New Englanders
found in funerals that he wrote of them:

"They were the only class of scenes, so far as my investigation has
taught me, in which our ancestors were wont to steep their tough
old hearts in wine and strong drink and indulge in an outbreak of
grisly jollity. Look back through all the social customs of New
England in the first century of her existence and read all her
traits of character, and find one occasion other than a funeral
feast where jollity was sanctioned by universal practice.... Well,
old friends! Pass on with your burden of mortality and lay it in
the tomb with jolly hearts. People should be permitted to enjoy
themselves in their own fashion; every man to his taste--but New
England must have been a dismal abode for the man of pleasure when
the only boon-companion was Death."

This picture has been given by Sargent of country funerals in the days
of his youth:

"When I was a boy, and was at an academy in the country, everybody
went to everybody's funeral in the village. The population was
small, funerals rare; the preceptor's absence would have excited
remark, and the boys were dismissed for the funeral. A table with
liquors was always provided. Every one, as he entered, took off his
hat with his left hand, smoothed down his hair with his right,
walked up to the coffin, gazed upon the corpse, made a crooked
face, passed on to the table, took a glass of his favorite liquor,
went forth upon the plat before the house and talked politics, or
of the new road, or compared crops, or swapped heifers or horses
until it was time to _lift_. A clergyman told me that when settled
at Concord, N. H., he officiated at the funeral of a little boy. The
body was borne in a chaise, and six little nominal pall-bearers,
the oldest not thirteen, walked by the side of the vehicle. Before
they left the house a sort of master of ceremonies took them to the
table and mixed a tumbler of gin, water, and sugar for each."

It was a hard struggle against established customs and ideas of
hospitality, and even of health, when the use of liquor at funerals was
abolished. Old people sadly deplored the present and regretted the past.
One worthy old gentleman said, with much bitterness: "Temperance has
done for funerals."

As soon as the larger cities began to accrue wealth, the parentations