=HOUSE RESTORED TO ORDER=

While the funeral cortege is still at the cemetery, some one who is in charge at home must see that the mourning emblem is taken off the bell, that the windows are opened, the house aired from the excessive odor of flowers, and the blinds pulled up.  Any furniture that has been displaced should be put back where it belongs, and unless the day is too hot a fire should be lighted in the library or principal bedroom to make a little more cheerful the sad home-coming of the family.  It is also well to prepare a little hot tea or broth, and it should be brought them upon their return without their being asked if they would care for it.  Those who are in great distress want no food, but if it is handed to them, they will mechanically take it, and something warm to start digestion and stimulate impaired circulation is what they most need.

=MOURNING=

A generation or two ago the regulations for mourning were definitely prescribed, definite periods according to the precise degree of relationship of the mourner.  One’s real feelings, whether of grief or comparative indifference, had nothing to do with the outward manifestation one was obliged, in decency, to show.  The tendency to-day is toward sincerity.  People do not put on black for aunts, uncles and cousins unless there is a deep tie of affection as well as of blood.

Many persons to-day do not believe in going into mourning at all.  There are some who believe, as do the races of the East, that great love should be expressed in rejoicing in the re-birth of a beloved spirit instead of selfishly mourning their own earthly loss.  But many who object to manifestations of grief, find themselves impelled to wear mourning when their sorrow comes and the number of those who do not put on black is still comparatively small.

=PROTECTION OF MOURNING=

If you see acquaintances of yours in deepest mourning, it does not occur to you to go up to them and babble trivial topics or ask them to a dance or dinner.  If you pass close to them, irresistible sympathy compels you merely to stop and press their hand and pass on.  A widow, or mother, in the newness of her long veil, has her hard path made as little difficult as possible by everyone with whom she comes in contact, no matter on what errand she may be bent.  A clerk in a store will try to wait on her as quickly and as attentively as possible.  Acquaintances avoid stopping her with long conversation that could not but torture and distress her.  She meets small kindnesses at every turn, which save unnecessary jars to supersensitive nerves.

Once in a great while, a tactless person may have no better sense than to ask her abruptly for whom she is in mourning!  Such people would not hesitate to walk over the graves in a cemetery!  And fortunately, such encounters are few.

Since many people, however, dislike long mourning veils and all crepe generally, it is absolutely correct to omit both if preferred, and to wear an untrimmed coat and hat of plainest black with or without a veil.