hristenings is a hot eggnog, drunk out of little
punch cups. One is supposed to eat the cake as a sign that one partakes of
the baby's hospitality, and is therefore its friend, and to drink the
caudle to its health and prosperity. But by this time the young host (or
hostess) is peacefully asleep in the nursery.

CHAPTER XXIV

FUNERALS

At no time does solemnity so possess our souls as when we stand deserted
at the brink of darkness into which our loved one has gone. And the last
place in the world where we would look for comfort at such a time is in
the seeming artificiality of etiquette; yet it is in the moment of deepest
sorrow that etiquette performs its most vital and real service.

All set rules for social observance have for their object the smoothing of
personal contacts, and in nothing is smoothness so necessary as in
observing the solemn rites accorded our dead.

It is the time-worn servitor, Etiquette, who draws the shades, who muffles
the bell, who keeps the house quiet, who hushes voices and footsteps and
sudden noises; who stands between well-meaning and importunate outsiders
and the retirement of the bereaved; who decrees that the last rites shall
be performed smoothly and with beauty and gravity, so that the poignancy
of grief may in so far as possible be assuaged.

=FIRST DETAILS=

As soon as death occurs, some one (the trained nurse usually) draws the
blinds in the sick-room and tells a servant to draw all the blinds of the
house.

If they are not already present, the first act of some one at the bedside
is to telephone or telegraph the immediate members of the family, the
clergyman and the sexton of the church to which the family belong, and
possibly one or two closest friends, whose competence and sympathy can be
counted on--as there are many things which must be done for the stricken
family as well as for the deceased. (The sexton of nearly every Protestant
church is also undertaker. If he is not, then an outside funeral director
is sent for.)

If the illness has been a long one, it may be that the family has become
attached to the trained nurse and no one is better fitted than she to turn
her ministrations from the one whom she can no longer help, to those who
have now very real need of just such care as she can give.

If the death was sudden, or the nurse unsympathetic or for other reasons
unavailable, then a relative or a near friend of practical sympathy is the
ideal attenda