The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-13 00:00:00

DECORATION DAY.

The custom of decorating the graves of the dead is as old
as human affection, and it is as beautiful as it is ancient.
How many thousands day by day, in the privacy of their
great sorrow, visit the cemeteries throughout the country,
and there, quietly and unseen of men, lay upon the graves
of the departed those tributes—which most resemble life
in the proximity of death—bright flowers that woo the
sunshine, and evergreen shrubs, emblamatic of that
enduring life which the grave cannot extinguish ! But it
is on such public occasions as this that we see how the
sympathy of the people is expressed for those whose
memory has become public property by dying in the
cause of their country. The celebration was grand in all
its features, and exhibited a sorrowful sublimity that was
not equalled in the years which have passed since the war.
With sounds .of martial music, with solemn hymns
chanted above the graves, with- religious discourses be-
fitting the ceremony, the living comrades of those who
sleep in a hundred cemeteries, almost from one end of the
land to the other, paid that homage which shews that the
dead soldier, though passed away, is not forgotten. The
people generally participated in the feeling by abandoning
business to a great extent. In this city the Custom House,
the banks, and the public buildings were closed. Even
Wall-street was affected with a touch of human sympa-
thy, and, although the day was not a legal
holiday, the money changers ceased to clink their
gold out of respect for the solemnities which were
being performed at Greenwood and Cypress Hill. The
flags on the public buildings floated at half staff,
and guns from the forts in the harbour announced that
honours were being paid to the heroes who had died that
the nation might live. Similar scenes occurred in
Washington, in Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati,
Buffalo, rovidence, Lowell, and many other
cities. Congress on Saturday adjourned over
until Tuesday in honour of the day, and the
Government departments were all closed, while thousands
of soldiers and citizens proceeded to the cemetery of Oak
Grove, and the soldiers' cemetery at Arlington, to pay the
annual tribute of this floral month to the fallen brave.
This is just as it should be. We hope that the custom
will be continued and become more honoured in the ob-
servance as years roll on. Let the dead soldiers be hon-
oured while the memory of their services remains with us,
and that will be as long as we value a united country.
Bright be the flowers above them ! " Requiescant in pace!"
New York Herald, May 31.

"Decoration Day "—or " Memorial Day," as we are
asked to call it in the general order of the Commander of
the Grand Army of the Republic—as observed yesterday
was emphatically a festival of floral tribute, evidently
expressive of feelings both deep and tender, and there-
fore removed from the shadow of vindictiveness which is
so apt to mar the sacred ceremonial. The tone of the
speech-making seems everywhere to have been of a cha-
racter to lift the mind above the irritation and the ran-
cour which the recollection of a great national struggle
may arouse, and to flx it upon the self-sacrificing heroism
whose memory and honour will endure when all the bitter
feelings of the time are forgotten. Let the tone which so
happily distinguished the proceedings of yesterday be but
preserved, and " Memorial Day " will keep an honoured
place in the calendar of our national holidays.—New York
Times, May 31.