Our respect for the dead, when they are _just_ dead, is something
wonderful, and the way we show it more wonderful still. We show it with
black feathers and black horses; we show it with black dresses and black
heraldries; we show it with costly obelisks and sculptures of sorrow,
which spoil half of our beautiful cathedrals. We show it with frightful
gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the quiet
grass; and last, and not least, we show it by permitting ourselves to
tell any number of falsehoods we think amiable or credible in the
epitaph.--_Ruskin._