about midnight
Good-by , friend . '' And with his gravestone on his shoulder he joined the grisly procession , dragging his damaged coffin after him , for notwithstanding he pressed it upon me so earnestly , I utterly refused his hospitality . I suppose that for as much as two hours these sad outcasts went clacking by , laden with their dismal effects , and all that time I sat pitying them . One or two of the youngest and least dilapidated among them inquired about midnight trains on the railways , but the rest seemed unacquainted with that mode of travel , and merely asked about common public roads to various towns and cities , some of which are not on the map now , and vanished from it and from the earth as much as thirty years ago , and some few of them never had existed anywhere but on maps , and private ones in real-estate agencies at that . And they asked about the condition of the cemeteries in these towns and cities , and about the reputation the citizens bore as to reverence for the dead . This whole matter interested me deeply , and likewise compelled my sympathy for these homeless ones . And it all seeming real , and I not knowing it was a dream , I mentioned to one shrouded wanderer an idea that had entered my head to publish an account of this curious and very sorrowful exodus , but said also that I could not describe it truthfully , and just as it occurred , without seeming to trifle with a grave subject and exhibit an irreverence for the dead that would shock and distress their surviving friends .