G. W. Crane

“ The next day the girl and her invalid mother were forced to leave their cozy little home, and move into the damp, decaying house at the other end of the village. Neighbors insisted that the sick woman come into their homes, but even in her illness the invalid was too proud to do so.
Two weeks later the suffering of the poor woman was at an end. Out in the cemetery a haggard girl watched the lumpy, half-frozen clods of earth fall down upon the casket and shut in forever the body of her loved one. ”

“ It was a large iron one much like the ordinary farmhouse dinner bell which the rural housewife uses to notify the men in the field that dinner is ready. The old man had it fastened on a post, which was set in the ground near the spot which he had chosen for his grave.
The time finally came when the shriveled figure of the miser did not appear upon the street, and investigation revealed him lying upon his bed, almost wholly paralyzed. Doctor Jackson obtained one of the middle-aged women of the village to wait upon him, and give him his food, for he could not even move his arms to feed himself. ”

“ The earth was rapidly shoveled into the opening, and in a short time a mound of yellow clay marked the old skinflint's last abode. It was unlike other newly-made graves, however, for a rope reached out of it to the bell near by, and six inches of an air-pipe protruded.
The grave-diggers left the spot, and returned to their homes. The cemetery was deserted unless one believes that the spirits of the dead hover above the last resting place of their bodies. ”