Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1888 — Borrowing for Funerals. [ARTICLE]

Borrowing for Funerals.

Philadelphia Record. A Philadelphia undertaker declares that a women who will not. even borrow money from a willing friend will borrow funeral halbiliments and the belongings at a funeral when there is a death in the family. “Itr is astonishing,” said this shrewd observer, who has had long experience in managing funerals, “to what an extent the borrowing business is carried on upon such occasions. It is a little worse in the rural districts generally, and specially prevalent in New Jersey, where any thing from a silk dress to a pair of gloves is sought frem the near and generally obliging neighbor. Some of this is absolutely necessary and excusable, but in some places it has grown to be a custom, and is expected. It is not only the family of the deceased who indulge in this queer habit. The death of a friend is a good excuse forthe asking of a loan of a neighbor’s new high silk hat, or his best black suit, or his wife’s silk dress or almost any thing that is useful at a funeral. One dislikes' to say no upon such an occasion, and the lender can only grin and bear it if the hat shall come home with all its slickness gone and a dent in it, or the new Prince Al bertcoathasa rent in thetail. It would astonish some oeople to know how much of a national custom it has become to borrow from one’s neighbor when there is a funeral in the neighbor-hood.”