How gloomy is the home which death has entered ! The only calm face is often that of the dead wife or husband, parent or child. People speak to one another in a constrained and unnatural whisper, (365) 366 THE hearthstone; or, life at home. as though afraid of disturbing a repose which can never more be broken by disturbance. Then there is the shutting out of the sun- light, the Hghting of candles in the dark chambers, the stealthy tread of the undertaker, and in some countries of the mutes who are to put on the paid hypocrisy of grief Nothing can well be imagined more utterly desolate and gloomy than the time-honored Christian funeral. In former times, at funerals in England, the widow, daughters, wife, sisters and other near relatives of the dead, sat in awful silence, clothed in black, except the white cap or cravat, and with two mute%at the door of the house. Then the hearse bearing the corpse, and the car- riages, or mourning coaches, as they were called, carrying the clergy- men and male relatives and mourners only, wended their melancholy way to the church-yard, where, after a brief, solemn service, the funeral was over and the solemn guests departed. For the conventional twelvemonth the family abstained from all the social gayeties of life, and even from its most innocent pleasures, and went about to church or business clothed in the deepest mourning. There has lately been a relaxation of these rigid ceremonies, but it is still the case that first, last and all the time everything that is connected symbolically with death is gloomy and depressing. Yet what does religion, and especially a religion so sublime as Christianity, amount to if it cannot shed the light of hope and resig- nation upon the inevitable lot of all ! It is hard to lose the child upon whom a mother's love has been so lavishly expended, and the wrench to nature is indeed a terrible one. But if the mother really has faith that death is but the gateway of a happier life, in which pain and sickness and disappointment cannot enter, she ought surely not to be sorry for her little one as though some dreadful evil had befallen it. So also of the husband or wife, the father or mother. Death is no unusual accident or catastrophe, but the common lot. A few years more is all that could have been added to the life that stops. If the joys of this brief existence are laid down, so also are its sor- rows, and surely the latter are quite as real as the former. We need DEATH IN THE HOME, 367 not say with Lord Byron that whatever life has been to any one " 'tis something better not to be," but we may surely feel, as many of the great and good, even before gospel times, have felt, that if death be not a good, it is certainly not an evil.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

How gloomy is the home which death has entered ! The only calm face is often that of the dead wife or husband, parent or child. People speak to one another in a constrained and unnatural whisper, (365) 366 THE hearthstone; or, life at home. as though afraid of disturbing a repose which can never more be broken by disturbance. Then there is the shutting out of the sunlight, the Hghting of candles in the dark chambers, the stealthy tread of the undertaker, and in some countries of the mutes who are to put on the paid hypocrisy of grief Nothing can well be imagined more utterly desolate and gloomy than the time-honored Christian funeral. In former times, at funerals in England, the widow, daughters, wife, sisters and other near relatives of the dead, sat in awful silence, clothed in black, except the white cap or cravat, and with two mutes at the door of the house. Then the hearse bearing the corpse, and the carriages, or mourning coaches, as they were called, carrying the clergymen and male relatives and mourners only, wended their melancholy way to the church-yard, where, after a brief, solemn service, the funeral was over and the solemn guests departed. For the conventional twelvemonth the family abstained from all the social gayeties of life, and even from its most innocent pleasures, and went about to church or business clothed in the deepest mourning. There has lately been a relaxation of these rigid ceremonies, but it is still the case that first, last and all the time everything that is connected symbolically with death is gloomy and depressing. Yet what does religion, and especially a religion so sublime as Christianity, amount to if it cannot shed the light of hope and resignation upon the inevitable lot of all ! It is hard to lose the child upon whom a mother's love has been so lavishly expended, and the wrench to nature is indeed a terrible one. But if the mother really has faith that death is but the gateway of a happier life, in which pain and sickness and disappointment cannot enter, she ought surely not to be sorry for her little one as though some dreadful evil had befallen it. So also of the husband or wife, the father or mother. Death is no unusual accident or catastrophe, but the common lot. A few years more is all that could have been added to the life that stops. If the joys of this brief existence are laid down, so also are its sorrows, and surely the latter are quite as real as the former. We need DEATH IN THE HOME, 367 not say with Lord Byron that whatever life has been to any one " 'tis something better not to be," but we may surely feel, as many of the great and good, even before gospel times, have felt, that if death be not a good, it is certainly not an evil.

The hearthstone; or, Life at home