Connecticut western news., 1885-05-20
IF DEATH IS IN A HOUSE
Is IT WRONG TO PUT THE WHOLE
 FAMILY IN HEAVY BLACkS

FAMILY IN HEAVY BLAShf MT. Newton Against Following the Body
 10 the Grave and for Cremntion-Duty
 10 the Living Precedes FancIed Duty to
 the Dead.
 "Immediately after a dea'h in the house," said the Rev. R. Heber Newton Sunday in Anthon Memorial Church, "the minister's visit may be welcome1, but the chief thought is given in many a household at such times to the milliner and the dressmaker. Too often funeral customs are in reality the parade of grief, and not its expression. There is room for improvement in many of our forms of grief. The sashes which the old Knickerbocker custom dictated tyrannously in the past are still by many desired on these sad occasions, and the clergy are asked to deck themselves conspicuously with @ symbol whose meaning no memory of man can now in- terpret. I dislike the show of this GUS tom, and object to any symbol which has become & mere conventional sign, signifying nothing. Of far greater inn portance are the still prevailing excesses in mourning dress. It is very question: able to me whether it is right at all to garb our children from head to foot in the deepest black. Highly nervous children are sensitive beyond our reali- zation to colors, to the quality of the material, and to the associations in- volved in mourning dress. Some proper marks of grief may naturally be placed on our children, but parents should study watchfully the effects of tue prevalent excessive customing of lit tie ones in black upon their health. AS to the use of black by women, have seen some instances of sensitive natures persisting in shadowing themselves in gloom, injuring their health, affecting their spirits, and wronging their house. hold unconsciously, lest they omit mis- called duty to the dead. Let us not wrong the dead by thinking to honor them in that which injures ourselves or our households.
 Following the body to the grave-in milder and more equable climates how beautiful the custom, but how irrecon- cilable with the conditions of our life here to-day. During any portion of the year the custom is attended with inevit- able risk. Through our winters the days are exceptional when the ground |. 5~x, a,,o,,ob apd tIa o;r roiI1 apouob to allow of such usage without peril. When storm rages the observation of this custom is a wrong. Again and again I have concluded service feeling as though I could scarcely stand, and when, after such service, draining ones sympathies in heated, crowded house, there follows long drive to the suburb an cemetery and standing with uncov- cred head round the grave in indictment weather, the service is rendered at an imminent risk of one's future work on earth. The minister who loves his peo- pie cannot protest. He must submit. The Church is to-day without the ser- vice of men who could be i'll spared, be. cause of mistaken notions of duty we owe the dead.
 "Physicians should unite to protest against holding funeral service when death ensues from infectious disease. The air is death-laden, and to enter the home is to invite sickness and death. Only ignorance or thoughtlessness can be an excuse for inficting so cruel wrong on the friends of the dead. I shall never again oficiate at such ser vices.
 "Another custom which is wrongly conceived to be a duty toward the dead is that of interment az we now practice it. The custom is to me unspeakably revolting. The old Greeks, when they buried at all, placed their dead truly in the bosom of the earth-mother, draped in flowing robes, flowers sprinkled above their breasts, nothing around them to in- terfere with the chemical processes which nature sets immediately at work when death ensues, in order to return earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We copy the form, but we add every pos sible hindrance to the natural process of dissolution. We place our dead in two or three cases. We enclose the wooden casket in a metallic box, and seal it tight as possible. We cannot prevent the inevitable dissolution, but we can and do prevent natures purify ing this process. We can and do delay this process. We can and do turn what would be an innocuous process into one fraught with danger to the living. The dead are standing menace. No sani- tary science in our homes can save us from perpetual danger while the homes of the dead violate the laws of nature. From our graves gases are liberated to poison the air. Fountainheads of water are tainted. Germs of disease are turned up to the surface of the earth with every change made by the ceme- tary superintendent. I hope to see the introduction of cremation. For, seek ing to use my life in some real and earnest work for my fellows, it would be Q grief to me to think that my remains became source of danger to any human being. No possible conception of our duty toward the dead stands in the way of reasonable solution of the problem which confronts us. To set up any one form as the only rightful custom is to enslave ourselves to a prejudice. To surround that traditional form with the associations of religion, so that when science calls us to change it we shrink back in fear-that is to invite a new superstition, from which our age ought surely to have shaken itself free. Yet