last resting-places. It was an astute nineteenth century schemer who conceived the idea of employing the street railways as the best method of transporting the dead to the cemeteries. One man owned all the lines of street railway, and in order to carry out his purposes, he bought up all the hearses and their equipments, and thus compelled the public to accept his plan. It works admirably so far. The wealthy may indulge a hearse car, plumed, draped, liveried, and lackeyed, for $120, with an additional one, or perhaps two, for friends. The plainer cars, drawn by one mule, may be procured for $3, while others reach from $12 to $30, including one or two cars, neatly draped, for mourners. But to the stranger eye, accustomed to seeing the long cortege moving solemnly along the streets, with its hearse and weeping mourners, the Mexican plan seems repulsive and devoid of that respect which we pay to the lifeless clay of our loved ones. It reminds one irresistibly of Thomas Noel's famous couplet:
"Rattle his bones over the stones!
He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!"[1]
A short sojourn, however, serves to convince the most skeptical of the "fitness of things," the Mexican method being far more expeditious and, it is claimed, less expensive than the old plan.
Any day in the week one may take a car for Tacubaya, and there see the Indians transporting their dead to Dolores Cemetery. I have seen four men bearing on their heads the coffin containing its dead occupant. For miles they tramp steadily along, themselves the only hearse, horses, cortege, or mourners.
"In the darkness of the forest boughs,"
with the muffled tread of naked feet, they journey with their dead. At other times one may see a poor woman, bearing upon her head a plain little open coffin, containing her dead child, with eyes wide open and a profusion of gay flowers covering the tiny form. What volumes it tells of the sweetly poetic thoughts, implanted by a divine hand in the heart of a poverty-stricken, bereaved Indian mother!
- ↑ The Pauper's Ride.
