The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1882-02-11

Yesterday morning undertaken Edward
G. Smith buried the body of Otis Gowdy
the would-be robber shot in the ST. George
hotel. The body was still as fresh in every
particular, save peaked and pinched ap.
pearance Of the nose, as it was when life
first left it. There is no doubt but that he
could have kept it a month longer, perhaps
indefinitely. All he did was to inject into
the veins of the body every four or five
days, a reddish colored liquid he has. This
liquid would be forced through all the veins
and arteries and for a little while after the
| face of the cadaver would present slightly
flushed appearance. 1t is wonderful TO
what ends the discoveries of science have
reached. Not only can disease be baiiled
and indeed defeated, life preserved for
weeks and weeks and months by the skill of
the physician and of the surgeon, but after
death, the laws of nature can be set aside
and the body, the trail tenement of the
spiritual part of man, be saved from decay.
The bodies OF the dead all iiguratively and
virtually return to the dust whence they
came, but, with the advantages which mod
crn science give they can be prevented from
literally doing so. We of this dav and
time, in our egotism and self laudation for
the little we know, are prone to term our
achievements and attainments in science
and occult knowledge rs modern, when, in
| reality, we are far behind the ancents in
many, very many things, and what are
mysteries to us were but plain and simple
facts to them. This is notably so in the
matter of the preservation of the bodies of
the dead. The mummies taken from the
catacombs of the. pyramids were quick hui
man beings quick with life and intelligence,
ages before the Christian era dawned, centu-
hnfn ha nl n,,I, 4
Remus or they had founded the seven
| hilled city, the once mistress of
the world. The wavelets of the
| Tiber may have danced in the sunlight and
| cleaned underneath the stars when these
mummies had being, but no Roman had
| ere bathed in their flowing tide then. Still
| these bodies, despite the lapse Of years
on multiplied years, and the ravages of
time and the mutations Of nature every
where else, remained perfect in all particu-
lars as they were when death came TO them.
Not even the pyramids themselves are more
durable than they, are more i'm
the elements or the seasons. Ii must be q
pleasant thought to know that those we
love, although they are dead and lost on
earth TO us forever, are still in the form in
which we knew them, and that although
the clods of the valley lie upon their
bosoms, the worms of the earth have not
desecrated their bodies. Cremation has
given to the world the means OF preserving
the ashes in ornate urns, of the loved and
lost, but II is not impossible or improbable
that the art of embalming will
ere many years reach that point OF
perfection which will enable us to so pre-
serve our friends that We can retain them
in mausoleums built for the purpose, their
| hatnU m nj Ia ola hot
may look upon their faces when we so de-
sire. II may become fashionable and it
would be reasonable fashion, to build
these mausoleums on the homestead prem
Uses, making of them handsome, attractive
and ornamental structures. Such dispo-
sal of the dead would doubtless be calcula.
ted to divest death of many of its terrors,
and to tighten ths grief of mourning friend.
to a considerable degree. The loneliness
of the church-yard, its solemn stiffness ana
the horrid orgies of the worm in the char
mel house invest death with an awiulness
that makes even the stoutest and NEST in.
different to shudder. Sir Worm has been
q lordly autocrat since Adam tell, Princes
and paupers alike have furnished the ban.
quot viands for his feasts, and
dainty though he be, caressing fondly the
lips and cheeks Of pallid beauties
in their burial robes, and toying with their
raven or golden trcsses, wheiting his us,ful
chops the while as he gloated ON the rich
menu all his own. Once upon time our
reporter remembers when Bronze John was
stalking through our blessed sunny south.
land, and he fell into the clutches of the
saffron monster; the red-hot lever prostra.
ted him. Delirum held revel in all the
chambers oihis brain and reared its affairs
for weird. wild and fearful mimicrcs and
pageantrics. One of the delirum's favori,c
pastimcs was to coniure up horrid form,
to torment its victim. One of these forms
was dead man. There was q bit OF rope
about his neck, rs though he had died by
hanging. His tongue, black and swollen,
and necked with ictid saliva, protruded
from the mouth, and out OF the cycles
sockets great, fat, loathsome worms wig
gled aud twisted and they seemed to laugh
In mockery at the icvcr.strcken wretch II
the tolls OF the demon delirum, and mouth
ingly say; 1--WE soon WILDE at you to picl
your bones bare" Ali Il will be blcssct
T day indeed when Sir Worm can DO dc