Morning journal and courier., 1882-10-23
The St. Bernard MOrgue.

From Letter to the Boston Journsl
 The great curiosity at the Monastery of the Mount St. Bernard is the morgue. If tho day is little warm the brother who at tends to visitors hesitates bit before open ing the door of the wooden house just out side the chief building. He first drives away the dogs, who came prowling about, snuffing the air suspiciously, and has them shut into their room opposite the huge refectory Then he marhals the little company of inter- national tourists in line before the mysteri ous door, and opens the chamber of horrors. The keen mountain air rushes in, and pres ently you are conscious of 8 faint, sickly odor-not strong enough to be repulsive but eminently suggestive of death. Then as you stand there peering with strained eye balls into the darkness, you become vaguely conscious that face is looking at you. I de- fy anyone who is possessed of the smallest gain of imagination to see that mysterious face growing slowly out of the obscurity without sudden sinking of the heart and chill which no effort of the will can suppress. It is the face of a woman-and yet of ghost; kind of corporeal presence dlvssted of life and yet so horribly like life that you are almost afraid the bony and skinny frame to which 1t belongs will arise and stretch out it's dreadful arms, and drag you down into the depths which you so instinctively shun. The good brother does not say anything; he watches the effect of this curious spectacle upon you. Pretty soon you can discern that the face belongs to the body of a woman and the woman is clasping to her breast the form of babe. That mother is seated on the ground, and appears to be dazed by the light pouring down in her darksome habita- tion. But oh! the horror of her face Here is death without decay here, in this wondrous air, on this pass more than 5000 feet above the sea level, putrefaction is un- known and bodies found in snows in winter or after the white shroud has melted away from the bosom of nature in the spring-are preserved entire so long as the monks care to keep them. The grimness of spectacle is en-
 hanced by the fact that nearly every body found is contorted, twisted, strained and knotted up in fantastic shapes Now and then one which bears all the appearance of tranquil sleep is brought in but in most cases there are indications that man and wo- men, iii their battle with nature, foughs hard and desperately and refused to be over come until every particle of force was ex- hausted. The brethren gather up the bodies with tender care and place them in the dead house in the usually vain hope that some relatives may come to recognize them. Where is the father of the child which this strange spectral mother clasps in her arms? What was the history of the woman who had thus wandered in the wild winter from the Rhone ! valley toward the kinder and warmer Italian slopes? Perhaps her husband was with her and perhaps his body now lies St the bot l tom of some precipice where even the ''pious I monks of St Bernard" cannot find him-or perhaps he is here, in the dead house; per
 haps that prostrate body, seeming to grovel
 on the rocky floor, is his. The peasant rare- 1 ly carry any paper which can completely
 identify them, and sometimes the unfortu
 mates found dead in the pass here led such
 wandering lives-going to Switzerland for
 harvest work in the summer and to Italy
 when the winter nips them-that their pass ports give no clue to their birthplaces or ma 1 tive villages.