icism.

It is all well enough--"due to decency," in fact--to wear "mourning,"
and now and then look grave; but "this idea of closing your house,"
observed our philosopher, "and silencing your piano, and abstaining from
your customary amusements and habits _for months_ [only think of it!],
because some one has departed from misery to happiness, is not alone
supremely ridiculous [though _that_ is bad enough], but it is sublimely
preposterous and [what is yet more] disgraceful to the last degree of
shame."

Precisely; just what we have always said, whether we believed it or not.
It is what any feeling man _would_ say.

The fact is, people sacrifice too much to their friends. Especially
after the friends are dead. "The cream of the joke is," as our lively
essayist remarks, "that the dead do not dream of your sufferings on
their account."

And suppose they did: what _is_ a friend, any way? Why, something you
would do well to rid yourself of as soon as possible. There is scarcely
anything mean, sordid, contemptible, and disgusting, that an average
friend won't do without winking.

It would certainly contribute greatly to the cheerfulness of one about
to leave this "mortial wale," to feel morally certain that nobody cared
a rap about him, or was going to make any fuss just for a trifle like
that.

We must say, however, we would prefer to see our mourning friends go the
whole figure, and not visit the opera in weeds. Be jolly, but also
_look_ jolly.

The trouble seems to be, that people _will_ be sentimental; they must do
a certain amount of tribulation, "whether or no." We would not even
counsel the wearing of black diamonds. We would refrain from jet, bog,
and ebony. We would not try to grin through a disguise of skull and
bones. Be gay (and by all means _look_ gay) in spite of your departed
grandmother.

* * * * *

No Great Shakes.

It's a pity that the earthquake came too late for the census, as it
cannot now be included among our native productions.

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