attend the funerals of distant relatives; he buys tickets galore for
benefit entertainments given for a widow or a consumptive in peculiar
distress; he contributes to prizes which are awarded to the handsomest
lady or the most popular man. At a church bazaar, for instance, the
alderman finds the stage all set for his dramatic performance. When
others are spending pennies, he is spending dollars. When anxious
relatives are canvassing to secure votes for the two most beautiful
children who are being voted upon, he recklessly buys votes from both
sides, and laughingly declines to say which one he likes best, buying
off the young lady who is persistently determined to find out, with five
dollars for the flower bazaar, the posies, of course, to be sent to the
sick of the parish. The moral atmosphere of a bazaar suits him exactly.
He murmurs many times, "Never mind, the money all goes to the poor; it
is all straight enough if the church gets it, the poor won't ask too
many questions." The oftener he can put such sentiments into the minds
of his constituents, the better he is pleased. Nothing so rapidly
prepares them to take his view of money getting and money spending. We
see again the process disregarded, because the end itself is considered
so praiseworthy.

There is something archaic in a community of simple people in their
attitude toward death and burial. There is nothing so easy to collect
money for as a funeral, and one involuntarily remembers that the early
religious tithes were paid to ward off death and ghosts. At times one
encounters almost the Greek feeling in regard to burial. If the alderman
seizes upon times of festivities for expressions of his good-will, much
more does he seize upon periods of sorrow. At a funeral he has the
double advantage of ministering to a genuine craving for comfort and
solace, and at the same time of assisting a bereaved constituent to
express that curious feeling of remorse, which is ever an accompaniment
of quick sorrow, that desire to "make up" for past delinquencies, to
show the world how much he loved the person who has just died, which is
as natural as it is universal.

In addition to this, there is, among the poor, who have few social
occasions, a great desire for a well-arranged funeral, the grade of
which almost determines their social standing in the neighborhood. The
alderman saves the very poorest of his constituents from that awful
horror of burial by the county; he pro