The fortunate Vice-President suddenly called upon by destiny
to guide the ship of state, the general who sees a possible
Victoria Cross in a hazardous engagement, can have a faint
conception of aunt Hitty's feeling on this momentous occasion.
Funerals were the very breath of her life. There was no ceremony,
either of public or private import, that, to her mind,
approached a funeral in real satisfying interest.
Yet, with distinct talent in this direction, she had always
been "cabined, cribbed, confined" within hopeless limitations.
She had assisted in a secondary capacity at funerals in the families
of other people, but she would have reveled in personally
conducted ones. The members of her own family stubbornly
refused to die, however, even the distant connections living
on and on to a ridiculous old age; and if they ever did die,
by reason of a falling roof, shipwreck, or conflagration,
they generally died in Texas or Iowa, or some remote State where
aunt Hitty could not follow the hearse in the first carriage.
This blighted ambition was a heart sorrow of so deep and sacred
a character that she did not even confess it to "Si," as her
appendage of a husband was called.
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