The daily Cairo bulletin. (Cairo, Ill.) 1878-1???, 1882-10-06
Funeral Flowers,

VI all the esthctic and decorative uses
OF iiowers the most delicate and per-
picking are at times Of death and burial.
Who can treat theme reaching so
many broken hearts and darkened homes
with gentle, wholesome touch For
something of Christian hope, and the far
outlook OF faith, have penetrated the
savage, half-heathen spirit Of funeral
obseryances years ago, and the old
ghastlness and terror have given place
to something better.
Jesus lives! No longer now"
would have broken upon such solemni-
Ties with almost intrusive, Earring clam
or, once upon time; and the presense
OF flowers in the chamber of departure
--on the coilin-at the solemn burial of
the dead, sayored Of downright flip
pancy. So much for the slumberous,
long-cIinging shadows Of the old Puri-
tan darkness! Yet in the truest elegy
in uninspired song we see the poet
strewing blossoms aud wreaths in his
opening lines
yet once more, o yc aurcls, and once more,
Ie myrtles brown, with ivy never sere
] come to pluck your berries harsh and crude;
And with forced fingers rude,
Scatter your leaves before the mellowing
year"
And in the fearful climacteric flowers
are more forceful than words;
80 return sicilian Muse.
And call the wales and bid them hithcr cast
Ihelr bells ana howerets OF thousand hues.
Bring the rattle primrose that forsaken dies.
The tufted crow-tOc, aud pale jcssamino,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with
Jet
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose aud the well-attaned woodbine,
with cowslips wan that hang the pensive
head.
And every flower that sad embroidery wears
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty she'd
And dailOdilies MI their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid
Hes"
Surely, no dreadful hintings of latter,
day floral hysteria disturbed the poets
vision; no fell portents of its undertaker's
horrors in the way of floral tributes
and ''emblems," and Offerings" Of
prim, milliner-like crosses, and wreaths,
and crowns, and sundry other nameless,
innumerables properties" of lugubri-
GUS estheticism, each and all conspicu-
ously labeled with visiting card, and
strung on the arm of the vampire-like
attendants mortuary, and sometimes al
most suilicating the officiating clergy
then borne along in the hearse, in the
undertakers' open wagons, in carriages
after the dead, bother, nuisance, and
positive torment at the grave side, or
the door of the waiting tomb-surely
the poet never suffered such unwhoIe-
some provisions, or Lycdas would have
been buried altogether after different
manner, and we should have lost the
GROWING elegiac in any language.
please omit flowers" we may then
understand, notas reputation Of their
silent, prescious ministry, but a quiet
declaration OF the reserved rights of
the sorrowful-a claim that kindred
hands shall provide all these half-sacred
offices of floral ministry; sRvic'ir tinI-
ciohsness and that ostentatious conven-
tionalities shall not break in upon the
privileged sorrows Of bereavement,
There is no vicarious expression of Joy
or grief. The florist cannot put into
his constructions and designs the elo-
quence of loving grief with which the
mother winds her few flowers for the
adornment of her dead babe! From her
hands they catch language all hearts
interpret, and no one misunderstands
the mute elegy.~ We insist upon rev.
erent recognition of this principle, and
protest against the brassy, pitiless in
trusion of traffic and convention ality.-
Churchmdn.