The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1875-02-18
The Dead.

The first soul that went from our erring earth
to God was Abel's, and his the first burial let
US stand in imagination with the earliest fami-
ly of mourners that dropped tear "over the
loved and lost" Adam and Eve gazed in awe
struck wonder on the face of Death, and saw
with agony the terrible fruits of sin; they felt
that the fell monster, in driving his sword
through the body of their child, had pierced
their own hearts also; the resistless flood OF
earth's bitterest anguish commenced Its course
when our Mother Eve looked on the face of the
worlds first dead, and down in torrent of
woe it has swept through the hearts of millions
of her descendants Slowly Adam gathered
the beautiful clay in his arms, and within the
shadow of the Garden Of Eden, we may sup
pose the body of our Earth's First Sleeper
awaits the morning of the resurrection. Alas
the millions that have followed him through
the clark valley" Death has been the worlds
most frequent visitor; and yet men have not
grown familiar with his coming; no one looks
for him no one awaits him; we of the nine
teenth century shrink from the dark angel with
the same fearful awe the antediluvians felt, and
still from age to age from generation to gener-
alton men have had the dead among them, from
the Sovereign's palace to the Indians wigwam.
"In the midst of life thy've been in death. -
Dissertation of bodies of the departed has never
been in any age Of the world crying sin of
humanity; some nations have disposed of them
in one way, some in another, but the King OF
Terrors" by his very presence seemed to i'm
press even the ancient heathens with solemn
reverence; the most refined among them COM
ian Mother bowed with broken heart DER the
ashes of her child, deeming them more sacred
even to her since they had been purified by the
breath of fire. The Egyptian father would fain
have kept the body of his first born always with
him ;if not in the beauty of lfe at least in the
calm repose of death, and learned among them
studied for years to devise plan by which to
do this, until at last they gave to the world the
art of embalming. The body of Joseph slept
for hundreds of years in the Cave of Mamre as
free from corruption as when the spirit depart.
ed. Some of the proudest memorials the world
has ever seen have been built over the graves
of the dead, and the tomb of one of the Egyp-
tian kings, covers eleven acres of ground, while
its top has pointed to Heaven for thousands of
wears. The ancient Greeks and warlike Ro-
mans, with the natives of India and Isles of the
Sea, burned their dead, and the "ashes of Scipio
still live in song" In later days the Romans
sent them under ground, with coin in their
mouths to pay their passage to Hades.
In the pursuance of our subject, we must
cross the deep waters from the graves OF tne
Old World to those of the New, for there is no
cline beneath the sun where this painful sub
ject will not lead us; the waving palm of the
Sandwich Islands, the lofty pine of Oregon,
with the cedars of Lebanon, alike must shadow
the dead Let US watch the red men OF the
forest as they bear their chief to his last resting
place. slowly and sadly they seat him in his
narrow home, with his bow on his back and his
arrows beside him, for he will need them in the
happy hunting grounds to which be is going.
They also give him cup of water and some
food, that he may not faint by the way The
same wall of womans anguish, the same deep
note of mans strong woe are heard from this
lone grave in the forest that went up from the
low mound in the shadow of Eden, and they
mingle their notes with cries from the air bur
ial of the Esquimaux, and the wavc-pressed
grave of the mariner. Down through the
hearts of our highly favored people comes this
old diapason of earth's bitterest sorrow; we
have it in the homes of our own Christian
America, and it must continue to be heard as
long rs there is one living left to mourn the
dead. We, too, have our beautiful cemeteries
where italian marble and New Hampshire
granite tell the stories of the beloved. Oh let
us often visit their resting places, and while
we stand by their sides let US remember that
earth is fast becoming one vast grave yard OF
her children and that sooner or later these
bodies of ours, of which we are now so proud,
must sleep in her bosom, float in her atmos-
phere, or mingle with her waters.-Cncinmat'
Times