is human rubbish, and bereaved parties have certain feelings
which require that it should be shot gingerly. I suppose such
sentiments are natural, and will always prevail. But I fear that
people will by and by begin to think that pomp, parade, and ceremony
are unnecessary upon melancholy occasions. And whenever this happens,
Othello's occupation will, in a great measure, be gone.

I tremble to think of mourning relatives considering seriously what
is requisite--and all that is requisite--for decent interment, in a
rational point of view. Nothing more, I am afraid Common Sense would
say, than to carry the body in the simplest chest, and under the
plainest covering, only in a solemn and respectful manner, to the
grave, and lay it in the earth with proper religious ceremonies. I
fear Common Sense would be of opinion that mutes, scarfs, hatbands,
plumes of feathers, black horses, mourning coaches, and the like,
can in no way benefit the defunct, or comfort surviving friends, or
gratify anybody but the mob, and the street-boys. But happily, Common
Sense has not yet acquired an influence which would reduce every
burial to a most low affair.

Still, people think no more than they did, and in proportion as they
do think, the worse it will be for business. I consider that we have
a most dangerous enemy in Science. That same Science pokes its nose
into everything--even vaults and churchyards. It has explained how
grave-water soaks into adjoining wells; and has shocked and disgusted
people by showing them that they are drinking their dead neighbors.
It has taught parties resident in large cities that the very air they
live in reeks with human remains, which steam up from graves; and
which, of course, they are continually breathing. So it makes our
churchyards to be worse haunted than they were formerly believed to
be by ghosts, and, I may add, vampyres, in consequence of the dead
continually rising from them in this unpleasant manner. Indeed,
Science is likely to make people dread them a great deal more than
Superstition ever did, by showing that their effluvia breed typhus and
cholera; so that they are really and truly very dangerous. I should
not be surprised to hear some sanitary lecturer say, that the fear of
churchyards was a sort of instinct implanted in the mind, to prevent
ignorant people and children from going near such unwholesome places.

It would be comparatively well if the mischief done us by Science,
Medicine an