As soon as a death occurs in a family a servant or friend is immediately sent round to announce the sad event to all the nearest relatives of the deceased, and the omission of this formality is looked upon as a great slight, and a legitimate cause of offence. If any person enter a house where a corpse is lying it is considered a mark of great disrespect not to offer a sight of it, and it is thought equally disrespectful on the part of the visitor if the offer is declined, as the refusal is supposed to bring ill-luck on the house. When the day is fixed for the funeral a messenger is sent to invite the friends and relatives to attend, and in times gone by if those to be invited resided at any distance it was considered proper that this messenger should be mounted on a black horse. Formerly the funeral feast was universal, of late years it is seldom heard of except in some of the old country families of the middle classes, among whom ancient customs generally abide longer than among the classes immediately above or below them. The lid of the coffin is not screwed down until all the guests are assembled, and the person whose business it is to see to it, comes into the room where they are met, and invites them to take a last look. Hearses are almost unknown, even in cases where the distance from the house to the cemetery is considerable. The coffin is almost invariably borne on the shoulders by hired bearers, but in former days it was only persons of a certain standing in society who were considered entitled to this honour; the poor were carried by their friends, three on each side, bearing the coffin slung between them. Care was always taken that the corpse was carried to the church by the way the deceased was in the habit of taking during his lifetime.[47]