The San Francisco call., 1897-09-26
WRECKAGE.
BY HOWARD V. SUTHERLAND

BY HOWARD V. SUTHERL AND.
The habit appears to be growing among
the relatives of deceased person to mourn
his or her hence-taking in ungrammatical
and numerical song. This is one OF the
most blame worthy Of modern customs,
and may be as offensive to the dead as to
the living. Were the offense to be COM
mitted privately we should not have so
much cause for complaint; but when,
through the courtesy of the proprictors
the verses appear in all their nakedness in
the columns of the newspapers we peruse
at the breakfast-table, and form unholy
alliance with our Chinese cook to cause us
indigestion, then it is time for a suff ring
people TO rise in their wrath and demand
that the nuisance cease. The custom is
an old one, and undoubtedly originated in
the days when every man and woman was
by birth a poet, when obseQuies were
celebrated in metrical lamentation and
happiness was an occasion Tor song.
In those days of the worlds infancy,
grief and Joy were sublime. even as child
hood with lis pleasures and pain. and its
keen appreciation of either, is still sublime.
But things are different nowadays. Cen
turies OF TOLL of striving after little disks
OF metal instead of high ideal, have taken
the poetry out of US; and although We
conld beat the money changers of the
Temple at their own game, or force the
merchants of PhGnicia and of early
Venice into Insolvency, we could not com
pete with the least educated of them in
matters other than mercantile or scen-
~ 81
average person bursts into song, the
music thereof is likely to be feeble, if not
untUneful. The thunder of Homer and
the other Greek, Hebrew and Latin bards
has nowadays dwindIed down with a few
occasional peals from en- exceptional poeD
to the twittering heard after tue storm.
And althougn they were able to sing of
Death and the dead, seeing that they COM
pretended Life, it is beyond us TO do so,
and We are compelled to leave the subject
alone.
The best way we have of showing our
grief is by being silent; much speech is
not becoming, and the well-spring OF song
is dried up within us. That these un-
qualified verslfiers offend Willingly against
good taste is not likely. When they write
tACAA Aby thCy w So NAeh
good intentions, little thinking that their
effusions are more humorous than much
OF the comic verse of the hour. In calling
attention 10 the matter, have not done
so in any spirit OF ridicule, but merely
with the hope that people may be deferred
from committing themselves should their
cup of life ever contain more than the
accustomed share of bitterness.
1t is to be hoped that the sad aff1iction
which has fallen on Miss Flora Macdonald
Shearer may be removed, and that one of
California s sweetest poets will once more
be permitted to sing the songs that have
endeared her to SO many. Miss Shearer's
wo-k is not as we'll known as it should be,
but that appears to be the rule rather than
the exception with our own writers.
Neither Miss Ina Coolbrith nor Miss
Emma Francis Dawson have acquired any
sort OF local popuIsrity. although the
quality OF their work entities them to be
ranked with the best of Eastern writer's.
Old Omar may have been to his neigh
bors a stitchor Of tents, rather than the
author of the immortal Rubaiyat.
Had these writers resided in London or
New York as long as they have been here
their works would now be in the hands of
every reading person in this State. AS