Funeral service

“ In attending a funeral not in your own family, never leave the pew until the mourners have passed into the aisle; but rise and stand while they pass, falling into your proper place as the procession passes you.
It is ill-bred for gentlemen to congregate in the vestibule of a church and there chat familiarly, often commenting audibly upon the service or the congregation. No true lady likes to run this gauntlet, although in this country they are too often obliged to do so. ”

“ The first class of funerals are of great pomp: they include bearers, crosses, plumes, eighteen mourning coaches and attendants, grand mass at church, 120 lbs. of wax tapers, an anniversary service, and material of mourning cloth; and also the attendance of Monsieur le Curé, two vicars, twenty-one priests, six singers and ten chorister boys, and two instrumental performers, at a cost of 145l., for a funeral superior in magnificence perhaps to any private funeral in England. ”

“ Then again the newspapers will be filled with advertisements of families giving an invitation to their friends to be present at the funeral, also announcing the masses which are given from year to year on the anniversary of the funeral, and inviting their friends to be present at this solemn service. At the church servants will be posted at the door to receive the cards of those who go in, or those who send their regrets, the same as they would at any other social occasion. ”

“ All the morning the funeral knell has been tolling; the people listen, now, to the solemn words of a service which seem spoken by the dead man himself to those who mourn. They admonish and warn, but they bid them be of good cheer, lift up hearts, and trust in the Lord. ”

“ Simplicity characterizes the entire service among well-bred people everywhere. The music is soft and the flowers in many cases are sent to the hospitals where they may gladden the sufferers there instead of being allowed to wilt neglected on the grave. More often than not, nowadays, there is added to the notice of the funeral which is inserted in the newspapers the sentence, "Please omit flowers." ”

“ If the hat is worn, it must be removed as the coffin passes from the hearse to the church, when the guests form a double line, down which it is carried, and the same line and observance must be made after the service, as the coffin is carried from the church to the hearse again.
If lady friends attend a funeral, if they are not in mourning, they should wear grave, quiet colors. To go to a funeral in a gay dress is insulting. ”

“ It is desirable to visit the family in which death has occurred before the funeral services, both to express your sympathy in the affliction and to learn any facts respecting the deceased and the arrangements for the funeral that may be necessary for you to know. The pastor should here have the character of an adviser and friend. In all arrangements for the funeral it is better, in general, to conform to the customs of the community ”

“ On the occasion referred to, the funeral procession having entered the churchyard, and my informant and the officiating clergyman having taken their places at the head of the grave, the undertaker and his assistants having removed the coffin from the hearse, and the mourners, of whom there was a large crowd, having gathered into a circular audience, the Reverend Doctor —— began the service.
"'Man that is born of a woman'—Oh, stop those carriages! ”

“ The funeral services of the same people are not less interesting. At the death of one of their number, the body is stripped, laid out upon the ground, and the friends of the deceased assemble, forming a circle around it, and commence howling like so many demons. ”

“ All the preparations for a funeral in the house are committed to the care of an undertaker, who removes the furniture from the drawing-room, filling all the space possible with camp-stools. The clergyman reads the service at the head of the coffin, the relatives being grouped around. The body, if not disfigured by disease, is often dressed in the clothes worn in life, and laid in an open casket, as if reposing on a sofa, and all friends are asked to take a last look. The body of a man is usually dressed in black. ”

“ More than this, the funeral is the occasion over all others in which costly presents far above the ability of the family are given to the poungyis, or priests. But real consoling service to the sorrowing they give none. ”

“ Many people prefer a house funeral—it is simpler, more private, and obviates the necessity for those in sorrow to face people. The nearest relatives may stay apart in an adjoining room or even upon the upper floor, where they can hear the service but remain in unseen seclusion.
Ladies keep their wraps on. Gentlemen wear their overcoats or carry them on their arms and hold their hats in their hands. ”

“ The service of the burial of the dead is considered by the plain sects as a sacred obligation to attend whenever possible. Relatives, friends, and members of the deceased’s religious sect, drive many miles to pay their last respects to departed ones. The innate hospitality of the Pennsylvania Dutch calls for the serving of a light lunch after the funeral. Relatives, friends, who have come from a distance or live close by, and all others who wish to partake of it, are welcomed. ”

“ There should be no loud talking or confusion while the body remains in the house. All differences and quarrels must be forgotten in the house of mourning, and personal enemies who meet at a funeral must treat each other with respect and dignity. The bell knob or door handle is draped with black crape, with a black ribbon tied on, if the deceased is married or advanced in years, and with a white ribbon, if young or unmarried.
THE FUNERAL SERVICES.
If the services are held at the house, some near friend or relative will receive the guests. ”

“ The women never go to the funeral; but some days after, of which public notice is given by advertisement, a public service is held in church, at which all the family are present, and to which the friends are publicly invited. Funeral obsequies are as costly here as in America ”

“ The heat of Sunday and Monday was intense, but until the closing of the park gates in the forenoon previous to the beginning of the funeral service, the stream of people passing through the catafalque, to view the casket enclosing the remains, was continuous, and the number who so paid their last respects must have aggregated at least 150,000.
Promptly at half-past ten o'clock the ceremonies at the pavilion began. The immediate members of the family, and near relatives and friends, took seats about the casket, and at each corner was stationed a member of the Cleveland Grays. Dr. ”

