The Library Remembers When...

 

April 21, 2021



From the Ipswich Tribune

February 23, 1928 edition

DEATH IN THE CITY

I saw a pathetic sight a few days ago. A hearse was followed by one small Ford in which sat a man driving and three small children, crying piteously.

Through the crowded streets, the small cortege wended its way. Cars of all descriptions whizzed by it, filled with laughing, happy, troubled or care warn men and women, and few of them even glimpsed the tragedy of the hearse and its followers.

A father and three small children going to bury the mother and going alone.

Such a thing could never happen in the country. There, no matter how poor or lowly you may be, some kindly souls will always follow you to the grave and some tender hearts will weep with those who love you.

Those small town folks may be prying and curious and ignorant, but when trouble comes they are always ready to help. Perhaps they are what we like to call small souled individuals but then what does that matter so long as they have big hearts?

The city is a fine place for living but a lonesome place to die. For we are all so hurried with pursuing our pet ambitions, so intent on keeping pace, so engrossed with our trivial occupations that we have no time to stop when death passes.

And so, we rush our dead off swiftly to the cemeteries and lay them away as quickly as possible. We send our floral offerings to the undertaking parlors and let it go at that. We say it with flowers in the city; in the country they say it with tears.

And it is not that we have harder hearts. It is only that we have grown so used to rubbing shoulders so often with tragedy that we ignore it. Death is our neighbor so often that we have learned to turn our eyes away.

And gradually we have allowed the undertaker to do for our dead what friends once did.

As I looked at that broken man and those sobbing children. I wished that this mother might have been privileged to die in the little town where I was born.

— St. Paul Daily News

 

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