The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1882-02-02
The Wrong shes.

He was a jolly-looking man, with a
round corporation, burgundy-tinted
nose, and, the general exterior of con-
tented mind, and as he entered the edi-
torial den he offered us q good cigar lit
another and said:
''How about the local cremation
scheme?"
"Well, how yourself?''
''The fact is" said the stranger, re-
flectively, 81 had pretty tough ex-
perience with one of these cadaver toast
ing concerns once, and thought mebbe
you might like to make an item of the
facts SO as to warn the people here in
| time"
'Fire away"
"Well, you see, it was in New Orleans.
| My wife died there, and as a cremation
company was having a good deal of .
| boom there just then, she made me
promise to have her spirit sent up through
their fiue, as it were Said she thought
it would be nice and melancholy for me
to carry her ashes around with me
wherever l went-in a vase, you under
stand"
>''And you complied?''
'Why, yes. 1t was her last wish, yOu
know, and besides 1 thought it might be
nsefui in kinder preparing her for the
here-but never mind that, now. l sent
the remains round to the company's
office in push-c;rt. got u receipt, saw
Maria touched off, so to speak. and two
days after that they returned to me
beautiful majolica jar full of ashes,
scented with forget-me-not, and the
stopper tied in with pink ribbon.'
THAT was pretty"
Eyes, was very much pleased at first
but l had to keep the bottle out of sight
after while, though, because people
were all the time opening the jar, under.
the impression that it contained preserved
ginger or chow-chow, or something"
THAT must have been unpleasant"
''Unpleasant-weIl,I should smile-I
mean, l should weep. Why, actually,
one day while was living in New Y York,
1 came home and found a new servant
girl polishing knives with the remains
just think of it, ts
Terrible, sir, terrible eea
''But, what was going to say was
this. About a year after my wife was
kindled-I mean cremated-I was in
New Orleans again, and happened to
meet the superintendent of the refrac-
tory ore-I should say the corpse-burn-
ing furnace-at banquet, and he got
L
the way we stopped in a place or two for
the result was that he got very commu-
NEGATIVE about his company-in fact,
gave the whole business away"
, ''Did, ehP''
eyes, sir; he squarely owned up that
they didn't burn the bodies at all. He
said they just dropped 'em through
hole in the bottom of the furnace, took
'em out the back way at night, and sold
'em to the medical students"
'.Gracious! and the ashes - -,
''Mule ashes, sir; nothing but mule
ashes They would just cut up some
old mule carcass, the superintendent
said, pitch in enough to make bad
smell, and then sell the ashes to the
grief stricken relatives at 1926 bottle.
Terrible cheeky, now wasn't it ?"
''And all this time you had
''Had been carrying that jar of mule
ashes all over the country. just imag-
inc how mean l felt"
''You threw it away then ?''
''Well, no." said the widOwer, as he
winked a tear out of his left eye; .'the
more l studied over the matter the more
concluded that mules ashes weren't SO
much out of the way after all. You
see, poor Maria was an awful stubborn
n-t-r-e-m-e-n-d-o-u-s stubborn
and-yes, kinder thought mule ashes
would do mighty near as well, all things
considered
And heaving the resigned sigh of one
who had succeeded in bracing up under
great sorrow, the anti-cremationist
smiled softly, lit another cigar, and
walked out.-Derrick.