weddings and at parties, Brown makes out the list of persons to be
invited. He allows no interference. He knows his invitations will be
accepted, and as he knows who is in town, both stranger and resident,
he can always make out a full list. He directs every thing, and carries
his arrangements out with the decision and authority of an autocrat.
The Lenten Season is his bugbear. It is fashionable to observe Lent in
New York, and funerals are then the only opportunities for the display
of his peculiar talents. These he makes as interesting as possible. He
charges a liberal price for his services, and is said to have amassed
considerable money.


FASHIONABLE DEATH.

As it is the ambition of every one to live fashionable, it is their
chief wish to be laid in the grave in the same style. Undertakers at
fashionable funerals are generally the sexton of some fashionable
church, that, perhaps, of the church the deceased was in the habit of
attending. This individual prescribes the manner in which the ceremony
shall be carried out, and advises certain styles of family mourning.
Sometimes the blinds are closed and the gas lighted. The lights in such
cases are arranged in the most artistic manner, and every thing is made
to look as "interesting" as possible.

A certain fashionable sexton always refuses to allow the female members
of the family to follow their dead to the grave. He will not let them
be seen at the funeral at all, as he says "it's horridly vulgar to see
a lot of women crying about a corpse; and, besides, they're always in
the way."