Kansas City daily journal. [volume] (Kansas City, Mo.) 1892-1897, 1895-05-21
ASHES OF THE CREMATED.
What to DO with the Urns Is q Question
of the Day.

London Telegraph: The ancients
settled this question by placing the
cinerary urn either in its own recep-
tacle dedicated to the gods, or IN a
'columbarium," which was a kind of
stone cupboard, with many partitions
SUCH modern nations as the Hindoos
and japanese, who largely follow the
practice of cremation place the few
relics left by the flames in vessel of
pottery and deposit it either temporarily
or for good in their temples. Some
times the selected ashes after reposing
in the solemn spot, are thrown into a
holy river, such as the Jumna or the
GanEes, and in this way no embarrass-
ment arises The custom seems univer-
sal of desiring to preserve some little
portion of the scanty fragments left by
the fire. With the Hindoos a whitened
bone or two suffices. but the Greeks
gathered up all, and placed it in some
what larger vessels than the vases or
boxes used in India and Japan.
Every scholar recollects that touching
passage in Sophocles, where Orestes.
disguised brings back to his royal sister
the funeral urn supposed to contain his
own remains 1t may be doubted. in
spite of the reverence paid to the classic
morals, whether what Sophocles writes
was high dramatic art. He makes Orestes
relate a long-winded and utterly false
story of how he himself was smashed to
pieces in a chariot race. and then he
lets the lady go into passionate and elo-
quent grief through a hundred lovely
iambic lines, shedding tears as much
wasted as the water from a rain spout.
still the Greeks evidently found much
that was graceful and tender in the
two handfuls of white dust shut in n
little urn" and they lavished art upon
the receptacles, and knew where to put
them.
With us. however the fashion spreads,
har Ia npa
In large family-through a long lapse
of years, visited, perhaps, by recurrent
intluenza--the collection of departed rel
atives committed to all sorts of urns,
vases and jars might become a real in
convenience. Even if a special cabinet
We're devised, with separate shelves for
aunts, uncles, mothers-in-laW and SO on,
the difficulty at times of letting the
house or leaving it for another would be
likely to prove extreme. Beside, there
would always be this danger, which has
just befallen France, of losing an an
cestor or llinsman in transit; nor do we
know by what rule parliament itself
could decide how to concliate the value
which lover might put on the REM
nants of his mistress, or a residuary
legatee upon the ashes of the millionaire
who had enriched him, with the compare
tive indifference that railway companies
and common carriers would be inclined
to show toward such goods. Clearly
there would have to be a tariff, but in
drawing up that tariff what puZZing
questions might arise How could we
estimate the respective prices of aunts.
cousins and second cousins, or draw
pecuniary distinction between the re-
mains of a second third or fourth hus-
band of a widow?
If, as has been said, the ministers of
various denominations have declined to
find place of deposit for these inter-
esting memorials, the difficulty will
really press for solution as the practice
of cremation extends, and it must be
borne in mind, although new grief
might find a certain mournful pleasure
in having its lost ones ornamenting the
residence in exquisite porcelain of
Sevres or Satsuma still this feeling
wears off, and many people might be
glad to have a better place for all that
was mortal OF an uncle or a grandfather
than the parlor mantelpiece or the Chip
pendale whatnot.