Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1884-05-03

in the ocean to be consumed by the sharks, We
prefer TO give our dead 70 the birds OF the air.
We were certainly answered, though not con
WINGED, as to the propriety of the awful scene
just enacted.
Perhaps. after all il makes but little difference
what becomes of these tenements OF clay. Inc
Parsee feeds the vultures with his dead, the
deyout Hindoo burns the body, and the pro
fessed Christian gives his TO .he worms and TO
the sharks.
But these are purely sentimental rea-
sons. The sanitary claims for Incarceration
are simply incontestable In Brazil it has
been positively demonstrated that the
graves Of yellow fever victims swarm with
the germs of the plague. In Egypt it has
been established that the same is true Of
the burial-places of cholera victims 1t
certainly is Just Us reasonable to believe it
true'in cases of fever, smallpox and diph-
liberia. In New Orleans the cemeteries
have been declared nuisances, and Grand
Jury has just advised the setting up Of
public crematories. Cremation is less ex-
pensiye than burial; it sequesters no valu-
able ground it removes the possibility Of
burial of the living; it dissipates the
picture of the loved form rOtting in the
earth and fed upon by the most horrid of
creatures it enables the ashes Of the dead
to be gathered with ease and small ex
pense, no matter how widely scattered is
the family at the death Of It's members; it
blots out the miserable superstitions about
graves and cemeteries.
But when it is asked, "Why not burn ?"
there is Of course, expected a response.
None has not yet been giyen-that
is to say, the reply has uniformly been
such as cliRgs TO the skirts of prejudice.
No really practical or worthily reasonable
answer has or can be made, since science,
reason, economy and sanitary reform all
favor cremation. As to the sentimental
phase, that is purely a matter of educa-
ton. Whoever witnesses the disposal Of a
body in an incinerator comes away amazed
at its simplicity, and the fact that none of
the tragic agonies Of the grave are evoked
by the process.
A furnace, consuming all the gases Of the
process, brings a clay cylinder 10 a white
heat. In this there is neither coal nor
flame; in fact, the body is not burned, but
Is gently reduced to ashes as is matter in
a retort by chemical disintegration through
the agency of intense heat. The body,
prepared as for burial is covered with an
alum-saturated sheet and placed in the
cylinder, the opening OF which changes
the interior to a ROSY red. The sheet pre-
vents all scorching or burning or exposure
of the body, and as the spectator looks on
he sees the covered form gradually sink
away and vanish from sight, and as the
bones crumble beneath the sheet and ashes
remain, the process concludes.
A recent writer who witnessed the oper-
alton. and was converted to favor it, thus
reflects upon it: You have laid white
robed form within the rosy cylinder and
have turned away to think with gratitude
that all is we'll You have let your mag
ination dwell lovingly upon the pleasing
sentiment that whatever may be left
besides the calcined bones most pure and
clean-has gone to mingie with the upper
air and dwell with sunshine, birds and
flowers. The darkness and the dampness
of the earth have been escaped, and 50
have the perils of grave-snatching, the in
decencieS of possible dissecting room and
the nameless horrors Of putrefaction You
have pleasant memories to cherish OF the
last sad hour which, instead of breath
less darkness and the narrow house and
the dreadful thud Of falling earth upon
the coffin, presents to mind a lovely bed
of rosy light, and peaceful form, clad in
virgin purity, resting within its soft en-
brace. If lily mad been laid upon bed
OF pinks or roses in the summer, and you
had seen its fragrance and its beauty all
exhale amid the shimmering beams of
radiated heat beneath the touch of some
invisible and gentle agency, you would
have had not a dissimilar experience And
this is neither painful to the eye, nor dis
tressing to the sensibilities, nor ungrateful
70 the memory"