The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-01-02

of being Is a shadow which changes, and vapor that passes away, Thou breathest forth, and the endless spaces are peopled. Thou drawest breath, and all that went forth from Thee returns again."
 Colonel Olcott, in his account of these unique, occult services, says that was good Vedantism as well as good Theos- ophy. The Barons body was cremated the following December, being the first cremation in Dr. I4e Moyne's newly built erematorlum. The fire (of coke) had been lighted at ? o'clock on the morning of the day of the cremation, and when the party reached 1t the re- tort was at a dazzling white heat 'Fhot enough" said the stoker, ito melt iron" The following description by Colonel Olcott of the cremation may be of interest in this connections:
 "The mechanical construction of the apparatus was simplicity itself An arched retort of fire-clay, eight feet long by three feet broad, and the same in height, for receiving the body, was surrounded by a fire-flue communicat- ing with a furnace beneath the retort, which had tall chimney for making a draft and carrying off the smoke. An opening from the retort into the sur rounding hot-air flue allowed the es- cape into 1t of the gases and other vol atile products of cremation, where they were effectually consumed. A large iron door luted with fire-clay around the frame was fitted into the front of the resort, and the swinging flap not on- { ly permitted of the introduction of cold air and the making of a slight draught through the retort at will, but also served at peep-hole through which glimpses could be had of the progress of the cremation. As the body lay up- on an open iron crate, swathed in its alum-saturated sheet, in q fire-clay box which effectually separated it from the | furnace fire beneath, 1t will be seen there could be none of that horror of roasting human flesh which makes one | shudder at an open-air pyre-burning, while as all the lighter products of ere nation were burnt up in the heat-flue | that encircled the white-hot retort, there was none of the unpleasant odor of an Indian burning g.rate. The body simply dries into nothing save the ash es its skeleton. When the retort was opened the morning after De Palms cremation, there was noth- ing left of the once tall, stout body save a trail of white powder, and i some fragments of osseous articula- tions, the whole weighing but some six pounds. Public opinion has now after lapse of seventeen years (twen- ty years it is now) reached the point where a law journal dares print the following praise of cremation:
 | 'There is nothing surer than that in ] the not far-distant future the crema- tion of dead bodies will be in universal 1 vogue. It is now ascertained that ! earth worms convey microbes of dis l ease from cemeteries and distrib- utes them at their own sweet will. We have never yet been able to compre- bend how about SO,Ooo decaying bodies in an acre or two of ground can be anything less than an unmitigated dan ger to those living within few miles of their influence. Earth is a pretty good deodorizer but there are limits to its capacity. Do the advocates of inter- ment imagine that the gases from thou sands of closely-packed corpses escape | toward the center of the earth? If SO, they will have to learn that they easily permeate the few feet of earth, and have liberty to roam in the sunlight and poison those who happen to cross the path of their wanderings. Every malignant disease which curses man. kind to-day is the admonition of law calling on us to improve our habits and l live in accordance with reason The time will come when all decaying mat ter will be rendered harmless by the action of heat" "Jury'' is the name of the law-journal which says these wise words.
 Cremation has other advantages over burial; it prevents the thefts of bodies l by the knights of the dissecting table. It also prevents that terrible fate of burying alive. Burning alive. in an unconscious state, is far preferable to the terror of awakening under ground. Another advantage, it is much cheaper than the old method, or will be when crematories are as common as grave yards I haven't the statistics at hand
 but believe there are now some twenty crematories in this country. In 1894 there were S76 cremations; in 1876 there were but 36. In the crematory near Forest Hills, Boston, there were 12C bodies cremated in a little over year
 Clergymen are fast coming over to the cremation theory. Dean Hodges of the Episcopal Theological school at Cam bridge, supports cremation, and in con- trasting Pharaoh's mummy ill the Brit ish Museum with Wyclife's ashes scat tered in the sea, he declared that the cremation of the dead would discour- age the ostentation of marble pyramids and temples in cemeteries, and drew a poetic picture of the "beautiful house of the departed" which might arise ir
 the midst of the city to contain the ashes of all the dead Lord Shaftes-
 bury few years ago made pungent reply to some one who raised the ob-
 jection that cremation would endan- ger the doctrine of the resurrection oi the dead This reply was: What, ther has become of the holy martyrs who were cremated?" If these holy mar
 tyrs cannot be resurrected owing tc
 their bodies being burned, their sub- lime faith is of no account. Max Null. Ter regrets that the Jews did not ere.
 mate their dead, as then the Christian
 idea of the resurrection would have