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THE MOCKERY OF MOURNING

Thoughts Upon Outward Signs
of Inward Grief Prescribed
by Convention.

They Will Disappear Only When
Superstition Disappears and We Have
More Culture

Why do women wear mourning?

They will reply, without a doubt, in
order to make some outward evidence of their
inner grief.

But the question arises, if this is so, why
do not men also wear it? No one will
maintain that they suffer less than women.
Their hearts wear black much oftener than
their hat bands do. They used, it is true,
to wear it much more in former years than
they do now. But at present, mourning is
almost exclusively a feminine demonstration,
and it is rather interesting,
psychologically speaking, to inquire why women
should still cling to this ancient custom,
while men have almost abjured it.

Anyone who stops to think on the subject
for a moment or two, will perceive that men
have been the ones always to make
progress toward greater spirituality in matters
concerning death and burial. For example,
it is the men, almost without exception,
who are in favor of cremation, that
hygienic and economical method of
disposing of the dead. But women will have
no crematories. They want a grave to
weep over. They want a palpable, cold,
long, grass-grown grave to put wreaths on,
and at which they may sit and remember
the virtues of the deceased.

It may be that this is not materialism,
but it looks very much like it. Men
seldom visit graves, except in the novels of
Mrs Augusta Evans.

They had no solace for their woe in
the purchasing of cheap flowers -- for
women are very apt to exercise
economy in these melancholy purchases
and generally choose white carnations in
preference to roses It is difficult, always,
for a woman to be so prodigal that she will
forget the limitations of her purse, and
even when she purchases the flowery
emblem of a broken life, she will pause to
inquire the price, and to calculate whether
or not she will have enough left over to
buy the week's groceries. Of such details
must the life of woman be compounded.

Mourning is a hard thing to reconcile
with the sense of fitness of a woman who
has really loved the person whose death
she celebrates in wearing of her solemn
garments Supposing, for example,
that you had loved one man all your
life -- loved him for the first time that you
saw him and that you had married him,
and that he was the father of your children
and your constant companion, and, withal,
your heart s dearest possession. And
suppose that suddenly some day he should die
And that you would have to face the fact
that henceforth your soul must remain
silent -- that it was stricken dumb -- that you
must simply wait, through the rest of life,
for the day of death, which might -- just
possibly, might -- reunite you. And
supposing, then, that you swathe yourself in
black. You drape your garments in folds
suggestive of woe, yards of black hang
from the bonnet on your head, you see that
every letter you write bears its
silent evidence to your life's
disaster, and even the pocket
handkerchief with which you wipe your
nose proclaims the fact that your condition
is a sorrowful one. You regulate all these
signs with a fine nicety. The width of
the hem of your veil is regulated by
inexorable fashion ; so is the size of the border
of black on your handkerchief and your
stationery.

The days drag on. Six months pass --
six little months. And what happens?
You buy new writing paper with a border
of black but half the width of that on which
you wrote in the first dread days of your
sorrow, you let out the hem of your veil,
and divide its width, and you hasten to
wear out the handkerchiefs with the wide
border, and to get some with a smaller
edging of black. For it is unnecessary
to say that no woman, however rich,
would think of setting aside or throwing
away her handkerchiefs, even to
oblige the tradition which has set its
limit upon the sharpest hours of her grief,
and told her when she ought to begin to
appreciate the law of compensations No,
no woman, in any transport, would throw
away good handkerchiefs.

Very well; six more months pass And
by Niobe! but gray and lavender take the
place of blackest black! There is a flower
in the button hole. One even wears a
diamond or two. And a little later, and
the costume of delicate or rich tints tells
the world that your heart is mended and
that you are ready once more to take part
in the world's gayeties, and to laugh when
others laugh. It would be very well, if
your heart had really grown light in the
same ratio that your garments have. But
it's all a ghastly lie. The heart awakes
at night to cry for the love it has lost
Through all the world it goes, alone, and
the cancer of loneliness eats at it always

Or, on the other hand, suppose that one
nearly related to you -- perhaps, even your
husband -- dies, and that you did not care
in the least for him, and were secretly
much relieved, though, of course, shocked,
as we all must be at the fact of death.
You were relieved to know that you
were to be spared from possible shame, or
from a life of lowering discontent, or
from wranglings and deceits Such things
happen, it is said. Then what a horrid,
revolting, contemptible sort of a lie, to pull
your mouth down to the proper angle of
regret and hang yards of nun's yelling
around you !

