and the division, marshalled in line, for _once_ at least see
_through_ the whole affair. They then march over it in solemn
procession, and are enabled, as they step firmly on its covers, to
assert with truth that they have gone over it,--poor jokes indeed,
but sufficient to afford abundant laughter. And then follow
speeches, comical and pathetic, and shouting and merriment. The
night assigned having arrived, how carefully they assemble, all
silent, at the place appointed. Laid on its bier, covered with
sable pall, and borne in solemn state, the corpse (i.e. the book)
is carried with slow procession, with the moaning music of flutes
and fifes, the screaming of fiddles, and the thumping and mumbling
of a cracked drum, to the open grave or the funeral pyre. A
gleaming line of blazing torches and twinkling lanterns wave along
the quiet streets and through the opened fields, and the snow
creaks hoarsely under the tread of a hundred men. They reach the
scene, and a circle forms around the consecrated spot; if the
ceremony is a burial, the defunct is laid all carefully in his
grave, and then his friends celebrate in prose or verse his
memory, his virtues, and his untimely end: and three oboli are
tossed into his tomb to satisfy the surly boatman of the Styx.
Lingeringly is the last look taken of the familiar countenance, as
the procession passes slowly around the tomb; and the moaning is
made,--a sound of groans going up to the seventh heavens,--and the
earth is thrown in, and the headstone with epitaph placed duly to
hallow the grave of the dead. Or if, according to the custom of
his native land, the body of Euclid is committed to the funeral
flames, the pyre, duly prepared with combustibles, is made the
centre of the ring; a ponderous jar of turpentine or whiskey is
the fragrant incense, and as the lighted fire mounts up in the
still night, and the alarm in the city sounds dim in the distance,