“I cannot tell you,” warmly proceeded Danford, “how shocked I have been at fashionable funerals. There was a time when women did not consider it delicate to attend such functions; it was left to the sterner sex to accompany a beloved parent, whose female relations remained at home to mourn over their loss. But women are not any more to be put aside so easily; they have invaded the smoke-room, banged open the doors of City offices; it is not likely they would remain long away from graveyard excitement. The last I was at, a few weeks before the storm, was a sight, and the pitch of levity to which it rose fairly sickened me. Had I not pinched myself, and rubbed my eyes, I could have believed myself at an At Home. The hostess, a widow, was going from one guest to another, shaking hands with the one, thanking the other for coming; the bereaved daughters skipped over tombs and newly-digged graves to have a word with this one and that one. I instinctively looked round, thinking I might see an improvised buffet in the shade of a mausoleum; I quite expected to see plates of sandwiches handed round, and to hear the jingling of spoons and cups and saucers. Upon my soul, I have no doubt that had not the storm put a stop to Society’s doings, we should have been treated this season to a churchyard tea and a funeral cake. The idea seized hold of me then, and a fit of laughter choked me, when I thought what a good termination to this gruesome farce it would be, were the lamented defunct, on whom they had dropped a shovelful of cut flowers, just to stand up and apostrophise them thus: ‘I say, do not quite forget it is all owing to me that you are having all this fun!’ For I assure you they were entirely oblivious of the poor departed in the excitement of small-talk. Of course all this is at an end practically, and funerals have been quite neglected latterly, for this very good reason that the mourners did not know each other; we are therefore saved from the sad spectacle of levity and callousness which were the distinct traits of our past Society.” “Then what is to be done, Dan?” inquired Lionel. “Well, there is nothing to be done except to be cremated unostentatiously. ‘Let the dead bury their dead’; but Society decided otherwise, for it was the living that despatched the dead, which was a most unequal job.” “I wonder what will be the ultimate result of all these reforms?” lazily said George Murray. “If you reform burials, you must also some day reform marriage; you will find a great deal of incongruity and of levity in that ceremony also; then will follow the reform of the relations between the sexes, between employers and employees, and goodness only knows what next. You will have your work cut out for you, my poor Danford; and dear Lionel’s mission will not be a sinecure if he has to patronise every scheme your Committee brings forward.”