1099 A Wreath in Time 1909 A few of us have had the chance to read our own obituary notice , but it fell to the lot of John Goodhusband the rare privilege of viewing his own elegiac cinerary floral offerings , and at the time John was anything but a dead one . It happened thusly John , after office hours , meets a couple of his erstwhile chums , who prevail upon him to go with them to the show and make a jolly oldtime bachelorhood night of it . Now John is fully alive to his duties as a benedict , but it is hard to resist the temptation , so he yields and sends Mrs . Goodhusband a telegram that he had left on the Red Eagle Express for Freeport on business , and will return in the morning . The trio then repair to the Empire Theater , where the Burlesque Company is playing , of which La Tunita , the Queen of the Orient , is the bright peculiar star . To say they enjoy the show is putting it mildly , and after the performance they play the role of stage door Johnnies , inducing several of the show girls to join them in several cold bottles and hot birds at a neighboring lobster palace . Meanwhile , an extra evening paper is handed Mrs . Goodhusband , which contains the alarming news that the Red Eagle Express has been wrecked and all on board killed . Sorry her lot a widow so early in the game . Well , she dons the weeds and hies herself to the florist and orders a suitable floral tribute , a large wreath of roses , with the word REST worked in violets . All this time John is having a riproaring good time piling up an iridescent souse , arriving in the gray of morning to a house of mourning , where he is met by his own widow . Shown the newspaper , he feels some eclaircissement is due the lachrymose Mrs . Goodhusband , so he sets to work his fabricating faculties , and in lucid terms tells how he , the lone survivor of the calamity , at the risk of his own life endeavored to save others , dragging them from the wreck . He plays the noble hero in the eyes of Mrs . G . until the maid enters with the morning paper , which states that the account of the wreck was all a mistake it never happened . Poor John is now up against it for fair , and he certainly would have come out badly but for the arrival at this moment of the wreath , which presents to the Mrs . the thought of what might have been , hence she weakens , with a promise from John that to his bachelor traits he exclaim requiescat in pace .