Prose and Poetry of Funerals.
They had the poor woman in a fifty-dollar coffin. The beautiful bunch of white roses in the one hand that was exposed did not conceal the marks of toil on her fingers, the calloused places, the distended joints, and the rough skin. Her iron-gray hair was neatly brushed down on the sides of her wrinkled forehead, and the black silk gown, folded so gracefully about her, was full of luster, new, and evidently expensive. There were ten hacks for friends of the family, and the hearse was driven by a man in livery, and had eight costly plumes on top. "How natural she looked, and what a lovely funeral," said a woman who had known the family. "How unnatural she looked, and what an inhuman thing that funeral was," said a male cynic who accompanied her. "Because. There was a good woman, a hard-working wife and mother, who never had a ride in a hack, whose fingers never pressed a flower, and who never wore silk. She didn't have any time and didn't have money. Now look at her. Flowers rare and sweet in her dead hands, lots of carriages following her hearse, and a costly shroud for a body which in life was deemed none too good for a thirty-cent worsted. A queer world this, which ignores fashion in life and falls a blind votary to it in death." She lay in her lonely coffin,
With her wasted fingers pressed
Over the fair, full roses
They had placed upon her breast;
And the head, that ached no longer,
And the pitiful, haggard face,
They had pillowed with gleaming satin,
Had shaded with costly lace.
Then I said—and my heart was heavy,
Recalling her life forlorn—
"Let none lay a rose on my bosom
Who have planted my life with thorn."
—Sel.