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CHAPTER XVI.

THE FUNERALS.

NOTHING in America comes over one's feelings as so unlike home, as the manner in which everything is conducted relating to the burial of the dead.

On our landing we heard that the earth was that day to receive all that remained of a venerable and excellent lady, to see whom was one of the daydreams indulged in when preparing to cross the ocean. She had been born in a house which for many years was my happy dwelling. A degree of almost romantic sympathy had existed between us, fostered by messages and pictures of her early home, so that the news that I should not see her inflicted a real disappointment.

The next best thing was to honour her memory by waiting on the last obsequies.

So much are we the children of habit, that the sight of a polished mahogany receptacle shrunk me, as if there were an absence of reverence or of sorrow in parting with her, betrayed in the very colour of her coffin. It is true I had seen a coloured

coffin once- —but it was that of a Russian princess, covered with crimson velvet, and bedizened with all the blazoned heraldry which the death within mocks at, and holds at its true worth, a show of grandeur which is frequently the substitute for tears.

What was my amazement, nay, confusion, that very evening, while driving through the brilliant streets, to see whole stores set forth, with coffins of all sizes leaning against the walls-one black, to shew that they could be had in that fashion, all the others glancing in bright polish, and some with shining rows and figures of yellow nails! Coffins tall and short, for aged persons and for babes, pattern coffins for dolls, with a stand in the centre of the room covered with glass, exhibiting fashions of last garments to choose from. Everything has its fashion. In China, it is said they mourn in yellow. With us it is all black, deep black, according to the old ballad

"In black hung the kitchen,

In black hung the hall,

In black hung the dining-room,
Parlour and all."

Lament for Lady Jane Seymour.

In America the mourning is lighter, briefer, and if it happens not to suit, black garments are not assumed at all. This, in certain circumstances, is very right. Many a poor Scotch family will run in debt rather than not adopt sable decencies, or they will abstain from public worship for months rather than attend on it in coloured clothes. But polished

shining coffins! a showroom of them, as smart in its way as that of a tailor or a milliner! One must have lived a lifetime in the one country, and then seen the other, before you can know how the heart shivers at the sight. One of the Broadway stores you will find still open at midnight; its lamp still glaring, and reflected from those shining surfaces into the outer darkness; and a man, the watcher of the place, seated in the midst, moving his head in drowsy noddings, the dreary living thing present. Within or below the place they have accommodation for the remains that may be sent there under the cloud of night. Why such unwonted provision? Is it not enough to prepare the narrow house when it is needed and may not the clay repose where the spirit left it, till the hour of its last deposit ? No, it does not suit-and here again we meet the effect of boarding-house living and dying. The living, and healthy, and gay, do not like to hear of death so near them. Many die in the house unknown to the mass of the boarders, and hence the convenience of ready-made coffins, and midnight removals of remains to the undertaker's, and of hasty funerals. Thus is death deprived of its suitable impression, and the solemn thoughts naturally associated with a spirit's entrance into the invisible world are dissipated. People seem to live in a hurry, to love, to die, to be mourned, and in too many cases to be forgotten, in a hurry, which, in this dying world, when presently it will be said of each

of the living, "and he died," is an unwise condition.

The little glass door opposite the face in the coffin lid also hurts English feeling. It seems a compromise between the Popish fashion of the exposure of the body dressed as in life, and the Protestant custom of closing up reverently all that is left, to wait the sound of the last trumpet. Were it not usual to inter very speedily, this exposure of the countenance, which seems to me afflicting, would probably not be practised. With us it could not do at all.

In the middle ranks in New York it is usual for any neighbours that choose, to enter the house of mourning and look upon the corpse. A Scotch lady whose feelings revolted against such an exhibition, said she was forced to send the very disobliging message to the many who rung her bell, that she could not admit strangers, and allowed of no such custom. She observed very wisely, that she feared such familiarity with the aspect of death had rather a hardening than a softening tendency, and that she had been shocked to hear young girls and boys remarking on the "natural," or "life-like," or "deathlike" appearances before them, as coolly as they would criticise a picture or a doll.

In England, Christian parents have experience of the solemnising effect on their offspring, when first conducted to look upon the frame that no longer breathes and looks lovingly on them. It is

wrong to make that a light subject which exists ever as a token of divine displeasure against human disobedience or that a common event which can befall each of us but once. And that once!-which

kingdom may it open to us?

Invitations to funerals are frequently attached to the obituary notice in the newspaper-and the attendance depends much on the esteem in which the departed was held. The connected and the unconnected go alike, and you may see ladies in gay vestments with bright roses in their hats, mingling sincere tears with those dressed in the deepest mourning. If it is the funeral of a well-known Christian character, and a member of a church, the body is laid in front of the pulpit, and the friends gather round while an act of worship is performed, and a short oration is delivered, which is not simply laudatory, or pronouncing judgment on the dead, but rather warning to the living. The service is generally simple and touching, and calculated to be useful. The Episcopal form nearly resembles that of England.

The Odd Fellows' funerals are more like triumphal processions, with bands of music, flags, ribbons, and all the gaudy insignia of official people in the society, than like returning the ashes of a departed brother to the parent dust. It is said they are rendered very injurious to the morals of the community by being generally performed on the Lord's day, and during the hours of worship, and that many

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