and, with much ceremony,
lifts the lid of the coffin, rearranges some portion of the dress about
the face of the dead, gives a searching glance over the coffin and then
announces: "The friends and all those who desire, may now view the
'remains'". This is the most affecting moment in the ceremony; the last
parting look which wrings the heart of the stoutest, when the women
break down and are led away blinded by their tears. It is then that the
most indifferent spectator pays that beautiful tribute of weeping for
those he may not have loved, nay, hated or despised. All the ill is
forgotten, the good alone remembered. A hearse was hardly known in the
old days. The coffin was placed on a bier of home construction and
carried to the graveyard on the shoulders of four men. The sad funeral
procession followed behind, the mourners walking two and two and the
rear made up of a straggling company of men, women and children. The
minister offered a farewell prayer at the grave, and in summer time, an
appropriate hymn was sung, its appropriateness consisting mostly in its
dismal words and tune. Then the terrible moment arrived, the lowering of
the coffin and the sound of the first earth upon it; for, formerly the
company awaited this last act. This was not the formal dust to dust, a
verbal and figurative act, but some shovelfuls of real earth that for a
few moments rattled and pounded the top of the coffin with a
heart-rending sound. The minister shook hands with the chief mourners,
every one took his way home, the bier was placed under a tree and left
to the elements and to be the plaything of boys until the feet of them,
that await at the door to carry out the dead, are heard again.

The next funeral of which I have a recollection came into my own home.
My father was dead, dead in the prime of his life, his labors and his
hopes. Of this event I recall only two things, being taken from my
playthings under an apple tree to the grave, and the hard pressure of my
hand by my sister as the coffin was lowered. This became in after years
my most pathetic memory as I grew to realize what it meant. In that
grave all our hopes were buried; that I was unconscious of it must have
made the grief of my family only the more poignant. At the same time I
became the object of their greater solicitude and affection, and it was
a miracle that, in a family of women only, I was not spoilt by too much
indulgence. But while my sisters petted and pampered