Whichever way you take it, it seems to
be artificial, foolish, insincere and repellant.
I don't say that everyone of us
might not do it. But I insist that it is a
bad thing to do.

Along with this wearing of weeds goes
the tradition that the person thus afflicted
absolutely must not enjoy herself. She
cannot go to hear beautiful music. She
must not attend any sort of a public gathering
She cannot meet only a certain number
of her friends at one time In short,
she must apply no balm to her wounds
She must steadfastly refuse to drink of
the waters of Lethe.

It's all nonsense If there is ever a time
when music has a message for one it is
when the house has been made dreadful
by that awful Absence -- it is when the
yearning imagination hears in fancy the
familiar foot on the stair, and shudderingly
discovers the lie, and then recurs, with
maddening mechanical repetition, to the
same fantasy.

If ever the mimic life of the stage is
really calculated to help one, it is when
one is most anxious to forget the real life
in which one is forced to live. If ever
human companionship would be stimulating,
it would be at a time when solitude
was haunted with its newly made ghost,
and when, in the persistent laughter of the
rest of mankind, could be found life a
grim, but wholesome philosophy.

I do not suppose that it is very surprising
that women, even the most original and
independent of them, come under the thrall
of this imperative fashion and yield to it,
when I consider that their failure to do so
would lay them open to be suspected by
other members of their sex of lack of
affection for their dead. And that would be
the one thing that no woman could endure
patiently. A woman likes to be thought
to be crushed by grief, even when
she is not. She cannot bear to be thought
disloyal, and she seems to think it a form
of disloyalty not to love everyone that she
might be expected to love, because of the
accident of their connection with her.
Woman insists upon having the world
believe in her affections She would rather
be suspected of wantonness than of
hardheartedness And the world itself always
receives with reluctance the idea of a
coldblooded woman. Indeed, the world
consents to be rather interested in her when
she weeps It considers her very feminine
when she is bathed in tears.

No one, I hope, is so dull as to inveigh
against the sentimental. But there is a
good deal of sentiment that is really of a
very low and commonplace order, and
that we would all be disgusted with if it
were not so familiar.

But some day I really hope to meet a

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woman, who, when she loses her best
beloved, will say:

"He is dead. And he is immortal. Burn
that putrifying mass of flesh. It was dear
to me once, for it held his soul. It is
repulsive now, for it it vacant, and it is
changing. I cannot weep over that vacant
and repulsive tenement. What I remember
is his soul, and that is not beneath the
ground If I shed tears of loneliness it will
be when I am looking at the stars -- beyond
which I prefer to imagine that he is As
for my dress -- black or scarlet -- what is it
to me? I have not thought of dress. How
could I pause to think of my bonnet when
my love was making his way through
space and the silence up to God! No, I
shall tell the world n thing about my sorrow.
It could not understand. It did not
share my sacred joy while he lived. It
shall not share my sacred grief now he is
dead."

Some day, perhaps. I will know such a woman. But I never have yet.

As for funerals!

But the subject sickens one!

Carbolic acid and tuberoses, lachrymose hymes, and insincere clerical [?] A ghastly room round which the live things sit, looking with [?] eyes at the dead thing! Whispers going on in the room beyond, the house chilly for want of fire, nothing much to eat, everyone as faint with hunger as with grief, all sorts of people daring to try to console you with commonplace words, all sorts of lies circulating, amiable and otherwise -- Oh, most desolate, repulsive, wretched, material time, in which one has no pause to stop to hear the song of the liberated spirit who sings his song of victory above the bowed heads of those who weep!

I think going down to hang over the coffin of your dead before the curious eyes of casual neighbors, to whom you may lend your flatirons, but to whom you certainly would not lend your soul a secrets! Think of having them talk over, afterward, all your [?], incoherent utterances, and to know that they enjoyed your misery in proportion as it was demonstrative Not that they are cruel -- far, from it. But some persons cannot help their morbidity They like superlative conditions If they hear of a cyclone they want it to blow down all the houses in town; if they hear of a fire in a mine they want 200 miners imprisoned just where the sounds of their voices can reach those who are making futile efforts to liberate them; and if you lose a friend, they want it to wreck your life absolutely, and want you to let them see that it does!

No, no! It is all hideous, this public show of grief, this cant of the preacher who has to praise a man for qualities of which he knows nothing; this deliberate laceration of the tortured heart by the singing of mournful songs!

