handful of earth upon the coffin I am very sure that, like Lord Brougham on a somewhat similar occasion, we all felt more than we cared to express. On the death of a political antagonist whom he had not treated with much consideration his lordship was asked, rather rudely, "Have you no regrets now that he is gone?"

After a moment of thoughtful silence he replied, with gravity, "Yes; I favor his return."

One night in the summer of 1880 I was driving in a light wagon through the wildest part of the Black Hills in South Dakota. I