Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1890-10-17
er to SOW seeds of doubt in their satisfied

minds.
1t must be admitted in this connection
that the rage for relics of the famous exists
in America as we'll as elsewhere. One Pc
culiarly shocking example has to do with
the deayt and burial of George Frederick
Cooke nous English actor, whose ca
reer wasy ',ort at Boston by dissipation.
He died tembcr, 1872, and the doc
tors made .opsy, as they said, to dis
cover the naSure of hisdisease. One of the
surgeons, named Francis, cut off the poor
fellows head and kept it. Some years
later, when Hamlet" was on the boards
at the Park theatre, the property man
found himself without a skull for use in
the graveyard scene. He applied to Fran
els, who loaned him the skull of Cooke!
TIL mutilated remains were given sepul-
ture inst. Paul's c~hurchyard, New York
city. There they lay until 1891, when Ed
mund Kean, also a celebrated English &C.
tor, caused them to be dug up and rein
tered under a monument which he erect
ed at his own expense.
While the headless corpse was being
transferred from it's old to it's new resting
place Mr.. Kean distracted a toe bone,
which he reverenced as a priceless souve-
mir. He took it to London and made it an
oDJNSo VI "o1ohAP IL OAC AOu1o VI LIS VI
lin frenzy. He declared that it would
prove a fortune to his son Charles, but it
didn't, for Mrs. Kean, tired of her hus-
bands ridiculous rantings, one day picked
up the revered relic and pitched it out of
the window. Kean went frantic over the
loss and said to his wife, MARY, your son
Charles was worth 100000; now he is a
beggar." The sum mentioned was the
actors estimate of the value of the toe
bone.
What there is left of Cookies skeleton,
so far as known, has not been disturbed.
The monument erected by Edmund .Kean
in 1891 was repaired by his son Charles
! twenty-five years afterward, renovated by
K. A. Sothern a quarter of a century later,
and finally restored by Edwin Booth in 1890.
Not many weeks back a poor wretch of
an assassin named kemmler suffered death
by electricity in one Of New York's state
prisons. 1t is said nat nearly every per-
son present at the execution lugged away
some portion of the mans body or clothes
as a memento of the event. The same pas
sion for souvenirs has destroyed root and
branch the famous apple tree" under
| which Grant didn't receive Lees surren-
der, n scattered the furniture of the
house in which he did. Were it not for
careful guardianship the souvenirs of
Washington would be dispersed in twenty
four hours, and the Declaration of indie
pendence torn into bits by "pickers up of
unconsidered t%rifles." I
know one Of this class of people. He
figures with half a dozen others as the
&C.," in Il big dry goods house. His in
COM is Il fair one; he is an excellent bust
ness man and an affectionate father and
husband. But he never enters a public
building without surreptitiously writing
his name on the walls. He defaces statues
in the same way, and slyly tries to chip
bits for relics. When he can he cuts sig
natures from hotel registers and other
books in which noted men write their
names. At the Hotel Lafayette, Lake Min
netonka, MIMI, one season those who
knew his weakness entered in the register
Photographs" of IL. Rider Haggard, Rob
ert Louis Stevenson and similar worthless.
These now adorn his "collection," and are
displayed side by side with a shovelful of
earth from the battle field of Gettysburg,
q flask Of Jordan water and Il phial con-
tanning Il tear which fell from the eye of
the statue of St. J%anuarias. Like the men
already mentioned he wouldn't hesitate a
second about pulling a tooth from Hamp-
den IS jaw or mutilating the skeleton of
Cooke. Still, in most respects, he is a good
citizen and an honest man.
Queer thing, this craze for relics, isn't it?
FRED G. DAYTON.