Very likely I am in error; but it has seemed to me that even the
funerals here are not so gloomy as in other places. I have looked in
at the churches when they are in progress, now and then, and been
struck with the general good feeling of the occasion. The real
mourners I could not always distinguish; but the seats would be
filled with a motley gathering of the idle and the ragged, who seemed
to enjoy the show and the ceremony. On one occasion, it was the
obsequies of an officer in the army. Guarding the gilded casket,
which stood upon a raised platform before the altar, were four
soldiers in uniform. Mass was being said and sung; and a priest was
playing the organ. The church was light and cheerful, and pervaded.
by a pleasant bustle. Ragged boys and beggars, and dirty children
and dogs, went and came wherever they chose--about the unoccupied
spaces of the church. The hired mourners, who are numerous in
proportion to the rank of the deceased, were clad in white cotton,--a
sort of nightgown put on over the ordinary clothes, with a hood of
the same drawn tightly over the face, in which slits were cut for the
eyes and mouth. Some of them were seated on benches near the front;
others were wandering about among the pillars, disappearing in the
sacristy, and reappearing with an aimless aspect, altogether
conducting themselves as if it were a holiday, and if there was
anything they did enjoy, it was mourning at other people's expense.
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