There is a reality in the honor that is rendered at a rustic funeral to a poor, good man, a touching sincerity in sympathy where every follower is a mourner.
The custom, growing in some of our cities, of private funerals, of limiting the attendants to the family and nearest friends of the deceased, is there in good taste. The parade of ceremony, the pomp of numbers, the homage of civility, and all the show and tricks of hollow conventional life, are never more out of place, never more revolting, than where death has come with its resistless power and awful truth. But a country funeral has, beside its quality of general sorrow, somewhat of the nature of the Egyptian court that sat upon the merits of the dead. The simplicity and frankness of country life has truly exhibited the character of the departed, and if judged in gentleness (as all human judgments should be rendered) it is equitably judged.
The colonel's humble home was filled to overflowing, so that there were numbers who were obliged to await the moving of the procession in the intense cold on the outside of the house; and they did wait, patiently and reverently--no slight testimony of their respect.
The coffin was placed in the centre of the largest apartment, in country phrase, the 'dwelling-room.' Within the little bedroom sat the 'mourners;' but a stranger, who should have seen the crowd as they pressed forward one after another, for a last look at their departed friend, might have believed they were all mourning a father. They were remembering a parent's offices. There was the widow, whom he had visited in her affliction; there the orphans, now grown to be thriving men and women, fathers and mothers, whom he had succored, counselled, and watched over; there were those whom he had visited in prison; there were sometime enemies converted to friends by his peace-making intervention; there was the young man reclaimed by his wise counsel and steady friendship, for the good colonel had a 'skeptic smile' for what others deemed hopeless depravity, and believed
----'some pulse of good must live Within a human nature.'
And there were children with wet eyes, for the rare old man who had always a smile for their joys, and a tear for their troubles; and one, I remember, as her mother lifted her up for the last look, whispered, 'Oh, he is too good a man to bury up in the ground!'