Two funerals of international interest have recently occurred. Queen Victoria of England and ex-president [Benjamin] Harrison of the United States furnished the subjects, and their subjects furnished the funerals. The pomp and panegyric of these occasions dominated for days the columns of nearly every newspaper in Christendom. The amount of sham and hypocrisy that characterizes the burial of a modern ruler, no matter how useless, corrupt, or cruel, seems incredible to a sane person. The dead are always great as gods and immaculate as virgins. The press gushes with all its reserve force and a mighty flood of fulsome flatulency inundates the country. Thousands vie with each other to honor (?) the dead, and all the adjectives are strained to give éclat to the grave occasion.

Queen Victoria lived and preyed upon her subjects as long as she could. She did not surrender the scepter until death wrung it from her nerveless grasp. All her long life she had been a parasite. She held the working class in sovereign contempt. They were only fit to labor, propagate their species, and die. This is the estimate all royalty places upon the working animals of the world. The queen was entitled to no special credit for dying. She simply could not help it.