The Solace of Strangers, Public Rituals and Private Grief

“ The crape-canopied hearse, the nodding plumes of woe, the wailing music of the hired bands, the long procession of slow-moving coaches, the tramp of hundreds, tell only of human vanity: we make our show of sorrow. One vehicle only holds hearts breaking in an agony of grief—hearts that know nothing in their woe of the dear one’s greatness; know only that he has gone from their household that his presence had made so happy. In his death the dear walls of that home were shattered, the fire 240 upon the hearth is dead, and the hard world darkened down to desolation’s nakedness. ”

“ Do yards of crape and bombazine never express the opposite emotion? Is real heart-breaking grief to be gauged by the width of a hem, or the length or thickness of a veil? Have not many a widow and orphan woke up, the morning after a funeral, to find the little left by the deceased, expended in funereal carriages, for people who would not lift a helping finger if it would keep them out of the almshouse? We all know that, or if we don't, we may wake up to the fact, some future day, when the sunshine of prosperity is clouded over. ”

“ But after the funeral comes life again,--hard, cold, inexorable life, knocking with business-like sound at the mourner's door, obtruding its common-place pertinacity on the dull ear of sorrow. The world cannot wait for us; the world knows no leisure for tears ”

“ The more ostentatious the display of grief for the dead, the less I have always found of the reality. I heard two young ladies, who had recently lost a mother, not more than sixteen years older than the eldest of the twain, lamenting most pathetically that they could not go to a public ball, because they were in mourning for ma'! Oh, what a pitiful farce is this, of wearing mourning for the dead! ”

“ When we have watched through a long vigil with a great and agonizing sorrow, when we have rebelled against it, and battled and fought with the air, in our vain outcry against its injustice, when we have longed and wept and prayed for release in vain, and then, at last, have laid it in its ashes and stood beside that open grave, which yawns sooner or later in every past, then—the coming of its ghost is bitter with the bitterness of death. ”

“ Research into funeral rites, of whatever nature, confronts us with much that would be ludicrous were it not so very pitiful, for humanity has displayed a fatal tendency to rush into the committal of ghastly absurdities by way of showing the most sacred kind of grief. Yet, take them all in all, the death laments of the people form a striking and beautiful manifestation of such homage as "Life may give for love to death." ”

“ And one of the surest signs of our present vitality is that this attitude has become not only unusual, but frankly absurd and unfashionable. There is an intense and gallant pathos about a nature broken by sorrow, making desperate attempts to be cheerful and active, and not to cast a shadow of grief upon others. There is no pathos at all in the sight of a person bent on emphasising his or her grief, on using it to make others uncomfortable, on extracting a recognition of its loyalty and fidelity and emotional fervour. ”

“ Since it is a grateful thing to witness pleasurable feeling, and painful to see the expression of suffering in another, a polite form of society does all it can to encourage the one and to suppress the other. A man is for the most part supposed to be able to obtain all needed sympathy, in his troubles, from his family and his intimate friends. Before the rest of the world he is expected to hide his grief and maintain a cheerful aspect. It is one of the delicate forms of sensibility, produced by a high culture, to be fearful of obtruding one's feelings on unconcerned onlookers. ”

“ Working themselves up to the necessary pitch, some of the women (near relatives of the deceased) commenced to cry freely, and the wailing and lachrymation gradually spread round the circle, until all, except little girls and babies who were too young to be affected, were weeping and mourning, some for fashion, others from genuine grief. In carrying out the orthodox form of mourning, the women first had a good cry to themselves, and then, as their emotions became more intense, went round the circle, selecting partners with whom to share companionship in grief. ”

“ On a voyage everybody has confidences to make, private griefs to disclose, to everybody else. This is especially the case during the first few days out. We feel so lone and lorn; we have all undergone the misery of parting, the breaking of tender ties; we seem a huddle of human units shaken by chance into the same box, yet scarcely are we therein settled when we begin putting forth feelers of sympathy and recognition. There was one young man who seemed to me a master in the art of making desirable acquaintances for the trip. ”

“ As we are now at sea, the pilot takes his leave, with those who have come off to bid adieu to their brothers, sons, friends, etc.; and now the weather-beaten tar as well as the green hand brushes away a tear, as they bid a long farewell to happy homes; and as their native shores gradually sink behind the wave, all appear to be suddenly impressed with the loneliness of their situation, and the dangers they have to encounter and overcome ere they again behold the dear ones at home. ”

“ We were sitting in the rotunda of a famous Washington hotel, and only a few moments before had the speaker, an utter stranger to me, moved his chair beside mine and opened a conversation. I noticed that he had that timid, lonely, helpless air which invests the bucolic traveler who, for the first time, finds himself among strangers, and his identity lost, in a world so much larger, so much colder, so much more indifferent to him than he ever imagined. ”

