Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1882-11-02
THE MORGUE OF ST. BERNARD.
Death Without Decay-The Unfdenti
fed Victims of the snow-Storm.

hSu OI the SnOW-St0Tm.
The great curiosity at the monastery
OF the Mount st. Bernard is the NOR
que. If the day is a little warm the
brother who attends to visitors hesitates
bit before opening the door of the
wooden house just outside the chief
building. He first drives away the dogs,
who come prowling about, snufing the
air suspiciously, and has them shut into
their room opposite the huge refectory.
Then he marshals the little company of
international tourists in line before the
mysterious door, and opens the cham
Der of horrors. The keen mountain
cir rushes In, and presently you are
concious of faint, sickly odor-not
strong enough to be repulsive, but emf
nently suggestive of death. Then, as
you stand there peering with strained
eyeballs into the darkness, you become
vaguely conscious that face is looking
at you. defy anyone who is possessed
OF the smallest grain Of imagination to
see that mysterious face growing slowly
out of the obscurity, without sudden
sinking Of the heart and a chill which
no effort of the will can suppress. 1t is
the face of a woman-and vet of a
ghost; kind of corporeal presence
dlvested of life and yet so horribly like
life that you are almost afraid the bony
and skinny frame to which it belongs
will arise and stretch out its 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
can discern that the face belongs to the
body of a woman-and that this
woman is clasping to her breast the
form of tiny babe. The mother is
seated on the ground, and appears to
be dazed by the light pouring down
into her darksome habitation. But OIL
the horror of her face! Here is death
without decay; here, is this wondrous
air, on this pass more than eight thous-
and feet above the sea level, putrefac-
ton Is unknown; and bodies found in
the snow In the winteT-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
the spectacle is enhanced by the fact
torted, twisted, strained and knotted in
fantastic shapes. Now and then one
which bears all the appearance of tran
quill sleep is brought in; but in most
cases there are indications that man
and woman, In their battle with nature,
fought hard and desperately and re-
fused to be overcome until every par
ticle of force was exhausted. The
brethren gather up the bodies with a
tender care and placed them in the
dead-house in the usually vain hope
that some relatives may come to recOg-
nlze 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 slopes1 Perhaps
her husband was with her-and per
haps his body now lies at the bottom of
some precipice where even the "pious
monks of Saint Bernard" can not find
him-or perhaps he is here, in the
dead-house; perhaps that PROSTATE
body, seeming to grovel on the rocky
floor, Is his. The peasants rarely carry
any paper which can completely
indentify them, and sometimes the un-
fortunates found dead in the pass led
such wandering lives-going to Switzler-
land for harvest work in summer and
to Italy when the winter nips them
that their passports even give no clew
to their blrthplaces or native villages,
Cor. Boston Journal.