jess

Two of them were young students from a medical college a few miles away; the third was a gigantic negro known as Jess. For many years Jess had been employed about the cemetery as a man-of-all-work and it was his favorite pleasantry that he knew "every soul in the place." From the nature of what he was now doing it was inferable that the place was not so populous as its register may have shown it to be.

Removal of the casket from its box was less easy, but it was taken out, for it was a perquisite of Jess, who carefully unscrewed the cover and laid it aside, exposing the body in black trousers and white shirt.

On a bench in the obscurity sat the negro Jess. He rose, grinning, all eyes and teeth.

'You see Jess is not really you,' I begin inquiringly.

'Still, there is no denying that Jess had the same ambition.'

Had Jess a silk of any kind - not to speak of a silk like that?'

'Mother, that is the very way Jess spoke about her cloak!'

I tell you what, if there had been a real Jess and she had boasted to me about her cloak with beads, I would have said to her in a careless sort of voice, "Step across with me, Jess and I'll let you see something that is hanging in my wardrobe." That would have lowered her pride!'

But oh, mother, that is just how Jess would have acted if some poorer woman than she had shown her a new shawl.'

'Just as Jess would have been fidgeting to show off her eleven and a bit!'