Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-02-22

Panama promenading is witnessed and you see the city at it's best-or worst. You hear the rustling of dresses, the cries of children, the confusion and feverish fun of Q tropic fete. It is all wildly strange and picturesque, this mingling of nations. The soft music of the Spanish guitar prevails, and you feel yourself in land of passion and pleasure.> When you go on the ship after midnight-for if you are a wise American you will sleep in the bay-you have to pass Panama petticoats- galore. These far southern cities are like unto Paris, perhaps unto Sodom and Gomorrah, in this particular. . The isthmus clearly has it's worldly pleasures as well as it's worldly pains, but the shadows are very deep and the sunshine is not always clear. The heat is dense and heavy from January to January; all business ceases from 10 in the morning until late afternoon, and even then it is carried on with an ener- vating listlessness, for the air is filled with insidious disease, and no one knows just what tomorrow will bring forth.
 <*x
 The cost of living on the isthmus is not expensive, but the cost of dying is very considerable. One must be mil lionaire to quietly give up the ghost and be buried decently, with anything like the pomp attending the obsequies of middle class citizen in the United States. Collins are so expensive that they have a peculiar way of making economical the path which leads but to the grave. Therefore it is not uncommon to read in the two great cities of the isthmus this rather startling legend:
 :--...-....-...-......-. COFFINS TO LET.
 '..-........-..-..-.... .................: Having arranged to spend day or two on the canal, and time being valu- able, l had Mir. E. c. Horst, who accom- panies me through Spanish America as artist and photographer, examine as to the methods of burial, and after careful investigation he thus reports:
 The cemeteries of Panama, five in all. are at Cocoa Grove and are within ono minutes walk from one another. They are all managed by one firm, Sves Obarrio | y Cia. One of these gentlemen went with mo through all the graveyards and ex- plained everything of interest. The five cemeteries are the foreign, the Chinese, the Jewish, the old Spanish and the new | of these according to desire. The man. agers of the cemeteries are the only ones in the business of manufacturing, selling and letting collins, so they have a coffin monopoly just as the Boston Ice com pany has monopoly of ice, or as 8 New York house has Q monopoly in hams. There the Panama Canal company man. ufacture whatever coffins they need for their employees, and transact a very brisk business in this particular. In the price of coffins there is wide margin, the sum being from $7 to $100. If even $7 is higher than can be afforded, an old coffin more or less clean, in good con- dition of repair, can be hired for one tenth the selling price of new one, and a second hand coffin of rather disreput- able appearance be bought for interment at $1, the corpse being transferred at the grave. This is done to large extent. For instance, if poor mans friends want to give him a first class send oil for little money, they can hire $100 coffin for one-tenth, i. e. $10, and buy an old one for interment at $1, making $11, or hiring $40 one, the whole cost is only $5, or he may buy $1 one at once and not hire any other, or he may go still lower by not using any coffin at all, in which case he is sand wiched between two weather beaten boards. It is said that he sleeps as long and perhaps as comfortably this way as in the most superbly trimmed recep- tacle.
 The graves are not sold, but rented for one or two years. If the regular rental is not paid, the body is disinterred, the bones thrown in common heap and the coffin used as a second hand one This is very general result of burial. The same system prevails, too, in the Bore das, where holes in masonry are let for | S12 for eighteen months. Friends are usually neglectful after a period of mourning, and the common heap of bones kept in huge yard is enormous. There Celestials, Caucasians and Afri- cans are mixed up like Buttercups babies. This tumble of human remains suggests much trouble when Gabriel blows his trumpet. Who will be able to find the full complement of his own skel- eton? The agile one may make up his own deficiency from the pick of the rest, but the slow moving individual will be apt to miss it. I fear there will be many misfts at the celestial gate. Who can tell whether one is entitled to admission if one is composed partly of some ono else? The very thought is disagreeable and perplexing.
 l FRED'K w. WHITE. | Government in Cimarron.