The Etiquette of To-day

by Edith B. Ordway

Press notices of the funeral and death should be sent to the newspapers. The conduct of the funeral should be arranged with the clergyman chosen to officiate, the superintendent of the cemetery consulted (usually through the undertaker), and the notes of request sent to those chosen to act as pallbearers. Sometimes the latter are purely honorary, the undertaker furnishing the bearers. The honor is usually given to intimate family friends, or close business associates in case of a business man.

A carriage is always provided for the clergyman, and he is entitled to a fee, although clergymen do not charge it, either at a home or church funeral. If the service is held at a church, the sexton, organist and singers,—and the singers at a home funeral as well,—are entitled to recompense for their services.

Carriages are sent for the pallbearers, and are also provided to convey the family, and as many of the friends as may be invited to go, to the cemetery.

One may announce in the newspaper "Burial private," in which case it is understood that only the family attend at the grave; or "No flowers" if the family wish the usual sending of flowers dispensed with.

The clergyman usually consults the wishes of the family as to the form of service, the hymns or music, and remarks. The funeral service should be brief, and preferably a ritual service with no sermon or eulogy. The last are usually harrowing to the feelings of the mourners, and there should be every reasonable effort made to relieve the tension of the occasion, for the sake of the living.

At a church funeral the pallbearers sit in the first pews at the left of the center aisle; the family in those to the right. At a home funeral it is customary to have the family in some secluded room near the one where the coffin is placed and to have the clergyman stand in the hall between, or at the entrance of the drawing-room, where he may be readily heard by all.

If the service at the grave immediately follows the funeral the house should meanwhile be aired, the shades lifted, the flowers all sent away to some hospital, and the rooms arranged in the usual way.

Before a funeral at the home, it is necessary for some member of the family to receive the relatives from the distance, and the very intimate friends, and see that they are given necessary refreshment, and their return to trains, if they must leave immediately after the funeral, thoroughly understood by the hackmen.

At a home funeral the singers should be somewhat distant from the family, so that the music is not loud.

The members of the family are dressed in hats and veils ready to enter the carriages, before the service. They pass to view the body,—if, according to a former custom, the casket is left open,—last of all, and enter the last carriage before that of the pallbearers, which immediately precedes the hearse.