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The machine is planted by its three feet in the soil of the cage, level with the surface. A little sand conceals the ropes. The Mole is placed in the centre; and my bands of sextons are let loose upon the body. The burial is performed without a hitch in the course of an afternoon.
The body was dragged by the heels a few paces outside the camp, and the vultures were its sextons within a few minutes of the death. It was with difficulty that I could restrain my temper under such revolting circumstances. I felt that at an unlooked-for moment I might be compromised in some serious outbreak of the natives, caused by the brutal acts of the traders.
The people who chiefly spoke against it, as she informed me, were soldiers disbanded upon pensions, the sextons of village churches, and excisemen.
The Cathedral is not particularly rich in monuments; for it suffered grievous outrage and dilapidation, both at the Reformation and in Cromwell's time. This latter iconoclast is in especially bad odor with the sextons and vergers of most of the old churches which I have visited.
Afar they heard the chanting of the sextons, monotonous, yet solemnly effective; afar they saw the swaying candles and torches; and an awful silence signalized the approach of the pageant; but when it was up, and the bodies were borne past, especially when the ghastly countenances of the sufferers were under eye plainly visible in the red torchlight, the outburst of grief and rage in every form, groans, curses, prayers, was terrible, and the amazing voice, such by unity of utterance, went with the dead, and followed after them until at last the Hippodrome was reached.
The sextons had done their work, and the raw, brown earth of the grave, mixed with bits of decayed coffins and fragments of perished human bones, was covered with hot-house flowers. Among these lay a gorgeous wreath of white and purple orchids, to which was tied a card whereon was written: "To my darling wife, from her bereaved husband, John Blake."
The man yawned. He awoke refreshed and lay in snug indolence listening to the rival sextons pealing first bell for Sunday service. Whatever their doctrinal disputes, the churches of New Babylon made a shift for concord when it came to bell-ringing, whose stately performance was regarded by no less a theological expert than the Widow Weatherwax as "spiritoolly edifyin' and condoocive to grace."
Even good people seem unchangeably opposed to God's air, and insist on breathing old, worn-out, used-up second-hand air. God would be greatly glorified if housekeepers and church sextons were given a practical course in the use of fresh air, God's air. With that should be simple food, and simple dress, and abundant sleep, and simple standards of life. Worry is utterly useless.
It was part of himself, the best part, his illusions and his enthusiasm, which the sextons were taking away to lower into the depths. At that terrible moment an accident occurred which increased his grief. It had rained so hard during the preceding days, and the ground was so soft, that a sudden subsidence of soil took place.
There were no flies here, thus there were no worms to devour the carcases; but the usual sextons were the crows, although sometimes too few to perform their office.
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