The presentation of a beautiful hearse cloth "to Westminster Abbey by the Actors' Churen Union, in memory of their meuibers who fell in the war, recalls the beautiful white pall presented by the Armenian people om the occasion of Mr. Gladstone's funeral, in 1898, in honour of their great champion. White satin hearse cloths were used at the funerals of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. If every parish in the United Kingdom had suck a cloth a great step would have been taken along the path of funeral reform. Even now the appalling galaxy of horror which accompanied the funeral in Dickens' time is gradually disappearing, for which we have to thank him more than anyone else, but yet. the reform comes slowly. Fortunately in the East, where we seem to obtain a better perspective of life and death, these things have been left behind. Grief needs no livery, but, if it must have some, the wisest and best habiliments are those which speak of hope.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.