Part 17 (2/2)

On ascending the stairs that led to the apartment of the sick man, he found them crowded with people struggling to get in, to take a peep at the poor man. It was only by telling them that he was the doctor, that he forced his way to the bedside. He found his patient in a high fever, greatly augmented by the bustle, confusion, and heat, occasioned by so many people round him. With great difficulty he cleared the room of these intruders, and told the brother of his patient to keep every one but the sick man's wife out of the house. The brother followed the doctor's advice, and the man cheated the curiosity of the death-seekers, and recovered.

The Canadians spend a great deal of money upon their dead. An old lady told me that her nephew, a very large farmer, who had the misfortune to lose his wife in childbed, had laid out a great deal of money--a little fortune she termed it--on her grave-clothes. ”Oh, my dear,” she said, ”it is a thousand pities that you did not go and see her before she was buried. She was dressed so expensively, and she made such a beautiful corpse! Her cap was of real thread lace, trimmed with white French ribbons, and her linen the finest that could be bought in the country.”

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! But as I have a good deal to say to sensible people on that subject, I will defer my long lecture until the next chapter.

Random Thoughts.

”When is Youth's gay heart the lightest?-- When the torch of health burns brightest, And the soul's rich banquet lies In air and ocean, earth and skies; Till the honied cup of pleasure Overflows with mental treasure.

”When is Love's sweet dream the sweetest?-- When a kindred heart thou meetest, Unpolluted with the strife, The selfish aims that tarnish life; Ere the scowl of care has faded The s.h.i.+ning chaplet Fancy braided, And emotions pure and high Swell the heart and fill the eye; Rich revealings of a mind Within a loving breast enshrined, To thine own fond bosom plighted, In affection's bonds united: The sober joys of after years Are nothing to those smiles and fears.

”When is Sorrow's sting the strongest?-- When friends grow cold we've loved the longest, And the bankrupt heart would borrow Treacherous hopes to cheat the morrow; Dreams of bliss by reason banish'd, Early joys that quickly vanish'd, And the treasured past appears Only to augment our tears; When, within itself retreating, The spirit owns life's joys are fleeting, Yet, racked with anxious doubts and fears, Trusts, blindly trusts to future years.

”Oh, this is grief, the preacher saith,-- The world's dark woe that worketh death!

Yet, oft beneath its influence bowed, A beam of hope will burst the cloud, And heaven's celestial sh.o.r.e appears Slow rising o'er the tide of years, Guiding the spirit's darkling way Through th.o.r.n.y paths to endless day.

Then the toils of life are done, Youth and age are both as one; Sorrow never more can sting, Neglect or pain the bosom wring; And the joys bless'd spirits prove, Far exceeds all earthly love!”

CHAPTER VIII

Wearing Mourning for the Dead

”What is death?--my sister, say.”

”Ask not, brother, breathing clay.

Ask the earth on which we tread, That silent empire of the dead.

Ask the sea--its myriad waves, Living, leap o'er countless graves!”

”Earth and ocean answer not, Life is in their depths forgot.”

Ask yon pale extended form, Unconscious of the coming storm, That breathed and spake an hour ago, Of heavenly bliss and penal woe;-- Within yon shrouded figure lies ”The mystery of mysteries!”

S.M.

Among the many absurd customs that the sanction of time and the arbitrary laws of society have rendered indispensable, there is not one that is so much abused, and to which mankind so fondly clings, as that of _wearing mourning for the dead!_--from the ostentatious public mourning appointed by governments for the loss of their rulers, down to the plain black badge, worn by the humblest peasant for the death of parent or child.

To attempt to raise one feeble voice against a practice sanctioned by all nations, and hallowed by the most solemn religious rites, appears almost sacrilegious. There is something so beautiful, so poetical, so sacred, in this outward sign of a deep and heartfelt sorrow, that to deprive death of his sable habiliments--the melancholy hea.r.s.e, funeral plumes, sombre pall, and a long array of drooping night-clad mourners, together with the awful clangour of the doleful bell--would rob the stern necessity of our nature of half its terrors, and tend greatly to destroy that religious dread which is so imposing, and which affords such a solemn lesson to the living.

Alas! Where is the need of all this black parade? Is it not a reproach to Him, who, in his wisdom, appointed death to pa.s.s upon all men? Were the sentence confined to the human species, we might have more reason for these extravagant demonstrations of grief; but in every object around us we see inscribed the mysterious law of change. The very mountains crumble and decay with years; the great sea shrinks and grows again; the lofty forest tree, that has drank the dews of heaven, laughed in the sunlight, and shook its branches at a thousand storms, yields to the same inscrutable destiny, and bows its tall forehead to the dust.

Life lives upon death, and death reproduces life, through endless circles of being, from the proud tyrant man down to the blind worm his iron heel tramples in the earth. Then wherefore should we hang out this black banner for those who are beyond the laws of change and chance?

”Yea, they have finish'd: For them there is no longer any future.

No evil hour knocks at their door With tidings of mishap--far off are they, Beyond desire or fear.”

It is the dismal adjuncts of death which have invested it with those superst.i.tious terrors that we would fain see removed. The gloom arising from these melancholy pageants forms a black cloud, whose dense shadow obscures the light of life to the living. And why, we ask, should death be invested with such horror? Death in itself is not dreadful; it is but the change of one mode of being for another--the breaking forth of the winged soul from its earthly chrysalis; or, as an old Latin poet has so happily described it--

”Thus life for ever runs its endless race, Death as a line which but divides the s.p.a.ce-- A stop which can but for a moment last, A _point_ between the _future_ and the _past_.”

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