Portage sentinel. [volume] (Ravenna, Ohio) 1845-1854, 1853-09-14

Hdny sAorr!Ole reports OF the dolngS among tn
dead, we the other day visited the cemetaries Il
every street were long professions, trampling t.
a the solemn music Of funeral marches. In th
e countenance of plodding passengers were tn,
lines OF anxiety and grief, and many a door wa
festooned with black and white hanging, thu
Volcelsss witnesses of wailing and of sorrow
On thaene hand slowly swept the long corteges
OF the wealthy, nodding with plumes and drawn
by pranefng horses, rejoicing in their funeral
vanities; on another, the hearse of the citizen
soldier, preceded by measured music, enveloped
in warlike panoply, and followed by the noisy
tread of men under arms; while there again the
pauper was trundled to his long home on ricket-
ty cart, with boy for driver, who whistled as
he went and swore careless oath as he urged
his mule or spawned horse to a trot, making
haste with another morsal contributed to the
grand banquet of death. Now among the steeples
was heard the Ginning of the bells, as ofGhoules
up there, mingling their hoarse voices as in
chorus of graduation over the ranks of fallen
mortality. Anon from some lowly tenement
thrilled the low wall of mother for the child of
her affections, while from the corner opposite
burst the song of some low bacchanal, mingling
two as the humor moved him. f.s.
The skies wore delusive aspect. Above was
all cloudless sunshine but little in keeping with
the black melancholy that enveloped all below.
Out along the highways that lead to the cities of
the dead, and still the tramp of funeral crowds
knew no cessation. Up rolled the volumes of
dust from the roads, and the plumes of the death
carriages nodded in seeming sympathy to the
swaying expresses of the swamp, enveloped in
their dun appareling of weeping moss-fit garn-
ture for such a scene. ..- -a
At the gathering points carriages accumulated
and vulgar teamsters, as they jostled each other
in the press, mingled the coarse jest with the RI
bald oath; no sound but of profane malediction
and of riotous mirth, the clang of whipthongs and
the rattle of wheels. At the gates, the winds
brought intimation of the corruption, working
within. Not puff but was laden with the rank
atmosphere from rotting corpses. Inside they
were piled by ffties, exposed to the heat of the
sun swollen with the corruption, bursting their
cofin-lids and sundering, if by physical effort,
the igaments that bound their hands and feet,
and extending their rigid limbs in every outre
attitude What a feast of horrors! Inside, |
corpses piled in pyramids, and without the gates,
old and withered crones and huckster-women,
in their own greese, dispensing ice creams and
confections, and brushing away, with brooms
made of brushes, the green-bottle flies that how
cred on their merchandise, and that anon buzzed
away to drink dainty inhaatons from the green
and fostering corpses. Mammon at the gates
was making thrift outside by the hands of his
black and sweating minions, that rendered sweat
meats and cooling beverages to the throngs of
mourners or idle spectators, who, inhalng the
fumes of rotton bodies, already 'heaved the
gorge; while within. the ssKing Of Terrors'' held
his Saturnalia with crowd of stolid laborers,
who, as they tumbled the dead into the bitches,
knocked them 'sabout the mazzard," and swore
dread oaths, interminged with the more dreadful
sounds of demoniac jol1ity.
Long bitches were dug across the great human
charnel. Wide enough were they to entomb
legion, but only fourteen inches deep. Collins
laid in them showed their tops above the surface
of the earth. On these were piled dirt to the
depth of foot or more, but so loosely, that the
myrads of flies found entry between the loose
clods, down to the cracked seams of the coffins,
and buzzed and blew there their ovaria, creating
each hour their new-hatched swarms- .
But no sound was there of sorrow within that
Gehenna. Men used to the scent of dissolution
had forgotten all touch of sympathy. Uncouth
laborers, with their bare shock heads, stood un-
der the broiing heat of the sun, digging in the
earth; and as anon they would encounter an OBJ
structing root or stump, would swear a hideous
oath, remove to another spot, and go on digging
as before. Now and then the mattock the
spade would disturb the bones ofsome former ten
ant of the mould, forgotten there amid the armies
of the accumulated victims, and the sturdy larborer
with gibe, would hurl the broken fragments on
the sward, growl forth an energetic d-n, and
chuckle in his success of glee. Skull-bones
were dug up from their long sepulture, with ghast
illness staring out.
ssFrom each lack lustre, eyeless hole,''
without eliciting an "Alas, poor Yorick," and
with only an exclamation from the digger Groom
for your betters!'
Economy of space was the source of cunning
calculation in bestowing away the dead men,
Side by side were laid two, of gigantic proper
tions, bloated by corruption to the size of Ttans.
The central projections of their cofns, left spaces
between them at their heads and heels. This
was too much room to be filled with earth. How
should the space be saved! Opportunely the
material is at hand, for cart comes numbering III
with the corpses of mother and her two little
children. Chuck the children in the spaces at
the heads and heels of the Titans, and lay the
mother by herself, out there alone! A comrade
for her anon, and herself and babes will not sleep