external
life made to correspond to the internal. Wearing mourning has its
advantages. It is a protection to the feelings of the wearer, for whom
it procures sympathetic and tender consideration; it saves grief from
many a hard jostle in the ways of life; it prevents the necessity of
many a trying explanation, and is the ready apology for many an
omission of those tasks to which sorrow is unequal. For all these
reasons I never could join the crusade which some seem disposed to
wage against it. Mourning, however, ought not to be continued for
years. Its uses are more for the first few months of sorrow, when it
serves the mourner as a safeguard from intrusion, insuring quiet and
leisure in which to reunite the broken threads of life, and to gather
strength for a return to its duties. But to wear mourning garments and
forego society for two or three years after the loss of any friend,
however dear, I cannot but regard as a morbid, unhealthy nursing of
sorrow, unworthy of a Christian."

"And yet," said my wife, "to such an unhealthy degree does this custom
prevail, that I have actually known young girls who have never worn
any other dress than mourning, and consequently never been into
society, during the entire period of their girlhood. First, the death
of a father necessitated three years of funereal garments and
abandonment of social relations; then the death of a brother added two
years more; and before that mourning was well ended, another of a wide
circle of relatives being taken, the habitual seclusion was still
protracted. What must a child think of the Christian doctrine of life
and death who has never seen life except through black crape? We
profess to believe in a better life to which the departed good are
called,--to believe in the shortness of our separation, the certainty
of reunion, and that all these events are arranged in all their
relations by an infinite tenderness which cannot err. Surely,
Christian funerals too often seem to say that affliction 'cometh of
the dust,' and not from above."

"But," said Bob, "after all, death is a horror; you can make nothing
less of it. You can't smooth it over, nor dress it with flowers; it is
what Nature shudders at."

"It is precisely for this reason," said I, "that Christians should
avoid those customs which aggravate and intensify this natural dread.
Why overpower the senses with doleful and funereal images in the hour
of weakness and bereavement, when the soul ne