POST-MORTEM POETRY [1]


In Philadelphia they have a custom which it would be pleasant
to see adopted throughout the land. It is that of appending to
published death-notices a little verse or two of comforting poetry.
Any one who is in the habit of reading the daily Philadelphia
LEDGER must frequently be touched by these plaintive tributes
to extinguished worth. In Philadelphia, the departure of a child
is a circumstance which is not more surely followed by a burial
than by the accustomed solacing poesy in the PUBLIC LEDGER.
In that city death loses half its terror because the knowledge
of its presence comes thus disguised in the sweet drapery of verse.
For instance, in a late LEDGER I find the following (I change
the surname):


DIED


Hawks.--On the 17th inst., Clara, the daughter of Ephraim
and Laura Hawks, aged 21 months and 2 days.


That merry shout no more I hear,