The Ghost of a Local Satirist

One night, as I was slumbering on my couch in peaceful repose, I had a dream as follows: I thought I had died from swallowing one of my own jokes which had more sharp points to it than the others, so that it stuck fast in my throat and actually choked me to death. I thought I was out of the body, and was floating around in the air in the neighborhood of the old lone tree on the high hill back of Mr. Wilson's sawmill. I discovered a lonely grave that seemed to have been newly dug. My friends held me in such high esteem that they wanted me buried here on this hill. One of the leading merchants of Aberdeen lay down beside the grave and cried with a sorrowful tone, 'My friends, my heart is too full for utterance, but I want to say—boohoo—that I feel as if I had lost my best contributor, in fact the goose that laid the golden egg—boohoo-oo-oo.' Then a prominent lawyer arose and said, 'The friend whose mortal remains lie here before us was the only man in Aberdeen who did not dare to sass me to my face. I move that in memory of our brother’s intellect his grave be hereafter kept green, that a barb wire fence be built around the grave to signify that his pen is inapproachable; and last but not least, that a head-board be erected at once at his grave to be paid for from the city treasury.' A messenger boy arrived with a telegram from Governor Pennoyer of Oregon, who had been invited. It read: 'Regret to say that, much as I would like to show my regard for the late lamented Sage by being present on the occasion of his burial, yet I have a rule of conduct from which I never vary. It is to magnify my office by making everybody come to my headquarters. If it is convenient for you to bring the corpse down to Salem, Oregon, I will do it all the honors that my official rank can bestow. Besides this unvarying rule of life, I am very busy just now making preparations for my own funeral.'