BRIGHTER FUNERALS

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 166, 10 April 1926, Page 22

BRIGHTER FUNERALS

Hating the thought of . travelling by underground to his after-life destination and convinced that at the age of <2 he has lived at least two years too long, Mr. Alexander M. Carlisle has taken out his cremation certificate, and a “Dailv News” man found this aged Irish ’friend of the ex-Kaiser quite willing to discuss his funeral arrangements. “Why should old men and old women be afraid of death ? Why should mourners wear black ? Why must the ‘Dead March’ in ‘Saul’ be played?” asked Mr. Carlisle. . "And,” he asked with the air of a man playing a trump card, “why shouldn't I have my certificate framed?”

A sudden chill contracted while on a recent visit to the ex-Kaiser at Doorn hastened his intention of “seeing to bis funeral.” Accordingly he went to the Golders Green crematorium, and, said Mr. Carlisle, with many a chuckle, “for £2 16s. Bd. the thing was done.” This sum covers "use of chapel and chaplain’s fee for reading burial service; organ and dispersal of ashes in the Garden of Rest—cheap, itu’t it?” The organist will play the waltz from the “Merry Widow” after the ceremony—in fact, everything seems to be fixed but the actual date I Mr Carlisle himself has no fixed Ideas about this.