How gladly shall we fight the fight of life, hoping that, after death, we shall meet in a world of sulphureted hydrogen and other gases! And where do the Sanitary Reformers suppose that, after death, their gases will go—they who, in life, with asphalte and paving-stones, would have restrained the souls of their own fathers from ascending into upper air?
Against us let there be no such reproach. Freely let us breathe into our bosoms some portion of the spirit of the dead. If we live near no church-yard, let us visit one—Mesmerically, if you please. Now we are on the way. We see narrow streets and many people; most of the faces that we meet are pale. Here is a walking funeral; we follow with it to the church-yard. A corner is turned, and there is another funeral to be perceived at no great distance in advance. Our walkers trot. The other party, finding itself almost overtaken, sets off with a decent run. Our party runs. There is a race for prior attention when they reach the ground. We become interested. We perceive that one undertaker wears gaiters, and the other straps. We trot behind them, betting with each other, you on Gaiters, I on Straps. I win; a Deus ex machinâ saves me, or I should have lost. An over-goaded ox rushes bewildered round a corner, charges and overthrows the foremost coffin; it is broken, and the body is exposed—its white shroud flaps upon the mud. This has occurred once, I know; and how much oftener, I know not. So Gaiters pioneers his party to the nearest undertaker for repairs, and we follow the triumphant procession to the church-yard. The minister there meets it, holding his white handkerchief most closely to his nose: the mourners imitate him, sick and sorrowful. Your toe sticks in a bit of carrion, as we pass near the grave and seek the sexton. He is a pimpled man, who moralizes much; but his morality is maudlin. He is drunk. He is accustomed to antagonize the “spirits” of the dead with spirits from the “Pig and Whistle.” Here let the séance end.
At home again, let us remark upon a striking fact. Those poor creatures whom we saw in sorrow by the grave, believed that they were sowing flesh to immortality—and so they were. They did not know that they were also sowing coffee. By a trustworthy informant, I am taught that of the old coffin-wood dug up out of the crowded church-yards, a large quantity that is not burned, is dried and ground; and that ground coffee is therewith adulterated in a wholesale manner. It communicates to cheap coffee a good color; and puts Body into it, there can be no doubt of that. It will be a severe blow to the trade in British coffees if intramural interment be forbidden. We shall be driven to depend upon distant planters for what now can be produced in any quantity at home.
Remember the largeness of the interests involved. Within the last thirty years, a million and a half of corpses have been hidden under ground, in patches, here and there, among the streets of London. This pasturage we have enjoyed from our youth up, and it is threatened now to put us off our feed.
I say no more, for better arguments than these can not be urged on behalf of the maintenance of City grave-yards. Possibly these may not prevail. Yet never droop. Nevertheless, without despairing, take a house in the vicinity of such a garden of the dead. If our lawgivers should fear the becoming neighborly with Dante's Cordelier, and therefore absolutely interdict more burials in London, still you are safe. They shall not trample on the graves that are. We can agitate, and we will agitate successfully against their asphalte. Let the City be mindful of its old renown; let Vestries rally round Sir Peter Laurie, and there may be yet secured to you, for seven years to come, an atmosphere which shall assist in making Home Unhealthy.
III. Spending A Very Pleasant Evening.
By the consent of antiquity, it is determined that Pain shall be doorkeeper to the house of Pleasure. In Europe Purgatory led to Paradise; and, had St. Symeon lived among us now, he would have earned heaven, if the police permitted, by praying for it, during thirty years, upon the summit of a lamp-post. In India the Fakir was beatified by standing on his head, under a hot sun, beset with roasting bonfires. In Greenland the soul expected to reach bliss by sliding for five days down a rugged rock, wounding itself, and shivering with cold. The American Indians sought happiness through castigation, and considered vomits the most expeditious mode of enforcing self-denial on the stomach. Some tribes of Africans believe, that on the way to heaven every man's head is knocked against a wall. By consent of mankind, therefore, it is granted that we must pass Pain on the way to Pleasure.
What Pleasure is, when reached, none but the dogmatical can venture to determine. To Greenlanders, a spacious fish-kettle, forever simmering, in which boiled seals forever swim, is the delight of heaven. And remember that, in the opinion of M. Bailly, Adam and Eve gardened in Nova Zembla.
You will not be surprised, therefore, if I call upon you to prepare for your domestic pleasures with a little suffering; nor, when I tell you what such pleasures are, must you exclaim against them as absurd. Having the sanction of our forefathers, they are what is fashionable now, and consequently they are what is fit.
I propose, then, that you should give, for the entertainment of your friends, an Evening Party; and as this is a scene in which young ladies prominently figure, I will, if you please, on this occasion, pay particular attention to your daughter.