Republican Herald

But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast?—Can
I bring him back again?
These remarks against mourning apparel are
admitted with the sincerest kindness towards the
afflicted. These trappings of grief seem indifferent
and childish, where there is real grief; and
where there is not, they are mockery. The
principal objections against the custom of wearing
mourning apparel are, that it is useless, inconvenient
and expensive.
For what use does it serve? To remind me
that I am in affliction? I don't wish to be so
pointed out. Shall the sable garb be adopted
then, because it is grateful to my feelings—because
it is a kind of solace to me? I can gain
no consolation from it.
But if the custom is useless, its inconvenience
forms a still greater objection.—It is inconvenient,
because it throws the care of purchasing
and making clothes, upon a family, at the very
moment when, on every account, it most needs
seclusion and quietness—when worn out with
care, and watching, and sorrow, it needs retirement
and relief. There is a shocking unseemliness.
I had almost said a sacrilege, in turning the
house of death into a shop for the dress maker!
Who that has ever witnessed what is passing on
one of these occasions—who that has seen the
broken-hearted victims of affliction brought forth
to be dressed up as pageants, and harassed with
inquiries about mourning gowns and bonnets, or
heard intermingled with their sighs and tears
paltry and vain discussions about the adjustment
of mourning caps and ribbons—who, I say, has
not felt that all this is inconvenient, ill-timed and
unbecoming, beyond what any force of language
can express?
But the greatest objection, after all, to the use
of mourning apparel, is the expense. That the
expense presses heavily upon the poor, is a matter
very well known, and I believe, very generally
regretted. But this is not all; it presses
heavily upon the community. None but the opulent,
in fact, can afford it. There are few families
in the country with whom the expense of
mourning apparel does not form a burdensome addition
to the bills of the merchants. Besides,
this is the most expensive kind of apparel; and
there is always, on these occasions, from haste.
and the natural improvidence of an afflicted mind
about worldly things, a great deal of extravagance
and waste. And more than all, this expense
comes at a time when, of all times, it can
be least easily borne. It comes, in addition to
all the expenses of sickness, the paying of attendants,
and the charges of the physician. It
comes, perhaps, at the very moment when the
main support and reliance of a family is taken
away. When the husband, the father, the provider,
is cut off—when he has parted with the
world, with no feeling of distress so deep, as that
he was to leave destitute, those who were dearer
to him than life—then it is that the desolate and
deprived, under a false notion of showing respect
to him, are obliged, by the custom of society, to
abridge the already narrow means on which they
have to rely. How many are there in which a
considerable portion, and even the whole of
what remains for the fatherless, is expended, not
in providing for their wants, but in merely arraying
their desolate condition.
Grey, the poet, declares that the sum of happiness
beneath the moon consisted in the lolling all
day long upon a sofa, reading new novels