The pall was supported by young girls dressed in white,
and another, about the age of seventeen, walked before, bearing a
chaplet of white flowers--a token that the deceased was a young
and unmarried female. The corpse was followed by the parents.
They were a venerable couple of the better order of peasantry.
The father seemed to repress his feelings, but his fixed eye,
contracted brow, and deeply-furrowed face showed the struggle
that was passing within. His wife hung on his arm, and wept aloud
with the convulsive bursts of a mother's sorrow.
I followed the funeral into the church. The bier was placed in
the centre aisle, and the chaplet of white flowers, with a pair
of white gloves, was hung over the seat which the deceased had
occupied.
Every one knows the soul-subduing pathos of the funeral service,
for who is so fortunate as never to have followed some one he has
loved to the tomb? But when performed over the remains of
innocence and beauty, thus laid low in the bloom of existence,
what can be more affecting? At that simple but most solemn
consignment of the body to the grave-"Earth to earth, ashes to
ashes, dust to dust!"--the tears of the youthful companions of
the deceased flowed unrestrained.
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