when there is any other place to go.

the history of dead persons.  The living demand all your attention.

because in many instances the wearer is glad rather than sad.

unless your services are needed.  As a rule, persons go to funerals through curiosity, and would rather attend a funeral than a wedding.

It originates from the same source as other styles of mourning–from a diseased and abnormal state of the mind.

it makes you melancholy.   You should do everything possible to forget them if you cannot think of them cheerfully.

It is very injurious to both health and morals–injurious to the health, if you are really sorry, and injurious to the morals, if, as it is, in thousands of cases, simply a fashion.  You have no right to violate nature’s laws, nurse sorrow, nor impress it upon others by wearing long faces and black robes.  Modesty alone, should prevent you from doing it–from advertising your frailties.  Stop and think a little about this relic of barbarism, and sacrilegious rite.

it is like singing psalms to a dead horse.  It is a habit that signifies nothing in particular.

thinking about the dead; they do not need your services.  If you have any sympathy to spend, spend it on the living.