Keyser's Dream.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1752, 25 September 1875, Page 5 (Supplement)

Keyser's Dream.

How Me. Keyser -Anticipated Death. !Last December my friend Keyser dreamed one night that he would die on the 13th of January. So strongly was he assured of the fact that the "vision would prove true that he "began at once to make preparations for his departure. He got measured for a burial suit;, he drew up his will, he picked out a nice lot in the cemetery and had it fenced in; he joined the 'church, and selected six of the deacons as his pall-bearers; he also requested the choir to sing at the funeral, and he got them to run over a iavourite hymn of his to see how it would sound. Then he got Toombs, the undertaker, to knock together a burial casket, with silver-plated handles, and cushions inside, and he instructed the undertaker to rush out his best hearse, and to buy sixty pairs of black gloves to be distributed among the mourners. Be had some trouble deciding upon a tombstone. The man at the marbleyard wanted to shove off on him a second-hand one, with an angel weeping over a kind of flower-pot; but Keyser finally ordered a new one, with a design representing a rosebud with a broken stem, and the legend, 'Not lost, but gone before.' Then he got the village newspaper to put a good obituary notice of him in type, and he told his wife that he would be gratified if she would come out in the spring and plant violets upon his grave He said it was hard to leave her and the children, but she must trj to bear up under it. These afflictions are for our good, and when lie was an angel he would come and watch over her, and keep his eye on her. He said she might marry again if she wanted to ; for, although the mere thought of it nearly broke his heart, he wished her, above all, to be happy, and to have some one to love her and protect her from the storms of the rude world. Then he, and Mrs. Keyser, and the children cried, and Keyser, as a closing word of counsel, advised her not to plow for corn earlier than the middle of March On the night of the 12tb of January there was a flood in the creek, and Keyser got up at 4 o'clock in the morning of the 13th, and worked until night, trying to save his buildings and his woodpile. Be was s© busy that he forgot all about its being the day of his death, and, as he was very tired, he went to bed early and slept soundly all night. About 6 o'clock on the morning of the 14th there was a ring at the doorbell. Keyser jumped out of bed threw up the front window and exclaimed : ' Who's there ?' ' It's me—Toombs,' said the undertaker. '"What do you want at this time of the morning?' demanded Keyser. ' "Want ?' said Toombs, not recognizing Keyser,; why, I've brought around the ice to pack Keyser in, so he'll keep until the funeral. The copse'd spoil this kinder weather if we didn't Then Keyser remembered, and it made him feel mad when he thought how the day had passed and left him still alive, and how he had made a fool of himself. £0 the copse said: ' "Well, you can just skeet around home again with that ice; the copse is not yet dead. You're a leetle too anxious, it strikes me you're not going to chuck me into a sepulchre yet, if you have got everything ready. So you can haul off and unload.' About half past 10 that morning the deacons came around, with crape on their hats and gloom in their faces, to carry the body to the grave; and while they were on the front step the marble-yard man drove up with the rosebud tombstone and a shovel, and stepped in to ask the widow how deep she wanted the grave dug. Just then the choir arrived with the minister, and the company was assembled in the parlour, when Keyser came in from the stable, where he had been dosing a horse with patent medicine and warm mash for the glanders. He was surprised; but he proceeded to explain that there had been a little mistake somehow.. He was also pained to find that everybody seemed to be a good deal disappointed, particularly the tombstone man, who went away mad, declaring that such an old fraud ought to be ramme.d into the ground anyhow 4, dead or alive. Just as the deacons left in a huff, the tailor's boy arrived with the burial suit, and before Keyser could kick him off the steps the paper carrier flung into the door the Morning Argus, in which that obituary occupied a prominent place. Anybody who wants a good reliable tombstone that has a broken rosebud on it, and that has never been used, can buy one of that kind at a sacrifice for cash, from Keyser. He thinks that bad dream must have been caused by eating too much sausage at supper.