t a service in his kind.
How happy both sides to this transaction are expected to feel, and how
willing people are sometimes to add to the soft words a solid
testimonial of gold, if only thus a dismissal can be effected! But are
not the reports of the committees and the votes of the meetings false
coin, nowhere current in the kingdom of God, circulate as they may in
this realm of earth? Nay, does not everybody, save the one that receives
the somewhat insincere and left-handed blessing, read the formal and
solemn record with a disposition to ridicule or a pitying smile?

How well it is understood that we are not to speak the truth, but only
good, of the dead! How melancholy it is, that _lying_ has come to be so
common an epithet for the gravestones we set over their dust! How few
obituaries characterize those for whom they are written, or are
distinguishable from each other in the terms of their funeral
celebrations of departed virtue! How refreshing, as rare, is any of the
veritable description which implies real lamentation! But what a
suspicion falls on the mourning in whose loquacity we cannot detect one
natural tone! As if that last messenger, who strips off all delusions
and appearances, should be pursued and affronted with the mockery of our
pretence, and we could circumvent the angel of judgment with the
sentence of our fond wishes and the affectation of our groundless
claims! As if the disembodied, in the light of truth, by which they are
surrounded and pierced, could be pleased with our make-believe, or
tolerate the folly of our factitious phrase! With what sadness their
purged eyes must follow the pens inditing their epitaphs, and the
sculptors' chisels making the commonplaces of fulsome commendation
permanent on their tombs! What vanity to their nicer ears must be the
sonorous and declamatory orator's breath! Let us not offend them so.
They will take it for the insult of perfunctory honor, not for the
sympathy it assumes to be. _Nothing but good of the dead_, do you say?
_Nothing but truth of the dead_, we answer. _Do not disturb their bones;
let them rest easy at last_, is the commentary on all keen criticism of
those who have played important parts in life, and whose influence has
perhaps been a curse. No, we reply, their bones will rest easier, and
their benedictions come to us surer, for our unaffected plain-dealing.
The trick of flattery may succeed with the living. Those still in this
world of shadows,