“ In no phase of life is the worrying and the "fussy" habit more noticeable than in travel. This is, perhaps, partly because the lack of self-confidence, which so often unsettles the worrier, is peculiarly effective when he has relinquished the security of his accustomed anchorage. This applies surely to the over-solicitous attention paid by the traveler to the possible dangers of rail and sea. ”

“ Affectionate inquiries, gentle sympathy, and, when needed, most tender assistance, filled with bright spots a voyage which, but for this blessed spirit, would have been intolerable; making warm and genuine friends for life of those who but a few days before were perfect strangers. ”

“ The stranger has gradually improved in health, but is very silent, and appears uneasy when any one except myself enters his cabin. Yet his manners are so conciliating and gentle, that the sailors are all interested in him, although they have had very little communication with him. For my own part, I begin to love him as a brother; and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion. He must have been a noble creature in his better days, being even now in wreck so attractive and amiable. ”

“ For kindness shown when kindness was most needed—for sympathy and affection—yea, love itself—for grief and pity not misplaced, though bestowed in a mistaken belief of our condition, forlorn indeed, but not wholly forlorn—for solace and encouragement sent to us from afar, from cities and solitudes, and from beyond seas and oceans, from brethren who never saw our face, and never may see it, we owe a debt of everlasting gratitude ”

“ We learned a lesson from all this—we felt that not a word of kindness is ever wasted, that a simple friendly glance may cheer the spirit and warm the lonely heart, and that the slightest deed, prompted by generous sympathy, becomes a living joy in the memory of the receiver, which blesses unceasingly him who bestowed it. ”

“ Ought I not to have remembered that it required a more than ordinary share of courage to act otherwise than you did,—a virtue more than human to renounce the hope of exchanging a cheerless, solitary life, for one of wedded sympathy and happiness? Alas, when we are in grief or suffering, it is so natural to trust to the kindness and goodness of others! Hitherto your fault has been in depending too much on my generosity ”

“ There is always insolence and distance in the kindness of the fortunate.
When I had taken my seat beside this venerable lady in mourning, I already loved her; I really loved her.
She sighed:
"It is not a very gay place that I offer you, my child." ”

“ He spoke of words of kindness and sympathy, how often they cheered the heart of the desolate, and brightened the path of the wayfarer. How often those who were collecting for benevolent objects were more cheered with the kind words of one who had no money to give, than with the large gifts of another, grudgingly bestowed. ”

“ Love and sweet trust that never dies,
Wild yearnings that with constant flow
From kindred heart to bosom go,—
Would never in our souls had rise,
Had we not met!
[pg 110]
A SONNET.
We gentler grow by sorrow; not the breast
That never crouches in the nights of tears,
That never bends beneath the loads of years,
Has sympathies that are the kindliest.
There is a strength in agony that best
Can link the careless heart with human fears,
And teach it that fond kindness which endears
The millions that with sadness are oppressed. ”

“ On the land, in the city or town, a death is hardly noticed, and is not felt; but on board a ship, with but a small circle, as in our case, of about thirty, living together as one family, and shut out from the world, as it were, one snatched from our small company is seriously missed, and death serves to bind the remaining still closer together, as the loss just experienced shows us all the uncertainty of human life, and no one knows who will next be called upon to pay the last sad debt of nature. ”

“ There are griefs that hang no crape on the door-bell, that wear no black garments, that close no shutters, that drop no tears which men can see, that can get no sympathy save that of the blessed Christ and perhaps of a closest human brother, and must wear smiles before men and go on with life's work as if all were gladness within the heart. If we knew the inner life of many of the people we meet, we would be very gentle with them and would excuse the things in them that seem strange or eccentric to us. They are carrying burdens of secret grief. ”

“ Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need -- of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy as ourselves. ”

“ There are sick men swinging uneasily in their hammocks; and one poor fellow, whose fever threatens to terminate fatally, tosses painfully in his cot. His messmates gently bathe his hot brow, and, watching every movement, nurse him as tenderly as a woman. Strange, that the rude heart of a sailor should be found to possess such tenderness as we seldom ask or find, in those of our own sex, on land! There, we leave the gentler humanities of life to woman; here, we are compelled to imitate her characteristics, as well as our sterner nature will permit. ”

“ Let it be in the depth of winter, if it may be, when the labour of the year is over, and the heart is rejoicing in its home; and when you are alone: not that I would frown upon the traveller, or blight the warm hospitality of your nature, by reproof; but there are some things, and some places, where the thought of the stranger is intrusion,—the touch and hearing of the unknown man little better than profanation. If you love each other, you will not go abroad for consolation ”

“ Indeed, it frequently happened that the word came in very inappropriately, as if tugged heroically to the front by a clumsy conversationalist.
There is no hazard of life so certain to discover sympathy or antagonism as travel—a fact which points to the wisdom of beginning married life with a journey. ”