taker to the cemetery if a lot must be
purchased, or he may go alone, the undertaker receiving his instructions
from the cemetery authorities. If any special position is desired for the
new grave, this will be definitely stated. With this knowledge, an
undertaker will conduct a burial so quietly and decorously that as a
bereaved wife once remarked, it was "a real comfort to have John buried."
She did not quite mean what she implied, however.

Where means suffice, a black cloth-covered casket with silver mountings is
chosen. If the interment is in a vault, a metallic casket is obligatory.
The child's casket is white; that for a young person is white or
pearl-gray.

It is no longer necessary to call on friends and neighbors to bear the
dead to their last resting-place, though it may be done. Honorary
pall-bearers are chosen among the associates of the dead in case he is a
prominent personage; the active may be relatives, or undertaker's
assistants. A child is sometimes borne by his or her little school
friends, though it seems a pity to call on children for such offices.

The House Funeral.--At the house funeral the family remains upstairs, or
is seated in the room with the casket, the former more customary. The
clergyman stands at the head of the casket, or in the doorway, that his
voice may be heard. At the conclusion of the service, those not going to
the cemetery quietly disperse; the carriages drive up; the undertaker in a
low voice assigns the relatives to them in proper order, and the cortege
moves off. At the grave, the remainder of the solemn service is read, the
casket lowered, and all is over.

[MANNERS AND SOCIAL CUSTOMS 751]

That dreadful custom known as "viewing the remains," by which those
present file past the casket for a last look at the dead, is obsolete. The
bereaved take their farewell before any arrivals; those who desire to
behold the face of the dead do so as they enter, then are seated in
another room. Sometimes the casket is closed before the funeral.

Church Funerals.--The church funeral is more dignified, perhaps, but much
less common than a few years ago. Good taste counsels that our leaving,
like our arrival in this world, be a purely family affair. Those who
attend a church funeral are in their seats when the cortege arrives. The
organ is softly played as the casket is borne up the aisle, the clergyman
preceding it; its rests before the chancel, the clergyman reads the burial
serv