Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1885-07-18
KATE FIELD ON CREMATION.

Strong Arguments in Favor of Incineration.
From An Intellectual Woman.
Kate Field makes strong protest against
the practice of earth-burial In a recent issue
of the st. Louis Globe Democrat, and in
very characteristic way she presents the SUI
perior claims of cremation as substitute.
That these claims are being recognized is
shown by the London Times since twelve
years ago. At that time Sir Charles Dixie
was denounced by the Times for religiously
following his wife's request that her body
should be cremated. Recently it published
an editorial in which the following sem
tence appeared: "Urn-burial has secured
MOI than mere tolerance. Objections which
had been accepted as insurmountable are put
upon their trial and compelled to avow their
hinisness. y English law is silent
on the subject aud silence gives consent"
Max Muller has expressed his regret that
the Jews did not burn their dead, for in that
case the Christian idea of the resurrection
would have been more spiritual. Canon
Leddon and the Bishop of Manchester con-
eur that no Christian doctrine can be affected
by the manner or the time in which body
crumbles into dust.
After citing these eminent advocates OF
cremation the writer points to the horrors
being perpetrated below the surface OF the
earth, poisoning air and water and making
the living easy prey to zymotic diseases
Several particular grave-yards are referred to
as showing the horrible way in which the
dead 30,000,0 600 to a generation are crowding
the living and each other both in England
and i'm Ireland.
Our own land is not so crowded, the writer
continues but is not Mount Auburn sur
rounded by habitations? May not the de-
cline of the healthfulness of the neghbor
hood OF Cambridge, Mass, he partially, at
least, ex planned by its ciose proxiaity of its
nitu of ha Fkf,
around Greenwood blow its poison TO towns
where the death-rate is abnormally high.
Philadelphia has three cemeteries containing
$4,000 graves drained into the drinking waier
of a million Of people. When the water sug-
gested to some Connecticut townsnen that
the prevailing amalaria' might be due 10
drinking up the remains or ther dead ances-
tors howls of ''sacrilege" rent the air.
New Orleans thirty-five cemeteries are all
within the city limits, where you cannot dig
two feet without coming to water. What
wonder that the yellow fever runs rampant
in the Crescent City when the air reeks with
poison from its thrty-tivc plague spots ex-
posed for six months in year to n tropical
sun.
The "literal resurrection" argument is
too puerile for serious consideration. Even
the Mormons, the literal interpreters of the
Bible, advocate cremation" When the lite
raj Mormon abjures literalness, ii is time Tor
orthodox Christians to ahjure a system of
burial fraught with dire consequences to the
living
After two or three CHASTITY descriptions of
incidents showing the horrors Of earth bu-
rial, the paper closes with an appeal to the
aesthete.
SIN ancient Rome both burning and burial
went on side by side how much to the ad-
vantage of burning can be no better shown
the sentimental and aesthetic than by recall
ing recent discovery in Rome of the ashes
of a Caesar. The marble monument, the ala
baster urn, the sacriiicial vase the cppi aud
Inscriptions were in almost perfect preserva-
ton. But for the dishonesty of an Italian
workman the very ashes themselves might
have remained undisturbed. Foul as that
Cesar's career may have been, no ceased to
ure his reople when fire converted his
body into unofiending dust. OF how many
of our beloved ancestors, bameless in life,
can this be said? That 1 may do no harm
after deat1, wish to be cremated."