The Grange advance. [volume] (Red Wing, Minn.) 1873-1877, 1876-01-05
MISCELLANY.
THE PHENOMENA OF DEAD FACES

From the New York Times.
There is no longer any doubt of the
fact that the faces of the dead change in
expression even as do those of the living.
The subject is q CHASTITY one, and should
only be treated by Poe. Hawthorne, or
q Victor Hugo; but it has side Of hui
man and scientific intercst-one which
the physician and the philosopher should
examine. 1t may bear upon that dread.
full and sufficiently investigated subject
of premature interments, and upon the
propriety Of cremation, and Of willow
basket collins, which last subject brought
together gay and fashionable crowd at
Stafford House, and gave rise in London
to innumerable witty epigrams, rather
lighter than the occasion demanded. Here
is one Of them:
When start for Styx, land nobody knows
How the message will Gomez must quietly
AND, :, be *; sent by express, like a lot ofold
Or be packed up in moss, like a present of
game,
In a wicker work coffin, of cheapes: design
While on awired tag is my age and my name?
ooh bless me, We gous, il that isn't fame p
If was old Charon my place I'd resign,
Ere I'd ferry across-nO matter Who'll ask it.
Such badly packed, badly-illed, rickety
basket.
However, the author of the above did
not contemplate the possibility of his
supposedly rigid face smiling at his own
wit when old Charon should refuse him
as freight or expressage, even as petite
vitesse or otherwise.
But dead faces do smile - they blush,
as did Charlotte Corday's after her head
was cut off s; and the annals of the French
Revolution arc full of horrible stories of
eyes which winklcd, shed tears, or short
angry glances, and Of lips which smiled,
scornfully or resignedly, ere they kissed
the fatul basket into which they were
tumbled. The explanation Of this was
that the guillotine's sharp and sudden
administration left the brain we'll charg-
ed with blood, ard it could continue its
functisns for dreadful moment after the
body had ceased to belong to it. If this
is true, the guillotine is by far the most
cruel Of all the arts of decapitation. The
Spanish garrote, which by one fell screw
in the back Of the neck parlyzes all sensa-
ton at once,is far more Inerciful, although
no one who has been subjected to its
tender mercies has ever come back to tell
us if there be one instant of intense agony,
as there probably is.
The next anecdote is perhaps as re-
markable. 1t comes from Western
city, and has been mentioned in one or
two medical works. The story is Of a
lady about 38 years ofage, remarkably
beautiful woman, and the mother of four
children, three sons and daughter. She
had suffered much from the unreasonable
jealousy of her husband, who, although
he loved her much. had one Of those un.
governably jealous temperamerts which
Hannah More has delineated in her char
acter Of De Montfort, in the 'Plays of the
Pessions.' She was a woman of remark
able propriety of conduct and patient
with his infrmity; an excess OF goodness
not often found in the innocent, who are
not fond of being suspected, as a general
rule.
Her best friend and constant defender
was the sister of her husband and the
wife of the family physician. 1t was to
her interference that the poor lady owed
what peace she enjoyed for the last few
wears of her life. She was attacked by
heart disease and suffered greatly, but
was able to go out and drive about for
several months. During the progress Of
this illness her husband took up terri.
bic jealousy of the family physician, his
own brother-in-law, a fact that he did not
communicate to his sister, the physicians
wife. One day the poor invalid,
while driving, felt paroxysm
of pain coming on, and told her
coachman to drive to the house of the
doctor. He did so. She got out, went
in, and finding him with other patients in
his Office, received draught of digitalis,
or some other we'll known remedy. at his