Do the Job Right!

"A Grave in Honduras"

"I saw several churches and cathedrals in Honduras with a row of bullet-holes in the front wall, about as high from the ground as a man's chest, and an open grave by the road-side, which had been dug by the man who was to have occupied it. The sight gave us a vivid impression of the uncertainties of government in Central America. The man who dug this particular grave had been captured, with two companions, while they were hastening to rejoin their friends of the government party. His companions in misery were faint-hearted creatures, and thought it mattered but little, so long as they had to die, in what fashion they were buried. So they scooped out a few feet of earth with the tools their captors gave them, and stood up in the hollows they had made, and were shot back into them, dead; but the third man declared that he was not going to let his body lie so near the surface of the earth that the mules could kick his bones and the next heavy freshet wash them away. He accordingly dug leisurely and carefully to the depth of six feet, smoothing the sides and sharpening the corners, and while he was thus engaged at the bottom of the hole he heard yells and shots above him, and when he poked his head up over the edge of the grave he saw his own troops running down the mountain-side, and his enemies disappearing before them. He is still alive, and frequently rides by the hole in the road-side on his way to the capital. The story illustrates the advisability of doing what every one has to do in this world, even up to the very last minute, in a thorough and painstaking manner."

From Three Gringos in Venezuela and Central America, by Richard Harding Davis (1895).