CHAPTER VII
FUNERALS
FUNERAL CUSTOMS
There is no more eloquent commentary on the vanity of human wishes than the pomp and ceremony which, since the first syllable of recorded time have attended funeral services. Kings and emperors have erected splendid mausolems in which they and their families might be buried, Pharaohs have kept slaves at work for twenty years on a pyramid beneath whose stones their bones might rest, savages in lonely forests have builded great mounds under which their chiefs may wait for the time to go to the Happy Hunting grounds. Slave and emperor, prince and pauper—it is all the same. Last week in New York a woman died in the ward where they treat patients free of charge, yet for more than fifteen years she had been paying premiums on an insurance policy which would permit her to have a funeral "as good as anybody's funeral." Three weeks ago a boy in a small town in Iowa spent nearly all he had in defraying the expenses of the funeral of his mother. In this case, and indeed in many another, a simple ceremony would have been far more appropriate, for even in paying the last tributes of respect to the dead there must be the saving grace of common sense. It is like salt—everything is the better for a pinch of it.
83
