The Argosy — page 71: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

56 Letters from Majorca. the tail of the shirt—probably by those whose worldly possessions did not include handkerchiefs. Asa result of all this, sometimes a bag of coppers as large as a corn sack has to be conveyed to the bank. The faces of these men were peculiar. A few were decent, but many were repulsive. After all, what was to be expected of them? What else can be the result of lowly birth, coarse surroundings, hard lives and scanty fare? Here a man of fifty is wrinkled and curved and looks eighty ; a man of seventy might well have come out of Noah’s ark, Whilst all this was going on, a sound of distant music rose upon the air; wild, unearthly, discordant; such as I had never before heard. People in the street began running. I wondered what it meant. What incident or excitement could be taking place in this sleepy, deadly-lively little town? Mr. Bateman inquired of the clerks. A funeral, they replied. A young fellow of twenty had died of consumption that morning, and they were taking him to be buried. It is the custom in Mallorca. Jburial usually takes place within twelve hours of death. Very often they bury at night; simply place the coffin in the earth; and the service in church takes place the next day. I went out to look at the procession; and strange, wild, weird, melancholy was the sight. The coffin was borne on the shoulders of a number of young men, probably friends of the deceased. In front of the bier went the musicians, playing the most horrible, distracting, discordant music you can possibly imagine. But you could never imagine it. As if the event itself were not sufficiently sad, they did their utmost to make it simply unbearable. How those to whom the poor dead young fellow belonged endured it, I cannot tell. I think I should have died of it. It was almost enough to separate the living soul from the living body for very agony. One might almost interpret it into the wail of the departed spirit ; the despairing cry for release from purgatory : for, of course, they are Roman Catholics here, and believe in purgatory. It might even have been meant to describe the torments of that region. If so, it was very well done. They halted at every few yards ; there was dead, appalling silence for a moment ; then the music and the cortége went on again with renewed vigour. At the door of the house where the young fellow had lived, they made a longer pause ; one of at least ten minutes ; and the shrill wailing of the music might have turned the very stones of the street and caused them to cry aloud. Following the coffin came a long string of mourners or attendants, walking two and two. ‘They carried flaring torches of yew and pine, and trod upon cypress branches that strewed the road. ‘The air was full of flame and smoke and the suffocating scent of burning wood. ‘The flames threw ghastly lights and shadows around, which CONMNICMOOOKS. COn)