Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1882 — Mourning Weeds No Longer Fashionable. [ARTICLE]

Mourning Weeds No Longer Fashionable.

Mourning is going out of fashion in England. A widow’s is the only bereavement that must, according to the canons of society, be symbolized by yards of crape and paramatta. All other degrees of grief for the departed can, it seems, be simply expressed by a band of black crape worn around the sleeve. This state of .things is, doubtless, a reaction from the too apparent luxury of woe.prevalent until recently, but it has its disadvantages. Once on a time we were protected from the disagreeable risk of inquiring after the health of persons who are no mote by the inky blackness of attire of their surviving relatives. It is not pleasant to remark casually and cheerfully to a young lady: “And your father; is he all right?” and to be morally bowled over by the reply: “He is dead,” accompanied by a reproachful glance at the strip of black which you have never noticed upon her arm. Surely some compromise can be made between the heavy black that was once considered necessary and the scrap of crape that is now thought sufficient. Social pitfalls of a distressing kind ought to be guarded against, and women are ingenious enough to devise some means of advertising bereavement which shall be patent to all, and yet compatible with a becoming variety of costume and colors.— London Truth.