Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 February 1880 — Mourning in America. [ARTICLE]

Mourning in America.

Visitors to this country are greaily surprised at the long period during which people wear mourning and remain in seclusion. The custom must be purely American, for it docs not obtain elsewhere. In England, a widow or widower may, with perfect propriety, divest herself or himself of mourning attire at the end of twelve months, although, in mo3t case 3, they retain it in some degree a while longer. Mourning is worn for parent s for one year, but changed to lighter mourning after six months, and the same as regards the mourning of parents for children. Except in the case of widows and widowers, it is not deemed at ail obligatory to abstain from sociely for more than six months, although in the case of parents who have lost children it would be unusual to go to large enter! ainments before the expiration of ayt ar. Where a parent has died well stricken in years, and quite in ordin try course of nature, it would excite no remark were the children to go to quiet dinner parties

after three months. A two-years’ mourning and seclusion would, in such cases, be deemed affectation. Mourning is here carried to such lengths that some people really pass a large part of their lives in weeping and seclusion, the death of a father, mother, and sister or brother making an aggregate of five years. It is a question whether we are not carrying the thing too far. Life was surely not made to be spent in permanent seclusion on account of bereavement, more especially for those who, in the ordinary course of nature, must predecease us. Thousands of persons would gladly cut short their mourning but for tyranny of fashion, which arbitrarily rules in this as in so much beside.— New York paper.