Such clubs are necessary to protect the poor from being ruined by a heavy expense. But why the heavy expense? When I have shuffled off this mortal coil—what does it want, except to be put reverently underground? Cannot that be done for a very small sum of money? Why is it not done on reasonable terms? Simply because the mode of doing it is not reasonable. Its performance is attended with a useless sacrifice of furniture—necessitated by the tyranny of custom—to show what is falsely termed "proper respect." Proper respect is affectionate memory—not furniture.
Should I want "proper respect" to be shown to my leg, if I had the misfortune to lose it, by having it enclosed in an ornamental box, and deposited in a subterranean apartment, with a large expenditure in wages, coach-hire, silk, and crape, and feathers extracted from the tail of a great bird? If the leg is not to be treated with such "proper respect," why is the trunk?
The rich show "proper respect" by means of ostrich feathers and such like. The poor are obliged to follow their lead as far as they can—and farther. Hence Coffin Clubs—whence infanticide.
Superior Classes, every nail that you drive to show "proper respect," is an incentive to child-murder.
Theory and Practice.
Cardinal Wiseman, in his interview with the Pope, promised his Holiness, that in a few years there would not be a single heretic in England. Of course this is only "theor-heretically speaking," but we are afraid the Cardinal will find the practice quite another thing.
The Home of the British Drama.—A French Crib.