the same
day brought to the dead-house, and lie there three whole days before
interment.

There is something peculiar in the obsequies of Munich, especially in
the Catholic portion of the population. Shortly after the death, there
is a short service in the courtyard of the house, which, with the
entrance, is hung in costly mourning, if the deceased was rich. The body
is then carried in the car to the dead-house, attended by the priests,
the male members of the family, and a procession of torch-bearers, if
that can be afforded. Three days after, the burial takes place from the
dead-house, only males attending. The women never go to the funeral;
but some days after, of which public notice is given by advertisement,
a public service is held in church, at which all the family are present,
and to which the friends are publicly invited. Funeral obsequies are as
costly here as in America; but everything is here regulated and fixed by
custom. There are as many as five or six classes of funerals recognized.
Those of the first class, as to rank and expense, cost about a thousand
guldens. The second class is divided into six subclasses. The third is
divided into two. The cost of the first of the third class is about four
hundred guldens. The lowest class of those able to have a funeral
costs twenty-five guldens. A gulden is about two francs. There are
no carriages used at the funerals of Catholics, only at those of
Protestants and Jews.

I spoke of the custom of advertising the deaths. A considerable portion
of the daily newspapers is devoted to these announcements, which are
printed in display type, like the advertisements of dry-goods sellers
with you. I will roughly translate one which I happen to see just now.
It reads, "Death advertisement. It has pleased God the Almighty, in his
inscrutable providence, to take away our innermost loved, best husband,
father, grandfather, uncle, brother-in-law, and cousin, Herr---, dyer of
cloth and silk, yesterday night, at eleven o'clock, after three weeks
of severe suffering, having partaken of the holy sacrament, in his
sixty-sixth year, out of this earthly abode of calamity into the better
Beyond. Those who knew his good heart, his great honesty, as well as his
patience in suffering, will know how justly to estimate our grief." This
is signed by the "deep-grieving survivors,"--the widow, son, daughter,
and daughter-in-law, in the name of the absent relatives. After the name
of the son i