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W. C. Fields
was a nuisance and was stealing the show. Snavely got him calmed down a little by reminding him what a comfort it was that he and Potts would probably be reunited soon, and the Reverend Sumpter began.
It was a difficult sermon. The family agreed afterward that the minister had done the best he could with the materials at hand. The truth was that, despite his hearty farewell, Potts had been something of a rip. Reverend Sumpter pounded away at his good points, but at the best they had been pretty sickly and thin, and in the aggregate, the message took on more or less the tone of an apology. Sumpter said that, although Potts had not been active in the church, and in fact was never seen there except on Founder's Day, when he turned up for the free dinner, he had never actually talked against it; that, as a good many people knew who abetted him now and then, present company not necessarily excepted, but naming no names, Potts was a good deal of a boozer, but he was not a troublesome boozer, and no report had ever come to him (Reverend Sumpter) about Departed having knocked his wife or children around to excess ; and that, while he was extraordinarily free with his language, to the point where no sensitive person would care to get within half a mile of him, he had seldom cussed anybody out for purely personal reasons, but had stuck fairly close to things like politics and sports right down the line.
They opened the coffin, and Snavely removed a damp cloth from the face, and then everybody came up and had a last look. Not long after that one of the Wiggins boys tripped and fell in the grave, but they got him out in time and lowered Potts to his ultimate rest. Then everybody shook hands with the preacher, and thanked him, and they all went home. Fields said he had never seen anything quite so agreeable in the funeral line; he later hung around Snavely's place, and cultivated him, and learned all he could about his business.
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