MRS. FIELITZ

Light the candle for me, girl. [_She hands her the tallow-candle with which she has been experimenting._] We wants to study the writin' a bit.

RAUCHHAUPT

I fooled around with that thing a whole lot. But I got it to please me in the end. You c'n go an' look through the whole cemetery three times over and you'll come away knowin' this is the finest inscription you c'n get.

I went an' convinced myself of that.

[_He sits down on the low platform and fills his nose anew with snuff._

_MRS. FIELITZ holds the lighted lamp and puzzles out the inscription._

MRS. FIELITZ

Here rests in ...

LEONTINE

[_Reading on._] In G.o.d.

RAUCHHAUPT

That's what I said: in G.o.d. I was goin' to write first: in the Lord. But that's gettin' to be so common.

MRS. FIELITZ

[_Reads on with trembling voice._] Here rests in G.o.d the unforgotten carpenter ... [_Weeping aloud._] Oh, no, I tell you, it's too awful! That man--he was the best man in the world, he was. A man like that, you c'n take my word for it, you ain't likely to find no more these days.

LEONTINE

[_Reading on._] ... the unforgotten carpenter Mr. Julian Wolff ...

[_She snivels._

FIELITZ

--Don't you be takin' on now, y'understand? No corpse ain't goin' to come to life for all your howlin'. [_He hands the whiskey bottle to RAUCHHAUPT._] Here, Edward, that'll do you good. Them goin's on don't.

[_He gets up and brushes off his blue ap.r.o.n with the air of a man who has completed his day's work._

RAUCHHAUPT

[_Pointing with the bottle._] Them lines there I made up myself. I'll say 'em over for you; listen now:

"The hearts of all to sin confess" ...

'Tain't everybody c'n do that neither!--

"The hearts of all to sin confess, The beggar's and the king's no less.

But this man's heart from year to year Was spotless and like water clear."

[_The women weep more copiously. He continues._] I gotta go over that with white paint. An' this part here about G.o.d is goin' to be Prussian blue.

[_He drinks._

_The smith LANGHEINRICH enters._

LANGHEINRICH

[_Regarding LEONTINE desirously._] Well now, look here, Rauchhaupt, old man, I been lookin' for you half an hour! I thought I was to come an'

fetch you, you chucklehead.--Well, are you pleased with the job?

MRS. FIELITZ

Oh, go an' don't bother me, any of you! If a person loses a man like that one, how's she goin' to get along with you jacka.s.ses afterwards!

FIELITZ

Come on, man, an' pull up a stool. You just let her get back to her right mind.

LANGHEINRICH

[_With sly merriment._] That's right, I always said so myself: this here dyin' is a invention of the devil.

MRS. FIELITZ

We was married for twenty years an' more. An' there wasn't so much as one angry word between us. An' the way that man was honest. Not a penny, no,--he never cheated any man of a penny in all his days. An' sober! He didn't so much as know what whiskey was like. You could go an' put the bottle before him an' he wouldn't look at it. An' the way he brought up his children! What _d'you_ think about, but playin' cards and swillin'

liquor ...

LEONTINE

Gustav is poking out his tongue at me.

RAUCHHAUPT

[_Takes hold of a cobbler's last and throws himself enragedly upon GUSTAV, who has been making faces at LEONTINE and has poked out his tongue at her.] You varmint! Ill break your bones!--That rotten crittur is goin' to be the death o' me yet. I just gets so mad sometimes I think it's goin' to be the death o' me.

LANGHEINRICH

The poor crittur ain't got his right senses.

RAUCHHAUPT

I wish to G.o.d the dam' brat was dead. I'll get so dam' wild some day, if he ain't, that I'll go an' kill my own flesh an' blood.

FIELITZ

I'd go an' have him locked up in the asylum. Then you don't have the worry of him no more. D'you want me to write out a pet.i.tion for you?