Accordingly, every respectable deceased must be buried in a casket--a pretty casket of the most approved shape, and the costlier the material, the better. The nails must be silver-headed to be _au fait_, and the handles classic in design and silver beyond suspicion. The inside must correspond with the outside, and, after the late deceased is laid out, it is then eminently proper to smother him or her with flowers, crosses, wreaths, anchors and other emblematic designs. The climax will be capped if the deceased is clad in the latest style of the _beau monde_, and carries with him or her into the long sleep, the exact cut or style of garment in which death overtook him or her. I am not inveighing against respect to the dead. I believe that nothing is so appropriate for a dead child as flowers, nothing so typical of beauty and purity, nothing which so becomes the young life, frail as the flowers themselves. I only object to the frivolous, foolish, indecorous displays which fashion compels the survivors to make. If a man has lived through life like a gentleman, let him be buried like a gentleman, without fashion's tricking-out. I submit that when a man or woman has got through with life, he or she has got through with fashion, and that it is the height of folly for friends of the family to allow officious tradesmen the opportunity of displaying their fashionable wares, on an occasion when simplicity and solemnity are most befitting. Which brings me to another point in considering whether a live man has any rights a dead man is bound to respect. And that point is--Mourning. On general principles, I claim that we have no right to advertise our griefs to the world by mourning apparel. Of all griefs, those of death should be the most delicate, the most personal. If we must do it at all, I think the Chinese custom of wearing white is the most sensible. Why must we go in sables and obtrude our crape into the blessed light of the sun, and our black sorrow into the eyes of the world, when all is light where our friend has gone? But this custom could be endured if fashion had not seized it. Fashion regulates our sorrow, measures our grief, and bounds our mourning within prescribed limits. Heartfelt grief goes in deep black. Good average grief in half black. Mitigated grief contents itself in a black-bordered handkerchief, and advertises itself to correspondents in a black-bordered envelope. Hopeful grief will get along with a jet pin, and for just the smallest amount of grief in the world, a dark figure in the dress, and a week's abstinence from the opera will do; while for the tribe of relatives whom you never saw and never wanted to see, any milliner or tailor can regulate your grief with a yardstick or hat-body. If I were a blessed, viewless spirit, and found a friend of mine indulging in mitigated grief for me with handkerchief edging, I would indulge in spiritual manifestations which would put the Fox sisters to their trumps.