about 'em, and I'm sworn to look after all dead people that can't
account for bein' dead, or that are suspicioned of dyin' by foul play.
I could have made fifty dollars out of those deceased Peruvians, and
I ought to've done it. But no! Just as I was about to begin, the
supervisors, they shut down on it; they said the county didn't care
nothin' about people that had been dead for six hundred years, and
they wouldn't pay me a cent. Just as if _six thousand_ years was
anything in the eye of the law, when maybe a man's been stabbed, or
something, and when I'm under oath to tend to him! But it's just my
luck. Everything appears to be agin me, 'specially if there's money in
it."

"You do seem rather unfortunate."

"Now, there's some countries where they frequently have earthquakes
which rattle down the houses and mash people, and volcanoes which
burst out and set hundreds of 'em afire, and hurricanes which blow 'em
into Hereafter. A coroner can have some comfort in such a place as
that. He can live honest and respectable. Just think of settin' on
four or five hundred bodies killed with an earthquake! It makes my
mouth water. But nothin' of that sort ever happens in this jackass
kind of a land. Things go along just 'sif they were asleep. We've got
six saw-mills 'round this town, but nobody ever gets tangled in the
machinery and sawed in half. We've got a gunpowder-factory out beyond
the turnpike, but will that ever go up? It wouldn't if you was to toss
a red-hot stove in among the powder--leastways, not while I'm coroner.
There's a river down there, but nobody ever drowns in it where I can
have a hitch at him; and if there's a freshet, everybody at once gets
out of reach. If there's a fire, all the inmates get away safe, and no
fireman ever falls off a ladder or stands where a wall might flatten