Mark Twain

“ The Irish got to piling up hacks so, on their funerals, that a funeral left them ragged and hungry for two years afterward; so the priest pitched in and broke it all up. He don't allow them to have but two hacks now, and sometimes only one.'
'Well,' said I, 'if you are so light-hearted and jolly in ordinary times, what must you be in an epidemic?'
He shook his head.
'No, you're off, there. We don't like to see an epidemic. An epidemic don't pay. ”

“ And there's one thing in this world which you don't have to worry around after a person to get him to pay for. And that's a coffin. Undertaking?--why it's the dead-surest business in Christendom, and the nobbiest.
'Why, just look at it. A rich man won't have anything but your very best; and you can just pile it on, too--pile it on and sock it to him--he won't ever holler. And you take in a poor man, and if you work him right he'll bust himself on a single lay-out. Or especially a woman. ”

“ All it wants is physical immortality for deceased, and they're willing to pay for it. All you've got to do is to just be ca'm and stack it up--they'll stand the racket. Why, man, you can take a defunct that you couldn't GIVE away; and get your embamming traps around you and go to work; and in a couple of hours he is worth a cool six hundred--that's what HE'S worth. There ain't anything equal to it but trading rats for di'monds in time of famine. Well, don't you see, when there's an epidemic, people don't wait to embam. ”