To begin with, they are
immured in rooms from which, as far as possible, all light and air
are excluded. In a tropical climate, where the breeze is almost
indispensable to comfort, the reader may imagine the result. Then
all their relatives, near and far, flock to see them; they crowd the
apartment, and insist on talking to keep the patient from becoming
_triste_. When the sufferer finds this insupportable and gives up
the struggle to live, the whole clan, out to the last connection,
set about preparing their mourning.
Every woman makes a black dress, and every man ties a band of black
cloth around his white coat sleeve. When there is a wake, it is
noisy enough to be Irish. Our Eastern friends resemble the Irish
also in their love of a fine funeral. To go to the last resting-place
escorted by a band and with all possible ceremony seems to make even
death acceptable to them.
Among the very poor this ambition is quite disproportionate to their
resources. The percentage of infant mortality, owing to poor nutrition,
is especially high; yet babe after babe whose mother unwittingly
starved it to death is given a funeral in which the baby carriage
hearse is preceded by a local band, and hired mourners stalk solemnly
behind the little coffin in place of the mother, who is, in etiquette,
required to remain at home.
In Manila funerals resemble our own, save that the hearse, be it white
for a child or black for an adult, is drawn by stately caparisoned
horses, at the bridles of which stalk men in eighteenth-century court
costumes, which include huge shoe buckles, black silk stockings,
and powdered wigs.
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