The employment of an undertaker is in no sense obligatory in England, and an amateur funeral, needless to say, is just as legal as a funeral carried out by Peter Robinson or Maple and Co.![9] There is also no reason why the persons who die in a certain district should be buried or cremated in that district. The law does not interfere with sentimental preference. In England, the voluntary choice of burial place,--means, method, etc.,--is legally sanctioned. To a material mind, however, it is absolutely incredible how the people themselves at this advanced epoch continue to employ the ludicrous top-hatted, woebegone scarecrows, whose only function is to carry a piece of furniture to a wagon, also equally grotesque in its appearance, and a little later on to discharge the burden at a graveyard, a railway station or a crematorium! The day of undertakers’ “mourners,” desperate-looking hearse-drivers, and other _bizarre_ mockeries connected with funerals, should be ended by the force of common sense. The system continues through habit, through a certain repulsion which many people have for giving practical thought to death and its circumstances.[10] FOOTNOTES [6] See Appendix B. [7] Mr. Chester’s italics. [8] “The Isle of Wight Coroner to-day decided that an inquest was unnecessary on Sir Alfred Lyall, who died suddenly at Lord Tennyson’s yesterday. Sir Alfred’s medical attendant has certified that he was suffering from angina pectoris. The funeral will take place at Harbledown, near Canterbury.” From the foregoing paragraph in _The Pall Mall Gazette_, April 11, 1911, it will be seen that the discretion allowed the coroner has been well employed. Though Sir Alfred Lyall fell down dead in his room, there was obviously no cause for an inquest.