In childbirth, as in other human endeavors, fashions start with the rich, are then adopted by the aspirant middle class with an assist from the ever-watchful media, and may or may not eventually filter down to the poor.

It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word travel is derived from travail, denoting the pains of childbirth.

Now there is a society where the funeral industry got completely out of control.

Knowing few children of my age with whom to compare notes, I envied the children of literature to whom interesting things were always happening.

The character and mentality of the keepers may be of more importance in understanding prisons than the character and mentality of the kept.

Funeralese has had its ups and downs. The word 'morticians,' first used in Embalmers Monthly for February, 1895, was barred by the Chicago Tribune in 1932, 'not for lack of sympathy with the ambition of undertakers to be well regarded, but because of it. If they haven't the sense to save themselves from their own lexicographers, we shall not be guilty of abetting them in their folly.

In childbirth, as in other human endeavors, fashions start with the rich, are then adopted by the aspirant middle class with an assist from the ever-watchful media, and may or may not eventually filter down to the poor.