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Show Why Black Was Adopted fo- Mourning. Mourn-ing. About the adoption of black for mourning, mourn-ing, a writer on historic customs remarks re-marks that it was "the color of mourning mourn-ing from the earliest times, because death itself was supposed to be muffled in black." Rabelyias explains that "black is the sign of mourning, because it is the color of darkness, which is melancholy, and. the opposite to white, which is the color of lis hi, of joy and of happiness." In France the mourning robe was formerly for-merly white, and continued so until the reign of Charles VIII. An explanation of how this change came about tells that "Anne, Queen of Charles VIII, on the death of her husband hus-band In 1498, surrounded her coat-of-arms with black and clothed herself in the same color, in opposition to the then prevalent habit, which was for widows to mourn In white attire." Why certain colors are supposed to symbolize mourning is thus explained: "White is the emblem of purity; celestial celes-tial blue indicates the space where the soul ranges after death; yellow, or dead-leaf, dead-leaf, exhibits death as the end of hopes, and man falling like the leaf in autumn; gray Is supposed to represent the color of the earth, our common mother; black the color of mourning, now general throughout Europe, indicates eternal night." The wearing of black, white, violet or any other color as symbolic of mourning mourn-ing is, of course, purely a matter of sentiment, but is a sentiment that has become engrafted into the customs of times until it has developed into an unwritten un-written but acknowledged law. Various other customs were followed' in ancient Rome that applied to the departing de-parting of a soul. One was that before the doors of a house of mourning a cypress tree was placed, to indicate to all who approached that one of the occupants oc-cupants of the house had "passed into the region of shadows." Another custom was that a herald Invited people to be present at the eel- ' ebration of any grand funeral where it was usual for public games to form ', part of the spectacle, and for the procession pro-cession to be joined by "Miml," who lauded the qualities of the departed, quoted appropriate passages from the dramatists and poets, and then, by way of contrast, acted the part of veritable clown. Funeral orations and commemorative banquets the latter held about nine . days after the death were customary In ancient Rome, the funeral repast consisting con-sisting of simple fare, and beans forming form-ing a standing dish. Flowers played their part in funeral ceremonies then as now. Pliny men- tions that flowers were strewn before the bier of Scipio Serapio, and it was no uncommon thing for a chaplet of flowers to adorn the brows of the dead; while, from superstitious reasons, coins were " sometimes put into the hands of the deceased as passage money for crossing ', the River Styx, and inside the tombs bottles filled with perfume were placed; . these being the "tea-flasks." or lachry- i matories, so often mentioned In old books. Selected. ' |