No instance that I have narrated of the business-like manner in which Canadians treat death, is more ridiculously striking than the following:--
The wife of a rich mechanic had a brother lying, it was supposed, at the point of death. His sister sent a note to me, requesting me to relinquish an engagement I had made with a sewing girl in her favour, as she wanted her immediately to make up her mourning, the doctor having told her that her brother could not live many days.
"Mrs. --- is going to be beforehand with death," I said, as I gave the girl the desired release. "I have known instances of persons being too late with their mourning to attend a funeral, but this is the first time I ever heard of it being made in anticipation."
After a week the girl returned to her former employment.
"Well, Anne, is Mr. --- dead?"
"No, ma'am, nor likely to die this time; and his sister is so vexed that she bought such expensive mourning, and all for no purpose!"
The brother of this provident lady is alive to this day, the husband of a very pretty wife, and the father of a family, while she, poor body, has been consigned to the grave for more than three years.
During her own dying illness, a little girl greatly disturbed her sick mother with the noise she made. Her husband, as an inducement to keep the child quiet, said, "Mary, if you do not quit that, I'll whip you; but if you keep still like a good girl, you shall go to ma's funeral."
An artist cousin of mine was invited, with many other members of the Royal Academy, to attend the funeral of the celebrated Nollekens the sculptor. The party filled twelve mourning coaches, and were furnished with silk gloves, scarfs, and hatbands, and a dinner was provided after the funeral was over at one of the large hotels. "A merrier set than we were on that day," said my cousin, "I never saw. We all got jovial, and it was midnight before any of us reached our respective homes. The whole affair vividly brought to my mind that description of the 'Gondola,' given so graphically by Byron, that it
'Contain'd much fun,