The "ceremony" took place, as such ceremonies do, under the discreet cover of darkness. George Fentiman, who in Robert's absence, attended to represent the family was nervous and depressed. It is trying enough to go to the funeral of one's friends and relations, amid the grotesque pomps of glass hearses and black horses, and wreaths, and appropriate hymns "beautifully" rendered by well-paid choristers, but, as George irritably remarked, the people who grumble over funerals don't realize their luck. However depressing the thud of earth on the coffin-lid may be, it is music compared to the rattle of gravel and thump of spades which herald a pre-mature and unreverend resurrection, enveloped in clouds of formalin and without benefit of clergy.
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
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