ympathy." Or, on a
sheet of letter paper:

"Thank you, dear Mrs. Smith, for your beautiful flowers and your
kind sympathy."

Or:

"Your flowers were so beautiful! Thank you for them and for your
loving message."

Or:

"Thank you for your sweet letter. I know you meant it and I
appreciate it."

Many, many such notes can be written in a day. If the list is overlong, or
the one who received the flowers and messages is in reality so prostrated
that she (or he) is unable to perform the task of writing, then some
member of her immediate family can write for her:

"Mother (or father) is too ill to write and asks me to thank you
for your beautiful flowers and kind message."

Most people find a sad comfort as well as pain, in the reading and
replying to letters and cards, but they should not sit at it too long; it
is apt to increase rather than assuage their grief. Therefore, no one
expects more than a word--but that word should be _seemingly personal_.

=OBLIGATIONS OF PRESENCE AT FUNERALS=

Upon reading the death notice of a mere acquaintance you may leave your
card at the house, if you feel so inclined, or you may merely send your
card.

Upon the death of an intimate acquaintance or friend you should go at once
to the house, write, "With sympathy" on your card and leave it at the
door. Or you should write a letter to the family; in either case, you send
flowers addressed to the nearest relative. On the card accompanying the
flowers, you write, "With sympathy," "With deepest sympathy," or "With
heartfelt sympathy," or "With love and sympathy." If there is a notice in
the papers "requesting no flowers be sent," you send them only if you are
a very intimate friend.

Or if you prefer, send a few flowers with a note, immediately after the
funeral, to the member of the family who is particularly your friend.

If the notice says "funeral private" you do not go unless you have
received a message from the family that you are expected, or unless you
are such an intimate friend that you know you are expected without being
asked. Where a general notice is published in the paper, it is proper and
fitting that you should show sympathy by going to the funeral, even though
you had little more than a visiting acquaintance with the family. You
should _not_ leave cards nor go to a funeral of a person with whom you
have not in any way been associated or to whose house you have never been
asked.