Baltimore Evening Sun (5 July 1911): 6.

Safe and sane? To be sure! But while the cops were down town, guarding the route of the parade, West Baltimore and East Baltimore were bombarded furiously. Not for half a dozen years had there been more noise.

A glance at that excellent journal, the Southern Undertaker, shows that in the business of burying the dead, as in other human enterprises, progress is being made daily. On the one hand, it appears that Prof. Howard V. Eckels, of Philadelphia, is now issuing a challenge to the ancient Egyptians to meet him in an embalming contest, and on the other hand it appears that a hobble-skirt effect is now to be had in shrouds.

During the recent convention of the Missouri Funeral Directors’ Association a number of attractive hobble-shrouds were exhibited to the members. The modern woman, says the Southern Undertaker, “may now be buried in the finest of frocks without depleting a wardrobe, which may go to an appreciative friend.” And the decedent of the male sex may go to his last rest in an elegant frock coat, or in what the dancing masters call a full-dress evening dress suit, “even if the poor soul never owned but one scraggled (Missouri for baggy) suit of tweeds” during his sojourn in this lachrymose vale.

Meanwhile, despite all these refinements, the cost of a funeral goes down, down, down. Time was when it bankrupted the estate; now it “doesn’t anywhere near approach a wedding” or other such shin-dig. Says the able Journal aforesaid:

At a funeral you settle in a lump with one man—the undertaker. At a reception you pay the livery man for the carriages for the women who assist, the furniture man for the extra chairs, the employment agency for the extra help, and so on. In nine cases out of ten people never know how much such a reception did cost.

In funeral science, an opposed to funeral art, the latter-day practitioner looks down upon his predecessors from a lofty peak in Darien. Says the Southern Undertaker,

Vanity is part of the trade of the undertaker. * * * He can give the ancient Egyptians cards and spades when it comes to the preservation of the human body. “Pickled” is the way he derisively refers to the processes of the builders of the pyramids.

But, despite this new and unrivaled virtuosity, a great many Americans, it appears, still go to their graves unattended by the embalmer. In the South, in particular, embalming remains rather a novelty and curiosity to the great masses of the common people. Prof. Charles O. Dhonau, in the course of an extremely interesting and sagacious article in the Southern Undertaker, advises his brethren of the South to set up an educational propaganda. “If the people,” he says, “are unable to pay for having the work done, do it anyway.” In the long run, he points out, this course will pay for itself, for “wealthy relatives of the afflicted family” will give the progressive practitioner “the benefit of any future business they have in his line.” Besides, it is very likely that “some disinterested person will hear of the case,” and so the innovator “will have an inside track in getting his business when the time comes.”

Professor Dhonau argues that the dead-heading of a departed citizen now and then will cost much less than the resultant advertising is worth. To embalm a body in an efficient manner, he says, costs “not over $1.50”—which admits a sidelight, by the way, upon the profits of undertakers. But the expenditure of that small sum, at discreet intervals, will increase “your annual business at least 10 per cent.” The thing for Southern undertakers to do, he concludes, is to “talk embalming at an times.” Many gentlemen of the craft are doing so already “for all it is worth,” and their cash books show that it is worth a good deal.

But to leave depressing commercial details and return to funeral styles. A number of reforms, it appears, are now under way. For example, the undertakers of several States have begun a war upon the old-fashioned door crape, their notion being that it is unsightly and silly. Some of them propose that, in place of it, a bunch of flowers be fastened to the front door; others advocate an entire abandonment of external symbols of bereavement. No doubt the progress of civilization is in the latter direction. The wearing of mourning to now confined to immediate relatives and funerals are no longer the agonizing orgies they used to be.

Another thing against which the undertakers protest is the custom—still prevalent, it would seem, in the South and West—of taking a last look at the departed at the conclusion of the church service. This custom, they point out justly, aggravates the distress at the family and impedes the work of the undertaker, without having any compensating advantages. Once closed, they say, a coffin should remain closed. They also protest, and for like reasons, against long funeral sermons. Fifteen minutes, they say, is long enough to do justice to the dead. After that appreciation tends to become excessive and maudlin.

Unluckily enough, the progressive undertaker is often opposed by hunkerous relatives and sometimes even by the departed. One contributor to the Southern Undertaker, for example, tells how his plan to bury a prospective client in “clothes fit for a gentlemen” was knocked out by the wish of that client, expressed shortly before death, to be swathed in a common bed sheet. To proceed:

I misunderstood him at first. I thought he meant an ordinary white shroud. I took it that he was simply a little old-fashioned and wished to revert to a primitive custom. But he quickly corrected that impression.

“I don’t mean anything of the kind,” he said. “I want to be buried in a sheet—a plain, everyday white sheet.”

For once my curiosity got the better of my good manners.

“I will do as you, ask, of course,” I said, “but will you kindly tell me why you want to be dressed to that peculiar style?”

The old fellow’s answer fairly staggered me.

“Because,” he said, “I am going to do a good deal of haunting when I’m through with the flesh. I’m going to take the sheet along with me, so there’ll be no delay in getting down to business. Lots of people have been playing me mean tricks all their lives. I have never been able to get half at them in their present state, but just wait till I get clear of these fetters! If I don’t haunt them good and hard and make them wish they’d done the square thing by me it won’t be my fault!”

The teller of this tale goes no further with it. Did the plan work? Alas, we shall never know!

H. L. Mencken