and the insignificance of the deceased might only be likened to the secondary position of a man at his own wedding.  It was all fuss and mortuary feathers, mourning rings and mulled wine in the one case, just as in the other it is entirely a show of bride and blushes, flounces and femininity. [Footnote A:  In writing of the customs connected with old-time English funerals, Misson says:  “The relations and chief mourners are in a chamber apart, with their more intimate friends; and the rest of the guests are dispersed in several rooms about the house.  When they are ready to set out, they nail up the coffin, and a servant presents the company with sprigs of rosemary:  Every one takes a sprig and carries it in his hand till the body is put into the grave, at which time they all throw their sprigs in after it.  Before they set out, and after they return, it is usual to present the guests with something to drink, either red or white wine, boil’d with sugar and cinnamon, or some such liquor.  Butler, the keeper of a tavern, told me there was a tun of red port drank at his wife’s burial, besides mull’d white wine.  Note, no men ever go to women’s burials, nor the women to the men’s; so that there were none but women at the drinking of Butler’s wine.  Such women in England will hold it out with the men, when they have a bottle before them, as well as upon t’other occasion, and tattle infinitely better than they.”]

[Footnote B:  The will of Benjamin Dod, a Roman Catholic citizen of London (died 1714) runs in part as follows:  “I desire four and twenty persons to be at my burial ... to every of which four and twenty persons ...  I give a pair of white gloves, a ring of ten shillings value, a bottle of wine at my funeral, and half a crown to be spent at their return that night; to drink my soul’s health, then on her Journey for Purification in order to Eternal Rest.  I appoint the room, where my corpse shall lie, to be hung with black, and four and twenty wax candles to be burning; on my coffin to be affixed a cross and this inscription, Jesus Hominum Salvator.  I also appoint my corpse to be carried in a herse drawn with six white horses, with white feathers, and followed by six coaches, with six horses to each coach, to carry the four and twenty persons....  Item, I give to forty of my particular acquaintance, not at my funeral, to every one of them a gold ring of ten shillings value....  As for mourning, I leave that to my executors hereafter nam’d; and I do not desire them to give any to whom I shall leave a legacy....  I will have no Presbyterian, Moderate Low Churchmen, or Occasional Conformists, to be at or have anything to do with my funeral.  I die in the Faith of the True Catholic Church.  I desire to have a tomb stone over me, with a Latin inscription, and a lamp, or six wax candles, to burn seven days and nights thereon.”—­Vide ASHTON.]