The Duties of the Next Friend.—­The actual duties devolving upon the person representing the family include ascertaining their wishes as regards the officiating clergyman and his notification of their desire and the hour of the funeral; for music, if any is desired; the selection of a casket, and determining the number of carriages to be ordered.  A written list of relatives and friends who will go to the cemetery, arranged in order of their relationship, four in a carriage, is given the undertaker for his guidance in assigning those present to their places.  The friend of the family will accompany the undertaker to the cemetery if a lot must be purchased, or he may go alone, the undertaker receiving his instructions from the cemetery authorities.  If any special position is desired for the new grave, this will be definitely stated.  With this knowledge, an undertaker will conduct a burial so quietly and decorously that as a bereaved wife once remarked, it was “a real comfort to have John buried.”  She did not quite mean what she implied, however.

Where means suffice, a black cloth-covered casket with silver mountings is chosen.  If the interment is in a vault, a metallic casket is obligatory.  The child’s casket is white; that for a young person is white or pearl-gray.

It is no longer necessary to call on friends and neighbors to bear the dead to their last resting-place, though it may be done.  Honorary pall-bearers are chosen among the associates of the dead in case he is a prominent personage; the active may be relatives, or undertaker’s assistants.  A child is sometimes borne by his or her little school friends, though it seems a pity to call on children for such offices.

The House Funeral.—­At the house funeral the family remains upstairs, or is seated in the room with the casket, the former more customary.  The clergyman stands at the head of the casket, or in the doorway, that his voice may be heard.  At the conclusion of the service, those not going to the cemetery quietly disperse; the carriages drive up; the undertaker in a low voice assigns the relatives to them in proper order, and the cortege moves off.  At the grave, the remainder of the solemn service is read, the casket lowered, and all is over.

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That dreadful custom known as “viewing the remains,” by which those present file past the casket for a last look at the dead, is obsolete.  The bereaved take their farewell before any arrivals; those who desire to behold the face of the dead do so as they enter, then are seated in another room.  Sometimes the casket is closed before the funeral.

Church Funerals.—­The church funeral is more dignified, perhaps, but much less common than a few years ago.  Good taste counsels that our leaving, like our arrival in this world, be a purely family affair.  Those who attend a church funeral are in their seats when the cortege arrives.  The organ is softly played as the casket is borne up the aisle, the clergyman preceding it; its rests before the chancel, the clergyman reads the burial service from the step, the mourners, who have followed the casket, being seated in the front pews.  The procession retires in the same order, the congregation dispersing afterwards.