The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-01-07
WAS TOO UP ID DATE
 10 GET HE BUSINESS
Undertaken Tells Why He Took Word "MOrtician"
 Off His Sign
From the Providence Journal.

From the Providence Journal.
 T see by the papers that the State As sociation of Embalmers out in New York has started a movement to have the name undertaken changed to mortician, and henceforth and forever they intend to be classified under that high brow name,' | said a long faced individual on his weekly l trip to the city.
 Let 'em go it with their high falutin ways, but I want to tell you right now that there's one undertaking establish ment in these plantations that's going to keep that work in big letters on the shin gle until it comes time for me to put up the shutters on the window for the last time if the whole universe and the state of Rhode Island all adopt the new name tried that new spelling reform business once, and every time I figure up how much it cost me the amount seems big ger than the last time, but I'm satisfied that it amounted to a mighty nice living for q year.
 T was born and brought up in q south county town, and the furniture man who gave mo my first job carried on the un-
 
 so that knew moro or less about it and the more I learned the less I thought he knew about any kind of business.
 After I came of age I hiked down to Now York, where 1 got greater knowl- edge of the science or art that I had taken up and got all tangled up in lot of uppish ideas. After a couple of years l came to Inc conclusion that the old fogey was as much behind the times as 4 n a m yVa known all over the county, I decided that the one best place for me to start into business was right down in my home town.
 l Father drew enough money out of the bank to start me in business. l fitted up 1 a slick locking office and put a sign mp over the door with my name and the word mortician underneath. on one of the windows I had Preserving a Spe- ciaIty painted in nice, big letters, and then I sat down to wait for business to come in. "A few weeks after I started in one of my third or fourth cousins died and the old furniture man across the street got the job. A little later an old fellow that used to be in business with my fla ther passed away, and the old furniture man got that. And it went on that way for quite a while. First one person and then another died, and I calculated that I I ought for one reason or another. but every blessed one gave me the go-by and went across the street to the old duffer that didn't know more than half as much IS he ought to.
 Ut got so after about year that began to get discouraged, and one day I made up my mind that I'd find out why some of the trade wasn't coming to me. happened to meet a brother of that distant relative of mine one day, and when the conversation got around to the late and lamented deceased l sort of in- duired in careless kind of way why they hadn't come to me.
 Why, you ain't an undertaken. be you?' he asked T thought from them signs I saw up at your office when I went into town that day that you were in the eyeglass business.
 Another man that might have pat ronized mo said that he had sent his hired man to the village the day after his wife died. with instructions to get me. but the man came back and said that I didn't do that kind of work; that had taken up making pickles and fitting specs when I came back from New York. "It didn't take me long to guess that the high-toned titles that 1 had on the signs, and which I had picked up down in New York, were driving business away, instead of drawing it. and the first thing I did was to get the village painter to come over and put up new signs with