But when will we outgrow it? When will we go alone with our dead to some place where their perishing mortality may most quickly be made [?], refusing to make a spectacle of our grief for the inquisitive and the vulgar! When will we wear our grief in our hearts instead of ou our bonnets? When will we take the money we spend on wreaths for the dead, to buy bread for the living? When will we forget the material part of death to remember the spiritual part of it?

Truly, only when we have fewer superstitions and more culture than we have now. ELIA W. PEATTIE.

CHRISTIAN ENDEAVORERS.

The McCook District Societies Meet and Transact Business.

McCook, Neb , April 29 -- The district convention of the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor opened here last night by a song service and address by Rev. D. L. McBride. The meeting this forenoon was chiefly a business meeting for the purpose of electing officers. Mr. A B. Colvm of Cambridge was elected president, C. J. Watson, McCook, vice president, Miss Maude Bodine of Orleans treasurer. The name of the convention was changed from 'Republican and Beaver Valley union" to "The Light McCook district convention" The address of welcome was delivered by C T. Watson and responded to by Miss Mayo Beaver of this city. This afternoon was occupied by committee conferences and reports The delegates here now number about thirty, from Holdrege, Cambridge, Alma, Beaver City, Indianols, Orleans, Loomis, Bertrand and many other neighboring towns

The hours of the convention were spent tonight in speechmaking by C. A. Burch, president of the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor of Lincoln, and L. P. Ludden Mr. Ludden gave an elaborate description of the accommodations at Montreal in July at the National Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor. Tomorrow the convention intends spending the entire day in suggestions and fixing plans for the next convention.

CORN BELT EDITORS

They Will Meet in LeMars, and Will Have a Big Feast.

LeMARS, la, April 20 -- The Corn Belt editorial convention has been called to meet at LeMars, May 25 and 26. Newspaper men of the adjacent parts of Iowa, South Dakota and Nebraska will form the association, which it is expected will be organized at this meeting. A large number of those present were active newspaper men of the section, and are active in working up this first meeting.

The LeMars Polo club, the champions of the Missouri valley, will entertain the editors with a [?] game of polo, and the program will close with an address by Ignatius Donnelly and a banquet.'

A CANE TO VAN HORN

The clerks in the employ of Max Meyer and Bre company, as well as the head of the firm took occasion last evening to show their appreciation of M. M. Van Horn's services by presenting him with a goldheaded cane. Mr. Van Horn has been with the company for the last ten years, and his withdrawal from active work is a source of much regret.

A. Mandelberg, head clerk of the jewelry department, made the presentation speech, and Mr. Van Horn was taken entirely by surprise and expressed his thanks in reply.

The can was beautifully carved and bore the following lettering, "Presented to M M Van horn by His Associate Employes and Max Meyer and Bre Company, April 30, 1895." On the cap was also engraved the initials "M. M. V."

PENSIONS

WASHINGTON, D. C., April 29. -- Nebraska: Original, Henry Lewis, Albert Watrous, Greer Hair, Alanson Palmer, increase John Wier; original widows, etc, Sarah Meeds, minors of George W Howe, minors of Reuben H. Hurd, Sarah Watts Iowa: Original, Joel E. King, David [lrotter?]: additional, T. M. Bancroft, John Rasier, increase, [Evl?] Fuller, Augustus L. Moore, J. D. Denison: reissue, William P. Peterman, Milton Grabain, original widows, etc., Charles C. Hunting (brother), Kmiline King, Mary E. Keller, Rosalia Weyer, Polly Cartwright, Amy A T. Silcott, Laura E. Ellsworth, Melvins Randall.

RESISTED ARREST.

INDIANOLA, Neb , April 29 -- A tough named McKeever was shot here today while resisting arrest by City Marshal Crabtree. McKeever got into an altercation with a man named Green over reported indecent proposals from McKeever to Green's little 13-year-old girl. Green swore out a complaint and Marshal Crabtree, armed with a warrant, attempted to arrest McKeever and was resisted McKeever was shot in the leg, causing only a painful flesh wound, but he did not resist any long after the shot.

THE CIRCUS [?]

NORFOLK, Neb , April 29 -- The Hurlburt and Leftwich combined circus, which has made this [?] winter headquarters for two years gave this season's initial performance today to a crowded tent, not withstanding the cold weather The show has been greatly enlarged since last season.

A LITTLE FIGHT.

CHEYENNE, Wyo , April 29 -- A fight occurred among sheep herders in a Fort Steel saloon this morning John Calhoun, as American, was killed by a Mexican, who was badly wounded by Calhoun before he died