Year: 1878




On Thursday afternoon Matthias Wilhelm
was at work, as he had beeu on any afternoon
Tor thirty years, making coffin. He was
an old man of "a, with long hair and a long
mustache, both as white as snow. He was a
Dane by birth, but in middle age he came to
this country, and finding the demand for
such work constant and fairly profitable, he
has been a cofin-maker ever since.
and out of the necessities of the
dead has made for himself a decent
living. His companions say that
he was kind old man, that he nailed the
parts of coffin together justly, and that he
never did harm to anybody. The sound of
his hammer in his old age was slow but con-
slant, and arose in tho morning among the
earliest and ceased at night with the latest.
He said little but worked hard, everybody
liked him, and tho cofins that be put to-
gether were almost innumerable.


The shop in which the old Dane was at
work on Thursday afternoon was that of Mr..
Stolts, in the Bowery. Not the front part,
with plate-glass windows, where the
perfected products of the place,
velvet -colored and silver handled, are at
tractlvely displayed; but the little shop back,
two flights up, where the cofins get their
first outlines, and where they appear in un-
dress. He had bench in one corner, the
best corner in the room. next to an open
window overlooking a broad expanse of
tarred roof and forest of cnimneys through
which the breeze could come blowing upon
him in the warm season.


AS Wilhelm stood at his bench on Thurs
day afternoon, all the tools necessary to his
work were scattered about him, convenient
to his hand. The saw, the plane, the draw
knife. the glue-pot, and hammer and nails
were the implements which he
principally employed, and these were all
lying upon his bench or hanging in easy
reach just above it. The sbavings that he
had planed during the day made thick car
pet under his feet. He had been fitting and
mailing sides on to caskets, and pile of
these, made of white pine wood, rose in a
semicircle around him, like fort, almost to
the rafters of the low studded room.


Half dozen of the Danes fellow work
men were busy in other parts of the shop
Hammers were striking, chips we're flying,
and there was strong smell of glue.
It was few minutes before 4
O'Clock. The sky without was clouded, and
the room was gloomy; nevertheless, one of
the coftin-rnakers was whistling quick air,
another was singing, and the sounds arising
from the brisk instruments made the place
rather cheerful than otherwise. Wilhelm,
with his long white hair and moustache, was
bending over half opened coffin. A board
which formed the base of the same was held
fast in the wise attached to the side of his
workbench, and he was fitting and mailing a
side to it. Nail after nail sank into the
soft wood under the blows of the old mans
hammer. He bent the plant side of the
coffin little by little, and long row of close
ly-driven halls held it firmly to the edge OF
the base. There was but one more nail to be
driven. The old coffin maker passed his hand
along his almost completed work, changed
his hammer from his right hand to his left
and poked with his fingers among
his stock of nails in order to pick out q
good one for tho last. He found one to suit
him, turned it over in his palm once or twice
as if it were pleasing thing to contemplate
set it to the wood, and with slight tap OF
his hammer drove it partially in. He raised
his hammer for another blow, but the blow
was not given. For an instant the hamme,
hung suspended, then the fingers which held
1t loosened themselves and the instru.
ment dropped to the floor. The old coffin.
maker fell with it. He had been smitter
with heart disease, and the last nail but hall
driven, his head sank back, his eyes closed
and without word he fell dead long tht
hayinQS at the foot of hia work -banch