“ It is proper that our sympathies should be drawn out; it is proper that we should assemble together to attend to appropriate funeral services, as we are now doing, that we may reflect upon our lives and upon the uncertainty thereof, and upon death and the results that may follow after ”

“ And he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
When the bier, with the casket, was set down before the altar, and the chief mourners—the two sons of the deceased, who had followed it—had taken their seats in the rectory pew, then the funeral services, conducted by the curate, went on to their solemn ending.
At the close the parishoniers came out of their pews in an orderly manner, and passing on from the right to the left before the casket, took their last look at the mask of their deceased pastor. ”

“ Thus, the members of the bereaved family should be left as nearly alone to their grief as possible. Nothing in the nature of business should be thrust upon them. A male member of the family should take complete charge; or the immediate duties may be left in the hands of the nearest outside relatives. But whoever does take charge should see that the family is not troubled with the minor details, and that the funeral ceremony is carried out according to the family's pre-confided wishes. ”

“ Weeks, and sometimes months, intervened before the friends and relatives could be convened with sufficient pomp and circumstance to satisfy the mourners. I have attended services embodying a long sermon, eulogistic of the deceased and admonitory of the living, when the poor mortal house of clay had mouldered in the grave for half a year. I actually knew of one funeral of a wife that was postponed by untoward circumstances until, when a sympathizing community was convoked to listen to the sermon, the ex-widower sat in the front seat as chief mourner with a second wife and her baby beside him. ”

“ The Church, to use the fox-hunting phrase, must be in at the death; and how truly would a simple funeral, without pageantry, in some sort—a cold, unceremonious burial, without mutes, and streamers, and feathers—without bell, book, or candle—flout and scandalize the gorgeous Church of England! The Church and the State are connected, so intimately and indissolubly connected, that he, who dies in the arms of Mother Church, must permit that particular old lady, in the matter of his funeral, to indulge her ruling passion, for costly forms and ceremonies. ”

“ The one buried that day I had known, or she had known me in my boyhood, and it was expected that I would attend. My mother sent the wreath that belongs,—there is both sense and sentiment in flowers at a funeral when they are wreathed by the hands of those who loved the dead, as is still the custom here; none where they are bought at a florist's and paid for with a growl,—and we stood around the coffin and sang the old hymns, then walked behind it, two by two, men and women, to the grave, singing as we passed through the gate. ”

“ So the custom of funeralizing the dead long after burial grew from a necessity. The funeralizing of a departed kinsman or friend was published from the pulpit. The bereaved family set a day, months or even a year in advance, for the purpose of having the preacher eulogize their beloved dead. “Come the third Sunday in May next summer,” a mountain preacher could be heard in mid winter publishing the occasion. “Brother Tom’s funeral will be held here at Christy Creek church house.” ”

“ He addressed the vast multitude from the window of a house overlooking the great open space in front of the cemetery. On presenting himself he was received with enthusiastic cheering. When silence was obtained he said:—"Fellow-countrymen—This is a strange kind of funeral procession in which we are engaged to-day. We are here, a vast multitude of men, women, and children in a very inclement season of the year, under rain and through mud. We are here escorting three empty hearses to the consecrated last resting place of those who die in the Lord (cheers) . ”

“ At a church funeral the pallbearers sit in the first pews at the left of the center aisle; the family in those to the right. At a home funeral it is customary to have the family in some secluded room near the one where the coffin is placed and to have the clergyman stand in the hall between, or at the entrance of the drawing-room, where he may be readily heard by all. ”

“ The priest conducts the funeral ceremonies in the ordinary and usual way of mortuary proceedings observed by the Catholic church all over the world. While the grave-diggers are filling up the grave, the friends, relatives, neighbors, and, in fact, all persons that attend the funeral, give vent to their sad feelings by making the whole pueblo howl ”

“ A funeral procession is an imposing spectacle, and, to the uninstructed foreigner, a cheerful one; for there is nothing sad or sombre in the white, or bright-colored, robes of the priests, the white, tinsel-decorated bier, the red and white flags borne aloft, the enormous bunches of gay-colored flowers;—the very mourners in white silk, and with faces apparently unmoved by grief, bring no thought of the object of the procession to the Western mind. ”

“ Every circumstance of the funeral is meant to force joy upon the mourners. The child, dressed in white garments, and crowned with a wreath of flowers, is followed by the officiating priest in silk robes of the same colour; and the clergymen who attend him to the house from whence the funeral proceeds to the church, sing in joyful strains the psalm Laudate, pueri, Dominum, while the bells are heard ringing a lively peal. The coffin, without a lid, exposes to the view the little corpse covered with flowers, as four well-dressed children bear it, amidst the lighted tapers of the clergy. ”

“ A costly casket, a profusion of flowers and a long funeral procession merely gratify a foolish and ostentatious pride on the part of the survivors, and often entail a heavy burden on the father or husband. ”

“ Others of the same profession who have not been called to administer to the patient attend the funeral, their object being to secure whatever property they can by loud crying, cutting their hair and bodies, and other display of profound grief. Nothing resembling a prayer is said over the dead at the burial nor anything spoken. Indeed, on account of their loud lamentations it would be impossible to hear it if it were. Some weeks afterwards, however, other ceremonies take place regarding the dead which will be described in another place. ”

“ The property has got to fall to some heir, and why not the United States?
NATIVE PASSION FOR FUNERALS They are very fond of funerals. Big funerals are their main weakness. Fine grave clothes, fine funeral appointments, and a long procession are things they take a generous delight in. ”