Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 December 1890 — Sad, Solemn Men. [ARTICLE]

Sad, Solemn Men.

The gentlemen who provide humanity with its last lodging require no cards to designate their calling or to indicate what they are ready to undertake for their defunct fellow-beings. It is written on their faces, in their deportment, on their habiliments—all over them. They are their own cards, as a w riter expresses it. If one were to meet an undertaker under the shadow of the pyramids or at Spitzbergen there could be no difficulty in recognizing him as a member of the funeral profession. Undertakers, as a rule, are moral, estimable men, but they certainly do differ in aspect and manners from the mass of mankind. There is an indescribable air about them, which, for lack of a better word, we must call posthumous. Constant intercourse with the bereaved makes their voices mournful; for your undertaker ever assimilates his tones to those of his afflicted customers, and he thereby ac quires a habit of talking as if he had lost all his friends. In like manner the “ ’havior of his visage” becomes w r oe-begone past all remedy. His very smiles are .only deadly-lively. Then there is a severe plainness about the cut of his black suit which, to say nothing of its melancholy hue, is a rebuke to worldly vanity and a solemn hint that fashion and frivolity are of small account when his duties are to be performed. Nevertheless, the craf*. is a highly respectable one. and we have not a word to say against it. ,